President Sergio Mattarella on Monday
condemned the "ruthless violence" committed by Tito's Yugoslav
Partisans on Italy's Day of Remembrance of the Foibe massacres,
the mass killings and deportations of Italians living in the
area that stretches from the Trieste zone in Italy's Friuli
Venezia Giulia region across the Istrian peninsula to Dalmatia
in Croatia during and immediately after WWII.
The president also condemned the fact that the Foibe atrocities
were swept under the carpet in Italy by anti-Fascists in the
postwar years.
Indeed, Italy established Foibe Remembrance Day only in 2004.
"In the eastern border areas, after the Fascist oppression,
responsible for a harsh segregationist policy towards the Slavic
populations, and the barbaric Nazi occupation, Tito's communist
dictatorship was established, inaugurating a ruthless period of
violence against the Italians living in those areas," Mattarella
told a Foibe Remembrance Day ceremony at the Quirinal Palace in
Rome.
"The sad story of the exiles was underestimated and sometimes
even disregarded," the head of State continued.
"The institution of the Day of Remembrance, approved by a very
large majority by the Italian Parliament, has helped to
reconnect that tragic and neglected chapter in Italian history,
one which, at times, was even guiltily removed.
"For too long 'foiba' and 'infoibare' (to bury in a foiba) were
synonyms for the concealment of history".
(see related).
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