| Foibe massacres | |
| Native Name: | |
| Map: | Foibe seats.png |
| Location: | Julian March, Kvarner, Dalmatia (Italy and Yugoslavia) |
| Target: |
|
| Date: | 1943–1945 |
| Type: | |
| Fatalities: | Estimates range from 3,000 to 5,000 killed, according to other sources 11,000[3] or 20,000; 4,000 deported |
| Perpetrators: | |
| Assailant: | --> |
| Numpart: | --> |
| Dfen: | --> |
The foibe massacres (; ;), or simply the foibe, refers to mass killings and deportations both during and immediately after World War II, mainly committed by Yugoslav Partisans and OZNA in the then-Italian territories of Julian March (Karst Region and Istria), Kvarner and Dalmatia, against local Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) and Slavs, primarily members of fascist and collaborationist forces, alongside civilians presumed by Yugoslav forces to oppose the new authority.[4] The term refers to some victims who were thrown alive into the Italian: [[foibe]][5] [6] [7] (from Italian: pronounced as /it/), deep natural sinkholes characteristic of the Karst Region. In a wider or symbolic sense, some authors used the term to apply to all disappearances or killings of Italian and Slavic people in the territories occupied by Yugoslav forces. Others included deaths resulting from the forced deportation of Italians, or those who died while trying to flee from these contested lands.
There is academic consensus that these attacks were reprisal killings, triggered by forced Italianization and fascist Italian war crimes against Yugoslavs.[8] In addition, some historians also describe them as state terrorism and ethnic cleansing against Italians, including Italian anti-fascist militias and civilians.[9] [10] Other historians dispute this, stating that Italians were not targeted for their ethnicity, that the majority of victims were members of fascist military and police forces, and that many more Slavic collaborators were killed in postwar reprisals. Secret Communist instructions directed to cleanse, . The Italian historian, Raoul Pupo, states that, instead they were acts of political violence that had .
Italian and German reports mention members of local fascist militias as the primary victims in 1943. Among documented victims from Trieste in 1945, 80% were members of fascist and collaborationist forces, 97% were males, while of the 3% female victims at least half were Slovene. Victims also included unarmed and uninvolved civilians, which the Yugoslav partisans presumed to be political opponents of Titoism, killed in a purge along with native anti-fascist autonomists — including the leadership of Italian anti-fascist partisan organizations, opposed to Yugoslav annexation, and leaders of Fiume's Autonomist Party, Mario Blasich and Nevio Skull, who supported local independence from both Italy and Yugoslavia – resulting in the purge in the city of Fiume, where at least 650 were killed during and after the war by Yugoslav units, tried for war crimes before military courts.[11] [12]
The estimated number of foibe victims is disputed, varying from hundreds to thousands,[13] according to some sources 11,000 or 20,000. Many foibe victim lists are deficient, with repeated names, victims of fascist or German forces, victims killed in combat, or who were still alive or died in completely different circumstances. Italians and Germans also used foibe to dispose of victims. Italian historian Raoul Pupo estimates 3,000 to 4,000 total victims, across all areas of former Yugoslavia and Italy from 1943 to 1945,[14] noting that estimates of 10,000 to 12,000 must also include those killed or missing in combat, and states victim numbers of 20,000 to 30,000 are "pure propaganda". Historians note that it is difficult to determine the ethnicity of victims, since fascist authorities forcibly Italianized people's names, however of documented victims from Italian-majority Trieste, at least 23% were either Slavs or had at least one Slavic parent.
The foibe massacres were followed by the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus, which was the post-World War II exodus and departure of local ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) from the Yugoslav territory of Istria, Kvarner, the Julian March, lost by Italy after the Treaty of Paris (1947), as well as Dalmatia,[15] towards Italy, and in smaller numbers, towards the Americas, Australia and South Africa.[16] [17] According to various sources, the exodus is estimated to have amounted to between 230,000 and 350,000 Italians. A joint Italian-Slovene commission noted that the majority of the exodus happened in the early 1950s, more than five years after the massacres, when it was clear these parts would become permanently Yugoslav, and that the exodus had multiple causes, including war-caused economic hardship and general repressive policies in the immediate postwar years.
The events were part of larger reprisals in which tens-of-thousands of collaborators of Axis forces were killed in the aftermath of WWII, following a brutal war in which some 800,000 Yugoslavs, the vast majority civilians, were killed by Axis occupation forces and collaborators, with atrocities being mainly directed by German and Italian forces. Historians put the events in the context of broader postwar violence in Europe, including in Italy, where the Italian resistance and others killed an estimated 12,000 to 26,000 Italians, usually in extrajudicial executions, the great majority in Northern Italy, just in April and May 1945, while some 12 to 14.5 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Central and Eastern Europe, with a death toll of 500,000[18] [19] to 2.5 million.[20] [21] [22]
The name was derived from a local geological feature, a type of deep karst sinkhole called Italian: [[foiba]]. The term includes by extension killings and "burials" in other subterranean formations, such as the Basovizza "Italian: foiba", which is a mine shaft.
