Foibe killings

The Foibe killings or Foibe massacres refers to the killings that took place mainly in Istria during and shortly after World War II from 1943 to 1949, perpetrated mainly by the Yugoslav Partisans. This term includes by extension killings in other subterranean formations, such as the Basovizza 'foiba', which is not a true foiba but a mine shaft. The name derives from a local geological feature, a type of deep karst sinkhole called a foiba.

In Italy the term foibe has, for some authors and scholars, taken on a symbolic meaning; for them it refers in a broader sense to all the disappearances or killings of Italian people in the territories occupied by Yugoslav forces. According to Raoul Pupo, "It is well known that the majority of the victims didn't end their lives in a Karst cave, but met their deaths on the road to deportation, as well as in jails or in Yugoslav concentration camps". The terror spread by the disappearances and the killings eventually contributed to an atmosphere sufficient to cause the majority of the Italians of Istria, Rijeka and Zadar to flee to other parts of Italy or the Free Territory of Trieste.

Other authors have asserted that "[t]he post-war pursuit of the 'truth' of the foibe as a means of transcending Fascist/Anti-Fascist oppositions and promoting popular patriotism has not been the preserve of right-wing or neo-Fascist groups. Evocations of the 'Slav other' and of the terrors of the foibe made by state institutions, academics, amateur historians, journalists and the memorial landscape of everyday life were the backdrop to the post-war renegotiation of Italian national identity..

Estimates of the numbers of dead range from several hundred to several thousand.

Events
The first (very disputed ) claims of people being thrown into foibe date back to 1943, when the Wehrmacht took back the area from the Partisans, when around 70 local people were thrown into a foiba by the Germans after a cinema bombing.

Many of the bodies found in the pit of Basovizza, and in the foibe of Lokev (Corgnale), Grgar, Plomin, Komen, Socerb, Val Rosandra, Cassorana, Labin, Tinjan, Cerenizza, Heki and others were ethnic Italians, but, according to Katia Pizzi, "despite evidence that Fascist soldiers had also used 'foibe' as open-air cemeteries for opponents of the regime, only their equivalent use on the part of Yugoslav partisans appeared to arouse general censure, enriched as it was with the most gruesome details". The number of those who died in foibe during and after the war is still unknown, difficult to establish and a matter of much controversy. Estimates range from hundreds to twenty thousand. According to Katia Pizzi: "In 1943 and 1945, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Italians, both partisans and civilians, were imprisoned and subsequently thrown alive by Yugoslav partisans into various chasms in the Karst region and the hinterland of Trieste and Gorizia". According to data gathered by a mixed Slovene-Italian historical commission established in 1993, "the violence was further manifested in hundreds of summary executions - victims were mostly thrown (still alive) into the Karst chasms (foibe) - and in the deportation of a great number of soldiers and civilians, who either wasted away or were killed during the deportation". Some historians like Raoul Pupo or Roberto Spazzali estimated the total number of victims at about 5,000, but this is again contested by many. The episodes of 1945 occurred partly under conditions of guerrilla fighting of Croatian and Slovenian Yugoslav Partisans against the Germans, the Italian Social Republic and their Slavic collaborating allies (the Chetniks, the Ustaše and Domobranci) and partly after the territory had been secured by the Yugoslav army formations.

It was never possible to extract all the thousands of corpses from foibes (some of them are deeper than several hundreds meters). Until few years ago It had been able to extract from the pits just a small number of bodies, less than six hundred. , while other sources are attempting to compile lists of locations and possible victim numbers.

Background
[[File:MORLACCHI.QUARNARO.jpg|thumb|300px|Linguistic division of Istria and Kvarner in 1910 (on the basis of Austrian census of 1910)

{{legend|#d69c17|Italian (Venetian and Istrian)}} {{legend|#ddc758|Serbocroatian}} {{legend|#b59b13|Slovenian}} {{legend|#ab9a55|Istro-Romanian}}]]

Since the early Middle Ages, Latin and Slavic communities in Istria and Dalmatia lived peacefully side by side. The population was divided into urban-coastal communities (mainly of Romanic language) and country-mountain communities (mainly of Slavic language), with small minorities of Morlachs and Istro-Romanians. Sociologically, the population was divided into Latin middle-upper classes (bourgeoisie and aristocracy in coastal areas and in the towns) and Slavic lower classes (peasants and shepherds inland). Some contemporary Croat studies suggest that Dalmatia's towns were settled almost exclusively by Slavic population since A.D. 1000 and Italian ethnics emigrated there after Venetian domination.