In Italy the term Italian: 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 author :
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 these disappearances and killings eventually caused the majority of the Italians of Istria, Fiume, and Zara to flee to other parts of Italy or the Free Territory of Trieste. Raoul Pupo wrote:
[...] the horrible death in a cave [...] became the very representation of a barbaric and obscure violence hanging over as a potential doom of an entire community. This is the image that settles in the memory of contemporaries, and become an obsession in moments of political and national uncertainty. This has the power to condition appreciably the choices of the people, such as the one by Istrians that decide to leave their lands assigned to Yugoslav sovereignty [...]
See main article: Istria, History of Dalmatia, Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians.
Roman Dalmatia was fully Latinized by 476 AD when the Western Roman Empire disappeared.[23] In the Early Middle Ages, the territory of the Byzantine province of Dalmatia reached in the North up to the river Sava, and was part of the Praetorian prefecture of Illyricum. In the middle of the 6th and the beginning of the 7th century began the Slavic migration, which caused the Romance-speaking population, descendants of Romans and Illyrians (speaking Dalmatian), to flee to the coast and islands. The hinterland, semi-depopulated by the Barbarian Invasions, Slavic tribes settled. The Dalmatian cities retained their Romanic culture and language in cities such as Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik. Their own Vulgar Latin, developed into Dalmatian, a now extinct Romance language. These coastal cities (politically part of the Byzantine Empire) maintained political, cultural and economic links with Italy, through the Adriatic Sea. On the other side communications with the mainland were difficult because of the Dinaric Alps. Due to the sharp orography of Dalmatia, even communications between the different Dalmatian cities, occurred mainly through the sea. This helped Dalmatian cities to develop a unique Romance culture, despite the mostly Slavicized mainland.
Historian Theodor Mommsen wrote that Istria (included in the Regio X Venetia et Histria of Roman Italy since Augustus) was fully romanized in the 5th century AD.[24] Between 500 and 700 AD, Slavs settled in Southeastern Europe (Eastern Adriatic), and their number ever increased, and with the Ottoman invasion Slavs were pushed from the south and east.[25] This led to Italic people becoming ever more confined to urban areas, while some areas of the countryside were populated by Slavs, with exceptions in western and southern Istria which remained fully Romance-speaking.[26]
By the 11th century, most of the interior mountainous areas of northern and eastern Istria (Liburnia) were inhabited by South Slavs, while the Romance population continued to prevail in the south and west of the peninsula. Linguistically, the Romance inhabitants of Istria were most probably divided into two main linguistic groups: in the north-west, the speakers of a Rhaeto-Romance language similar to Ladin and Friulian prevailed, while in the south, the natives most probably spoke a variant of the Dalmatian language. One modern claim suggests the original language of the romanized Istrians survived the invasions, this being the Istriot language which was spoken by some near Pula.[27]
Via conquests, the Republic of Venice, between the 9th century and 1797, extended its dominion to coastal parts of Istria and Dalmatia.[28] Thus Venice invaded and attacked Zadar multiple times, especially devastating the city in 1202 when Venice used the crusaders, on their Fourth Crusade, to lay siege, then ransack, demolish and rob the city,[29] the population fleeing into countryside. Pope Innocent III excommunicated the Venetians and crusaders for attacking a Catholic city. The Venetians used the same Crusade to attack the Dubrovnik Republic, and force it to pay tribute, then continued to sack Christian Orthodox Constantinople where they looted, terrorized, and vandalized the city, killing 2.000 civilians, raping nuns and destroying Christian Churches, with Venice receiving a big portion of the plundered treasures.
The coastal areas and cities of Istria came under Venetian Influence in the 9th century. In 1145, the cities of Pula, Koper and Izola rose against the Republic of Venice but were defeated, and were since further controlled by Venice.[30] On 15 February 1267, Poreč was formally incorporated with the Venetian state.[31] Other coastal towns followed shortly thereafter. The Republic of Venice gradually dominated the whole coastal area of western Istria and the area to Plomin on the eastern part of the peninsula. Dalmatia was first and finally sold to the Republic of Venice in 1409 but Venetian Dalmatia was not fully consolidated from 1420.[32]
From the Middle Ages onwards, numbers of Slavic people near and on the Adriatic coast were ever increasing, due to their expanding population and due to pressure from the Ottomans pushing them from the south and east.[33] [34] This led to Italic people becoming ever more confined to urban areas, while the countryside was populated by Slavs, with certain isolated exceptions.[35] In particular, the population was divided into urban-coastal communities (mainly Romance-speakers) and rural communities (mainly Slavic-speakers), with small minorities of Morlachs and Istro-Romanians.[36]
Republic of Venice influenced the neolatins of Istria and Dalmatia until 1797, when it was conquered by Napoleon: Capodistria and Pola were important centers of art and culture during the Italian Renaissance.[37] Istria and Dalmatia were then aggregated to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1805, and annexed to the Illyrian Provinces in 1809 (for some years also the Republic of Ragusa was included, since 1808). From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, Italian and Slavic communities in Istria and Dalmatia had lived peacefully side by side because they did not know the national identification, given that they generically defined themselves as "Istrians" and "Dalmatians", of "Romance" or "Slavic" culture.[38]
After the fall of Napoleon (1814), Istria, Kvarner and Dalmatia were annexed to the Austrian Empire.[39] Many Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians looked with sympathy towards the Risorgimento movement that fought for the unification of Italy.[40] However, after the Third Italian War of Independence (1866), when the Veneto and Friuli regions were ceded by the Austrians to the newly formed Kingdom Italy, Istria and Dalmatia remained part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, together with other Italian-speaking areas on the eastern Adriatic. This triggered the gradual rise of Italian irredentism among many Italians in Istria, Kvarner and Dalmatia, who demanded the unification of the Julian March, Kvarner and Dalmatia with Italy. The Italians in Istria, Kvarner and Dalmatia supported the Italian Risorgimento: as a consequence, the Austrians saw the Italians as enemies and favored the Slav communities of Istria, Kvarner and Dalmatia.[41]
During the meeting of the Council of Ministers of 12 November 1866, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria outlined a wide-ranging project aimed at the Germanization or Slavization of the areas of the empire with an Italian presence:[42]
In 1909 the Italian language lost its status as the official language of Dalmatia in favor of Croatian: thus Italian could no longer be used in the public and administrative sphere.
Istrian Italians were more than 50% of the total population of Istria for centuries,[43] while making up about a third of the population in 1900.[44] Dalmatia, especially its maritime cities, once had a substantial local ethnic Italian population (Dalmatian Italians), making up 33% of the total population of Dalmatia in 1803,[45] [46] but this was reduced to 20% in 1816. Bartoli's evaluation was followed by other claims that Auguste de Marmont, the French Governor General of the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces commissioned a census in 1809 which found that Dalmatian Italians comprised 29% of the total population of Dalmatia. In Dalmatia, there was a constant decline in the Italian population, in a context of repression that also took on violent connotations.[47] During this period, Austrians carried out an aggressive anti-Italian policy through a forced Slavization of Dalmatia.[48] According to Austrian census, the Dalmatian Italians formed 12.5% of the population in 1865.[49] In the 1910 Austro-Hungarian census, Istria had a population of 57.8% Slavic-speakers (Croat and Slovene), and 38.1% Italian speakers.[50] For the Austrian Kingdom of Dalmatia, (i.e. Dalmatia), the 1910 numbers were 96.2% Slavic speakers and 2.8% Italian speakers.[51] In Rijeka the Italians were the relative majority in the municipality (48.61% in 1910), and in addition to the large Croatian community (25.95% in the same year), there was also a fair Hungarian minority (13.03%). According to the official Croatian census of 2011, there are Italians in Rijeka (equal to 1.9% of the total population).[52]
The Italian population in Dalmatia was concentrated in the major coastal cities. In the city of Split in 1890 there were Dalmatian Italians (12.5% of the population), in Zadar (64.6%), in Šibenik (14.5%), in Kotor (18.7%) and in Dubrovnik (4.6%).[53] In other Dalmatian localities, according to Austrian censuses, Dalmatian Italians experienced a sudden decrease: in the twenty years 1890–1910, in Rab they went from 225 to 151, in Vis from 352 to 92, in Pag from 787 to 23, completely disappearing in almost all the inland locations.
In 1909, the Italian language lost its status as the official language of Dalmatia in favor of Croatian only; previously, both languages were recognized. Thus, Italian could no longer be used in the public and administrative sphere.