After the Napoleonic age (1800–1815), nationalism spread among the populations of Istria and Dalmatia, with each ethnic group starting to fight for the unification of their lands with the respective fatherland. To counter the movement for Italian unification, which was seen as the greater threat to the Habsburg Empire, the government decided to "encourage an influx of Slavic populations into the coastal region". . Also, German-speaking population, coming from inner parts of the Empire and mainly working in the government bureaucracy, moved to Venetia and increased the German community of Triest to 5%. .

After World War I, the entire Istria was annexed to Italy, while Dalmatia (except Zadar) was annexed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Each State initiated to force the ethnic groups foreign language to accept a forced homologation or to flee: a common practice in Europe (see—for example—Germans in Alsace-Lorraine or in the Sudetes, Ukrainians and Lithuanians in eastern Poland, Magyars in Transylvania and Banat etc). The remnants of Italian community of Dalmatia (that had started a slow but continuous emigration to Istria and Venice during XIX Century) left their cities toward Zadar and Italian mainland. Slavic communities of Istria, Trieste and Gorizia countryside was subjected to an harsh Italianization since 1918.

The Italianization of the Slavic population in the 1920s and 1930s went worst during Fascism, and was, "exacerbated by a blatant policy of erasure of Slavic identity" and by a "fascist terrorism not hampered by the authorities".

In 1927, Italian fascist minister for public works Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli wrote in Gerarchia magazine, a fascist publication, that "The Istrian muse named as foibas those places suitable for burial of enemies of the national [Italian] characteristics of Istria". The minister also added stanzas of a poem, written in dialect: "A Pola xe l'Arena / la Foiba xe a Pisin / che i buta zo in quel fondo / chi ga certo morbin" ("In Pula there is the Coliseum, in Pazin the Foiba, into that abyss is thrown, whoever has some itching" [in the sense of 'bad thoughts'].

According with Galliano Fogar and Giovanni Miccoli there would be "the need to put the episodes in 1943 and 1945 within [the context of] a longer history of abuse and violence, which began with Fascism and with its policy of oppression of the minority Slovenes and Croatians and continued with the Italian aggression on Yugoslavia, which culminated with the horrors of the Nazi repression against the Partisan movement".

Investigations of the Foibe
No investigation of the crimes had been initiated either by Italy, Yugoslavia or any international bodies in the post-war period, until after Slovenia became an independent country in 1991.

In 1993 a study titled Pola Istria Fiume 1943-1945 by Gaetano La Perna provided a detailed list of the victims of Yugoslav occupation (in September-October 1943 and from 1944 to the very end of the Italian presence in its former provinces) in the area. La Perna gave a list of 6,335 names (2,493 military, 3,842 civilians). The author considered this list "not complete". The study has, however, been the subject of criticism, in that its "list of over 6,000 dead includes not just those who disappeared in the foibas or Yugoslav concentration camps but also legitimate wartime casualties, executions after due process of Fascist officials, Germans or German collaborators. Finally, many Slovenes or Croats are listed as Italians because they happened to be Italian citizens; the fact that they were from the South Slav nations persecuted by the Italian Fascists does not seem to bother the author".

A 2002 joint report by the "Society of Fiuman studies" (in Rome) (Società di Studi Fiumani) and the "Croatian Institute of History" (in Zagreb) (Hrvatski institut za povijest) concluded that from Rijeka and the surrounding area "no less than 500 persons of Italian nationality lost their lives between 3 May 1945 and 31 December 1947. To these we should add an unknown number of 'missing' (not less than a hundred) relegate into anonymity due to missing inventary in the Municipal Registries together with the relevant number of victims having (...) Croatian nationality (which were often, at least between 1940 and 1943, Italian citizenship) determined after the end of war by the Yugoslav communist regime."

In March 2006, the border municipality of Nova Gorica in Slovenia released a list of names of 1,048 citizens of Gorizia (Nova Gorica is the twin town of Gorizia on the former Yugoslav, now Slovene, side of the border, founded in 1947-'48) who disappeared in May 1945 after being arrested by the Partisans' 9th Corps. According to the Slovene government, "the list contains the names of persons arrested in May 1945 and whose destiny cannot be determined with certainty or whose death cannot be confirmed".

Alleged motivations
It has been said that the main motive for the mass killings seems to have been a plan of political cleansing that is to say, elimination of potential enemies of the communist Yugoslav rule, including members of German and Italian fascist units, Italian officers and civil servants, parts of the Italian elite who opposed both communism and fascism (including the leadership of Italian anti-fascist partisan organizations) Slovenian and Croatian anti-communists collaborators and radical nationalists.

Others see the main motive for the killings as having been retribution for the years of Italian repression, forced Italianization, suppression of Slavic sentiments and some killings performed by Italian authorities during the war, not just in the concentration camps (among them the Rab and Gonars camps), but also in the punitive expeditions often undertaken by the fascists

However, others point out Josip Broz Tito's political aim of adding the Istrian territories as far as Trieste and including the city itself to the new FPR Yugoslavia. The ethnic map of the area could potentially be a decisive factor in the post-War conferences and for this reason, according to some Italian historians, the reduction of the ethnic Italian population was held desirable. However, the Istrian exodus, which reduced the Italian population of Istria and Dalmatia, started before the killings were widely known and was motivated, for the most part, by the desire of the Italian people to live in their own country.

Pamela Ballinger in her book History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans wrote

I heard exiles' accounts of "Slavic barbarity" and "ethnic cleansing," suffered in Istria between 1943 and 1954, as well as Slovene and Croat narratives of the persecution experienced under the fascist state and at the hands of neofascists in the postwar period. Admittedly, I could not forget--as many exiles seemed to do--that the exodus from Istria followed on twenty years of the fascistization and Italianization of Istria, as well as a bloody Italian military campaign in Yugoslavia between 1941 and 1943. Nor could I countenance some exiles' frequent expressions of anti-Slav chauvinism. At the same time, however, I could not accept at face value the claim by some that the violence the Slavs suffered under fascism justified subsequent events in Istria or that all those who left Istria were compromised by fascism. Similarly, I came to reject the argument that ethno-national antagonism had not entered into the equation, as well as the counterview that the exodus represented simply an act of "ethnic cleansing".

The report by the mixed Italian-Slovenian commission describes the circumstances of the 1945 killings as :

14. These events were triggered by the atmosphere of settling accounts with the fascist violence; but, as it seems, they mostly proceeded from a preliminary plan which included several tendencies: endeavours to remove persons and structures who were in one way or another (regardless of their personal responsibility) linked with Fascism, with Nazi supremacy, with collaboration and with the Italian state, and endeavours to carry out preventive cleansing of real, potential or only alleged opponents of the communist regime, and the annexation of the Julian March to the new Yugoslavia. The initial impulse was instigated by the revolutionary movement which was changed into a political regime, and transformed the charge of national and ideological intolerance between the partisans into violence at national level.

Post-War silence
The foibe have been a neglected subject in mainstream political debate in Italy, Yugoslavia and former-Yugoslav nations, only recently garnering attention with the recent publication of several books and historical studies. It is thought that after World War II, while Yugoslav politicians rejected any alleged crime, Italian politicians wanted to direct the country's attention toward the future and away from the idea that Italy was, in fact, defeated nation.

Another reason for the neglect of the foibe can be found in the high degree of ideology historically present in the public debate in Italy. Many Istrians concealed their origins for fear of being identified by other communist Italians, who tended to believe that Italian Istrians who left after the war likely co-operated with the Fascists, since they were abandoning a "Socialist heaven".