In 1915, Italy abrogated its alliance and declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire,[54] leading to bloody conflict mainly on the Isonzo and Piave fronts. Britain, France and Russia had been .[55] In a deal to bring Italy into the war, under the London Pact, Italy would be allowed to annex not only Italian-speaking Trentino and Trieste, but also German-speaking South Tyrol, Istria (which included large non-Italian communities), and the northern part of Dalmatia including the areas of Zadar (Zara) and Šibenik (Sebenico). Mainly Italian Fiume (present-day Rijeka) was excluded.[55]
In November 1918, after the surrender of Austria-Hungary, Italy occupied militarily Trentino Alto-Adige, the Julian March, Istria, the Kvarner Gulf and Dalmatia, all Austro-Hungarian territories. On the Dalmatian coast, Italy established the first Governorate of Dalmatia, which had the provisional aim of ferrying the territory towards full integration into the Kingdom of Italy, progressively importing national legislation in place of the previous one. The administrative capital was Zara. The Governorate of Dalmatia was evacuated following the Italo-Yugoslav agreements which resulted in the Treaty of Rapallo (1920). After the war, the Treaty of Rapallo between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and the Kingdom of Italy (12 November 1920), Italy annexed Zadar in Dalmatia and some minor islands, almost all of Istria along with Trieste, excluding the island of Krk, and part of Kastav commune, which mostly went to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. By the Treaty of Rome (27 January 1924), the Free State of Fiume (Rijeka) was divided between Italy and Yugoslavia.[56]
Between 31 December 1910 and 1 December 1921, Istria lost 15.1% of its population. The last survey under the Austrian empire recorded 404,309 inhabitants, which dropped to 343,401 by the first Italian census after the war.[57] While the decrease was certainly related to World War I and the changes in political administration, emigration also was a major factor. In the immediate post-World War I period, Istria saw an intense migration outflow. Pula, for example, was badly affected by the drastic dismantling of its massive Austrian military and bureaucratic apparatus of more than 20,000 soldiers and security forces, as well as the dismissal of the employees from its naval shipyard. A serious economic crisis in the rest of Italy forced thousands of Croat peasants to move to Yugoslavia, which became the main destination of the Istrian exodus.[57]
Due to a lack of reliable statistics, the true magnitude of Istrian emigration during that period cannot be assessed accurately. Estimates provided by varying sources with different research methods show that about 30,000 Istrians migrated between 1918 and 1921.[57] Most of them were Austrians, Hungarians and Slavic citizens who used to work for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[58]
After World War I, under the Treaty of Rapallo between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and the Kingdom of Italy (12 November 1920), Italy obtained almost all of Istria with Trieste, the exception being the island of Krk and part of Kastav commune, which went to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. By the Treaty of Rome (27 January 1924) Italy took Rijeka as well, which had been planned to become an independent state.
In these areas, there was a forced policy of Italianization of the population in the 1920s and 1930s.[59] In addition, there were acts of fascist violence not hampered by the authorities, such as the torching of the Narodni dom (National House) in Pula and Trieste carried out at night by Fascists with the connivance of the police (13 July 1920). The situation deteriorated further after the annexation of the Julian March, especially after Benito Mussolini came to power (1922). In March 1923 the prefect of the Julian March prohibited the use of Croatian and Slovene in the administration, whilst their use in law courts was forbidden by Royal decree on 15 October 1925.
The activities of Croatian and Slovenian societies and associations (Sokol, reading rooms, etc.) had already been forbidden during the occupation, but specifically so later with the Law on Associations (1925), the Law on Public Demonstrations (1926) and the Law on Public Order (1926). All Slovenian and Croatian societies and sporting and cultural associations had to cease every activity in line with a decision of provincial fascist secretaries dated 12 June 1927. On a specific order from the prefect of Trieste on 19 November 1928 the Edinost political society was also dissolved. Croatian and Slovenian co-operatives in Istria, which at first were absorbed by the Pula or Trieste Savings Banks, were gradually liquidated.[60]
At the same time, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia attempted a policy of forced Croatisation against the Italian minority in Dalmatia.[61] The majority of the Italian Dalmatian minority decided to transfer in the Kingdom of Italy.[62]
Seeking to create an Imperial Italy, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, Albania, France, Greece, Egypt and Malta. In April 1941, Italy and its German ally attacked Yugoslavia, carving up the country. Italy occupied large portions of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia, plus all of Montenegro, directly annexing to Italy Ljubljana Province, Gorski Kotar and Central Dalmatia, along with most Croatian islands. Italy proceeded to Italianize Dalmatia. Place names were italianized and Italian was made the official language in schools, churches and government. All Croatian cultural societies were banned, Italians took control of all key mineral, industrial and business establishments.
Italian fascist policies prompted resistance, with many Yugoslavs joining the Partisans. In response, the Italians adopted tactics of summary executions, internments, property confiscations, and the burning of villages.[63] The Italian government sent tens-of-thousands of civilians, including many women and children, to Italian concentration camps - Rab, Gonars, Monigo, Renicci, Molat, etc. 30,000 Slovenes and 80,000 Dalmatians, 12% of the population,[64] were sent to Italian concentration camps. Thousands died in the camps, including hundreds of children. Italian forces executed thousands of additional civilians as hostages and conducted massacres, such as the Podhum massacre in 1942. On their own, or with Nazi and collaborationist allies, the Italian army undertook brutal anti-Partisan offensives, during which tens-of-thousands of Partisans were killed, along with many civilians, plus thousands more civilians executed or sent to concentration camps after the campaigns.