Moreover, when the Cold War broke out, in order to maintain good relations with Tito, the foibe were a dangerous topic to broach.

So, Italian government tacitly "exchanged" the impunity of the Italians accused by Yugoslavia for the renunciation to investigate the Foibe killings. Italy never extradited or prosecuted some 1,200 Italian Army officers, government officials or former Fascist Party members, accused of war crimes by Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, Greece and other occupied countries and remitted to the United Nations War Crimes Commission. On the other side, Belgrade didn't insist too much in requesting the prosecution of Italian alleged war-criminals in order to avoid investigations on the foibe, and their [the Yugoslav's] responsibility.

Both Italian war-crimes and Yugoslav war and post-war mass killings were forgotten in order to maintain a "good neighbor" policy.

Re-emergence of the foibe issue
For all Italian historians these killings were the beginning of organized ethnic cleansing. Few others political negationists, but no historian, assert that the number of victims was too small for this to be true, and that the killings were mostly restricted to fascists, both military and civilians, who might have had committed war crimes during World War II in Yugoslavia. The coalition of Silvio Berlusconi brought the issue back into open discussion: the Italian Parliament (with the support of the vast majority of the represented parties) made February 10 National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe, first celebrated in 2005 with exhibitions and observances throughout Italy (especially in Trieste). The occasion is held in memory of innocents killed and forced to leave their homes, with little support from their home country. In Ciampi's words: Time has come for thoughtful remembrance to take the place of bitter resentment. Moreover, for the first time, leaders from the Italian Left, such as Walter Veltroni, visited the Basovizza foiba and admitted the culpability of the Left in covering up the subject for decades. However, the conciliatory moves by Ciampi and Veltroni were not endorsed by all Italian political groups.

Nowadays, a large part of the Italian Left acknowledges the nature of the foibe killings, as attested by some declarations of Luigi Malabarba, Senator for the Communist Refoundation Party, during the parliamentary debate on the institution of the National Memorial Day: "In 1945 there was a ruthless policy of exterminating opponents. Here, one must again recall Stalinism to understand what Tito's well-organized troops did. (...) Yugoslavian Communism had deeply assimilated a return to nationalism that was inherent to the idea of 'Socialism in One Country'. (...) The war, which had begun as anti-fascist, became anti-German and anti-Italian."

However, Malabarba and his party maintained that the discussion on the massacres was being manipulated by the right-wing parties and that the new Memorial day was part of a general attempt to criminalize anti-fascism and Resistance.

The President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, took an official speech during celebration of the "Memorial Day of Foibe Massacres and Istrian-Dalmatian exodus" in which he stated: Already in unleashing of the first wave of blind and extreme violence in those lands, in the autumn of 1943 it took place an intertwining of summary and tumultuous justicialism climax, nationalist paroxysm, social retaliation and a plan to eradicate the Italian presence from what it was, and ceased to be, Venezia Giulia. There was therefore a movement of hate and bloody fury, and a Slavic annexationist design, which prevailed in the first peace treaty of 1947, and assumed the disquieting shape of an "ethnic cleansing". What we can say for sure is that it was consumed -in the most obvious way trough the inhuman ferocity of the foibe- one of the barbarities of the past century.

Croatian President Stipe Mesić responded: It was impossible not to see overt elements of racism, historical revisionism and a desire for political revenge in Napolitano's words. (...) Modern Europe was built on foundations… of which anti-fascism was is of the most important. The incident was solved in a few days after diplomatic contacts between the two presidents at the Italian foreign ministry. On February 14, the Office of the President of Croatia issued a press statement: The Croatian representative recognizes that president Napolitano's speech on the occasion of the remembrance day for Foibe victims was in no way intended as a controversy regarding Croatia, nor to question the 1947 peace treaties or the Osimo and Rome Accords, nor was it inspired by any revenge-seeking or historical revisionism. (...) Explanations were accepted with understanding and they have contributed to overcoming misunderstandings.

Video

 * Italian documentary of 1948
 * Italian documentary of 1998

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