After Italy's capitulation in 1943, Istria, Rijeka and Zadar were occupied by the Germans. The Nazi-puppet Italian Social Republic also held nominal control over these areas, with the fascist administration continuing to serve the Germans. The Nazis, aided by Italian and Slav collaborators, launched brutal anti-Partisan campaigns, with mass killings of civilians (e.g. the Lipa massacre),[65] [66] yet more were sent to concentration camps. Some Italians joined the Yugoslav Partisans, and the Partisans collaborated with the CLN, the Italian resistance. Toward the end of the war, the local CLN focused its efforts on retaining Istria, the Slovene Littoral, Trieste, Gorizia, Rijeka and Zadar for Italy, while accepting members of fascist and Nazi-collaborationist forces into its ranks. The Yugoslav Partisans, who had competing claims, liberated Istria, Rijeka and Zadar. The great majority of Slavs in Istria and Dalmatia, plus some Italians, welcomed the Yugoslav Partisans as liberators, while those in the Italian minority, and a smaller number of Slavs, supported Italian rule.
The first claims of people being thrown into Italian: foibe date to 1943, after the Wehrmacht took back the area from the Partisans. Other authors claimed the 70 hostages were killed and burned in the Nazi lager of the Risiera of San Sabba, on 4 April 1944.[67] [68]
The massacres occurred in two waves, the first taking places in the interlude between the Armistice of Cassibile and the German occupation of Istria in September 1943, and the second after the Yugoslav occupation of the region in May 1945. Victims of the first wave numbered in the hundreds, whereas those of the second wave in the thousands. The first wave of killings is widely regarded as a disorganized, spontaneous series of revenge killings by Slovenes and Croats after twenty years of Fascist oppression, as well as "jacquerie" against Italian landowners and more broadly the Italian elite in the region; these killings targeted members of the Fascist Party, their relatives (as in the famous case of Norma Cossetto), Italian landowners, policemen and civil servants of all ranks, considered as symbols of Italian oppression. The scope and nature of the second wave is much more disputed; Slovene and Croat historians, as well as Italian historians such as Alessandra Kersevan and Claudia Cernigoi, characterize it as another wave of revenge killings against Fascist collaborators and members of the armed forces of the Italian Social Republic, whereas Italian historians such as Raoul Pupo, Gianni Oliva and Roberto Spazzali argue that this was the result of a deliberate Titoist policy aimed at spreading terror among the Italian population of the region and eliminating anyone who opposed Yugoslav plans of annexing Istria and the Julian March, including anti-Fascists. While the Italian: foibe became the symbol of these massacres, only a minority of the victims were killed with this method, largely during the first wave; a far larger part were executed and buried in mass graves or died in Yugoslav prisons and concentration camps.[69]
After the re-occupation of Istria by Axis forces in September 1943, following the first wave of killings, the fire brigade of Pola, under the command of Arnaldo Harzarich, recovered 204 bodies from the foibe of the region. Between 1945 and 1948, Italian authorities recovered a total 369 corpses from foibe in the Italian-controlled part of the Free Territory of Trieste (Zone A), and another 95 were recovered from mass graves in the same area; these included also bodies of German soldiers killed in the closing days of the war and hastily buried in these cavities. Foibe located in the Yugoslav-controlled part of the Free Territory of Trieste, as well as in the rest of Istria, were never searched as this territory was now under Yugolav control.
Great controversy has surrounded the Italian: foiba of Basovizza, one of the most famous Italian: foibe (and unlikely called as such, as it was not a natural Italian: foiba but a disused mine shaft). Newspaper reports from the postwar era claimed anywhere from 18 to 3,000 victims in this Italian: foiba alone, but Trieste authorities refused to fully excavate it, citing financial constraints. At the end of the war, local villagers had thrown the bodies of dead German soldiers (killed in a battle fought in the vicinity in the closing days of the war) and horses into the mine shaft, which after the war had also been used as a garbage dump by the authorities of the Free Territory of Trieste.[70] After the war the Basovizza foibe was used by the Italian authorities as a garbage dump. Thus no Italian victims were ever recovered or determined at Basovizza. In 1959 the pit was sealed and a monument erected, which later became the central site for the annual foibe commemorations.
At the Plutone foibe near Bazovizza, members of the Trieste Steffe criminal gang killed 18 people. For this the leader of the gang, Giovanni Steffe, and three others were arrested by the Yugoslav forces. Steffe and Carlo Mazzoni were killed by the Yugoslav forces while trying to escape. Three members of the gang, all from Trieste, were later convicted by Italian courts to 2 to 5 years in jail for the killings.[71] Altogether some 70 trials were held in Italy from 1946 to 1949 for the killings, some ending in acquittals or amnesties, others with heavy sentences.
In 1947, British envoy W. J. Sullivan wrote of Italians arrested and deported by Yugoslav forces from around Trieste: Alongside a large number of Fascists, however, among those killed were also anti-Fascists who opposed the Yugoslav annexation of the region, such as Socialist Licurgo Olivi and Action Party leader Augusto Sverzutti, members of the Committee of National Liberation of Gorizia; in Trieste, the same fate befell Resistance leaders Romano Meneghello (posthumously awarded a Silver Medal of Military Valor for his Resistance activities) and Carlo Dell'Antonio. In Fiume (where at least 652 Italians were killed or disappeared between 3 May 1945 and 31 December 1947, according to a joint Italian-Croat study), Autonomist Party leaders Mario Blasich, Joseph Sincich and Nevio Skull were among those executed by the Yugoslavs soon after the occupation, as was anti-Fascist and Dachau survivor Angelo Adam. Priests were also targeted by the new Yugoslav Communist authorities, as in the case of Francesco Bonifacio. Out of 1,048 people who were arrested and executed by the Yugoslavs in the province of Gorizia in May 1945, according to a list drafted by a joint Italian-Slovene commission in 2006, 470 were members of the military or police forces of the Italian Social Republic, 110 were Slovene civilians accused of collaborationism, and 320 were Italian civilians.[72] The foibe massacres were state terrorism,[73] reprisal killings, and ethnic cleansing against Italians. The foibe massacres were mainly committed by Yugoslav Partisans and OZNA against the local ethnic Italian population (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians), as well against anti-communists in general (even Croats and Slovenes), usually associated with Fascism, Nazism and collaboration with Axis, and against real, potential or presumed opponents of Tito communism. The events were also part of larger reprisals in which tens-of-thousands of Slavic collaborators of Axis forces were killed in the aftermath of WWII, following a brutal war in which some 800,000 Yugoslavs, the vast majority civilians, were killed by Axis occupation forces and collaborators.
The foibe massacres were followed by the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus, which was the post-World War II expulsion and departure of local ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) from the Yugoslav territory of Istria, Kvarner, the Julian March, lost by Italy after the Treaty of Paris (1947), as well as Dalmatia, towards Italy, and in smaller numbers, towards the Americas, Australia and South Africa. According to various sources, the exodus is estimated to have amounted to between 230,000 and 350,000 Italians leaving the areas in the aftermath of the conflict.[74] From 1947, after the war, Italians were subject by Yugoslav authorities to less violent forms of intimidation, such as nationalization, expropriation, and discriminatory taxation,[75] which gave them little option other than emigration.[76] [77] [78] According to the census organized in Croatia in 2001 and that organized in Slovenia in 2002, the Italians who remained in the former Yugoslavia amounted to 21,894 people (2,258 in Slovenia and 19,636 in Croatia).[79] [80]
The number of those killed or left in Italian: foibe during and after the war is still unknown; it is difficult to establish and a matter of controversy. Estimates range from hundreds to twenty thousand. According to data gathered by a joint Slovene–Italian historical commission established in 1993, "the violence was further manifested in hundreds of summary executions—victims were mostly thrown into the Karst chasms (Italian: foibe)—and in the deportation of a great number of soldiers and civilians, who either wasted away or were killed during the deportation".
Historians Raoul Pupo and Roberto Spazzali have estimated the total number of victims at about 5,000, and note that the targets were not "Italians", but military and repressive forces of the Fascist regime, and civilians associated with the regime. More recently, Pupo has revised the total victims estimates to 3,000 to 4,000. Italian historian Guido Rumici estimated the number of Italians executed, or died in Yugoslav concentration camps, as between 6,000 and 11,000, while Mario Pacor estimated that after the armistice about 400 to 500 people were killed in the foibe and about 4,000 were deported, many of whom were later executed. Other sources claim 20,000 victims.
It was not possible to extract all the corpses from the Italian: foibe, some of which are deeper than several hundred meters; some sources are attempting to compile lists of locations and possible victim numbers.[81] Between October and December 1943, the fire brigade of Pola, helped by mine workers, recovered a total of 159 victims of the first wave of mass killings from the Italian: foibe of Vines (84 bodies), Terli (26 bodies), Treghelizza (2 bodies), Pucicchi (11 bodies), Villa Surani (26 bodies), Cregli (8 bodies) and Carnizza d'Arsia (2 bodies); another 44 corpses were recovered in the same period from two bauxite mines in Lindaro and Villa Bassotti.[82] [83] More bodies were sighted, but not recovered.
The most famous Basovizza foiba, was investigated by English and American forces, starting immediately on 12 June 1945. After 5 months of investigation and digging, all they found in the foiba were the remains of 150 German soldiers and one civilian killed in the final battles for Basovizza on 29–30 April 1945.[84] The Italian mayor, Gianni Bartoli continued with investigations and digging until 1954, with speleologists entering the cave multiple time, yet they found nothing. Between November 1945 and April 1948, firefighters, speleologists and policemen inspected Italian: foibe and mine shafts in the "Zone A" of the Free Territory of Trieste (mainly consisting in the surroundings of Trieste), where they recovered 369 corpses; another 95 were recovered from mass graves in the same area. At the time, no inspections were carried out either in the Yugoslav-controlled "Zone B", or in the rest of Istria.
Other foibe and mass graves were investigated in more recently in Istria and elsewhere in Slovenia and Croatia; for instance, human remains were discovered in the Idrijski Log Italian: foiba near Idrija, Slovenia, in 1998; four skeletons were found in the foiba of Plahuti near Opatija in 2002; in the same year, a mass grave containing the remains of 52 Italians and 15 Germans, most likely all military, was discovered in Slovenia, not far from Gorizia; in 2005, the remains of about 130 people killed between the 1940s and the 1950s were recovered from four Italian: foibe located in northeastern Istria.[85]
After the war, inspector Umberto de Giorgi, who was State Police marshal under fascist and Nazi rule, led the Foibe Exploration Team. Between 1945 and 1948 they investigated 71 foibe locations on the Italian side of the border. 23 of these were empty, in the rest they discovered some 464 corpses. These included soldiers killed during the last battles of the war. Among the 246 identified corpses, more than 200 were military (German, Italian, other), and some 40 were civilians, of the latter, 30 killed after the war.[86]
Due to claims of hundreds having been killed and tossed into the Basovizza mineshaft, in August–October 1945 British military authorities investigated the shaft, ultimately recovering 9 German soldiers, 1 civilian and a few horse cadavers.[87] Based on these results the British suspended excavations. Afterwards the city of Trieste used the mineshaft as a garbage dump. Despite repeat demands from various right-wing groups to further excavate the shaft,[88] the government of Trieste, led by the Christian Democratic mayor Gianni Bartoli, declined to do so, claiming among other reasons, lack of financial resources. In 1959 the shaft was sealed and a monument erected, thus becoming the center of the annual foibe commemorations.
Only a few trials were held, including that of the Trieste Zoll-Steffe criminal gang, for the killing of 18 people in the Plutone foibe in May 1945. Afterwards, Yugoslav authorities arrested the gang members and took them to Ljubljana, with two killed along the way while trying to escape, and the others convicted before a military tribunal.[89] Additional members of the gang were brought before an Italian court in Trieste 1947, and were convicted and sentenced to prison for 2–3 years for their role in the Plutone killings.
In 1949 a trial was held in Trieste for those accused of killing Mario Fabian, a torturer in the "Collotti gang", a fascist squad that during the war killed and tortured Slovene and Italian antifascists, and Jews.[90] Fabian was taken from his home on 4 May 1945, then shot and tossed into the Basovizza shaft. He is the only known Italian victim of Basovizza. His executioners were at first condemned, but later acquitted. The historian Pirjevec notes that the head of the gang, Gaetano Collotti, was awarded a medal by the Italian government in 1954, for fighting Slovene partisans in 1943, despite the fact that Collotti and his gang had committed many crimes while working for the Gestapo, and was killed by Italian partisans near Treviso in 1945.
In 1993 a study titled Pola Istria Fiume 1943–1945[91] 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".[92]
A 2002 joint report by Rome's Society of Fiuman studies (Italian: Società di Studi Fiumani) and Zagreb's Croatian Institute of History (Croatian: Hrvatski institut za povijest) concluded that from Fiume and the surrounding area [93]
In March 2006, the border municipality of Nova Gorica in Slovenia released a list of names of 1,048 citizens of the Italian city of Gorizia (the two cities belonged until the Treaty of Paris of 1947 to the same administrative body) who disappeared in May 1945 after being arrested by the Partisan 9th Corps.[94] 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".[95]
It has been alleged that the killings were part of a purge aimed at eliminating potential enemies of communist Yugoslav rule, which would have included 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 and the leaders of Fiume's Autonomist Party, including Mario Blasich and Nevio Skull), Slovenian and Croatian anti-communists, collaborators, and radical nationalists.[10]
Pupo claims that the primary targets of the purges were repressive forces of the Fascist regime, and civilians associated with the regime, including Slavic collaborators, thus:
With regard to the civilian population of Venezia Giulia the Yugoslav troops did not behave at all like an army occupying enemy territory: nothing in their actions recalls the indiscriminate violence of Red Army soldiers in Germany, on the contrary, their discipline seems in some ways superior even to that of the Anglo-American units.Since Yugoslav troops did not behave like an occupying army, this partly contradicts the numerous academic authors and institutional figures — both in Italy and abroad — who recognized an ethnic cleansing against Italians.
Another reason for the killings was retribution for the years of Italian repression, forced Italianization, suppression of Slavic sentiments and killings performed by Italian authorities during the war, not just in the concentration camps (such as Rab and Gonars), but also in reprisals often undertaken by the fascists.[96]
According to Fogar and Miccoli there is
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 Croats and continued with the Italian aggression on Yugoslavia, which culminated with the horrors of the Nazi-Fascist repression against the Partisan movement.
Gaia Baracetti notes that some representations of Italian: foibe, such as a miniseries on Italian television, are replete with historical inaccuracies and stereotypes, portraying Slavs as "merciless assassins", similar to fascist propaganda, while . Others, including members of Italy's Jewish community, have objected to Italian right-wing efforts to equate the Italian: foibe with the Holocaust, via historical distortions which include exaggerated Italian: foibe victim claims, in an attempt to turn Italy from a perpetrator in the Holocaust, to a victim.[97] Other authors assert that the 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 Italian: 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.[98]
Pamela Ballinger in her book, History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans, wrote:[99]
An Italian-Slovene commission, namely the Slovenian-Italian historical-cultural commission (sl|Slovensko-italijanske zgodovinsko-kulturne komisije), wrote in its 2000 report that the Italian exodus had multiple causes.
The report by the mixed Italian-Slovenian commission describes the circumstances of the 1945 killings as follows:
Following the war the Yugoslav government pursued a policy of "Slav-Italian brotherhood" and Italian workers came to Yugoslavia to help with rebuilding. Relations worsened in 1948 when Yugoslavia broke with Stalin, while the Italian Communist Party supported the Soviet Union. Border disputes, postwar economic deprivations and the initial totalitarian nature of the Yugoslav government, made life difficult for all. All this led to what was until then a limited exodus, to much broader exodus following 1950.The commission was re-established in 2007 with the official name of Mixed Italian-Slovene Commission for the Maintenance of the State Border.[100]
The Italian: foibe have been a neglected subject in mainstream political debate in Italy, Yugoslavia and former-Yugoslav nations, only recently garnering attention with the 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, a defeated nation.[101]
So, the Italian government tactically "exchanged" the impunity of the Italians accused by Yugoslavia for the renunciation to investigate the Italian: foibe massacres.[102] 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.[103] On the other hand, Belgrade didn't insist overmuch on requesting the prosecution of alleged Italian war criminals.[104]
For several Italian historians these killings were the beginning of organized ethnic cleansing.Silvio Berlusconi's coalition government brought the issue back into open discussion. The Italian Parliament (with the support of the vast majority of the represented parties) made 10 February 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 Carlo Azeglio Ciampi's words: 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.
Nowadays, a large part of the Italian left acknowledges the nature of the foibe massacres, 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:[105]
Italian president Giorgio Napolitano took an official speech during celebration of the "Memorial Day of Foibe Massacres and Istrian-Dalmatian exodus" in which he stated:[106] The Croatian President Stipe Mesić immediately responded in writing, stating that:
The incident was resolved in a few days after diplomatic contacts between the two presidents at the Italian foreign ministry. On 14 February, the Office of the President of Croatia issued a press statement:
In Italy, Law 92 of 30 March 2004[107] declared 10 February as a Day of Remembrance dedicated to the memory of the victims of Foibe and the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus. The same law created a special medal to be awarded to relatives of the victims:
Medal of Day of Remembrance to relatives of victims of foibe killings
In February 2012, a photo of Italian troops killing Slovene civilians was shown on public Italian TV as if being the other way round. When historian Alessandra Kersevan, who was a guest, pointed out to the television host Bruno Vespa that the photo depicted the killings of some Slovenes rather than Italians, the host did not apologize. A diplomatic protest followed.[108] [109]
Note: Many books have been written about the Italian: foibe, and results, interpretations and estimates of victims can in some cases vary largely according to the point of view of the author. Since most of the Italian: foibe currently lie outside Italian territory, no formal and complete investigation could be carried out during the years of the Cold War, and books could be of a speculative or anecdotal nature.For a complete list, see and .
An Italian-Croatian joint research carried out by the Italian "Society of Fiuman studies" and the "Croatian Institute of History", containing an alphabetic list of recognized victims. As foot note, on each of the two lingual forewords, a warning states that Società di Studi Fiumani do not judge completed the present work, because the lack of funds, could not achieve to the finalization that was in intentions and goals of the initial project.
Report of the Italian-Slovene historical-cultural commission (in three languages):
"In 1947, British envoy W. J. Sullivan wrote of Italians arrested and deported by Yugoslav forces from around Trieste: "There is little doubt, while some of the persons deported may have been innocent, others were undoubtedly active fascists with more than mere party memberships on their conscience. Some of these have returned to Trieste but have kept well out of the Allied authorities, not participating in enquiries about the deportations for fear of arrest and trial 'for their former fascist activities'"
"That fascists were specifically targeted by the repression is also confirmed by various Italian sources. A letter attached to the Hazarich report on the excavations carried out in the foibe in 1943 mentions corpses of fascists thrown there; another the extractions of the bodies of "our unfortunate squadristi (members of the fascist militia). An Italian report on "the grim fate of Pisino" (a city in istria) mentions only the killings of squadristi, which contrasts markedly with the subsequent report on the German offensive: random shootings of civilians, burning of houses and bombings"