Foibe massacres

Foibe massacres
Locations of some of the foibe
Location	Julian March, Kvarner, Dalmatia (Italy and Yugoslavia)
Date	1943–1945
Target	Members of fascist military and police forces Ethnic Italians (Istrian and Dalmatian Italians) Italian, German, Croat and Slovene anti-communists, presumed to be associated with fascism, Nazism and collaboration with Axis Preventive purge of real, potential or presumed opponents of Titoism
Attack type	Reprisal killings
Deaths	Estimates range from 3,000 to 5,000 killed, according to other sources 11,000 or 20,000; 4,000 deported
Perpetrators	Yugoslav Partisans OZNA

The foibe massacres (Italian: massacri delle foibe; Slovene: poboji v fojbah; Croatian: masakri fojbe), 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, and civilians opposed to the new Yugoslav authorities. The term refers to some victims who were thrown alive into the foibe (from Italian: pronounced ['fɔibe]), 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. In addition, some historians also describe them as state terrorism and ethnic cleansing against Italians, including Italian anti-fascist militias and civilians. 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, "not on the basis of nationality, but on the basis of fascism". The Italian historian, Raoul Pupo, states that, “the foibe are not genocide and are not ethnic cleansing,” instead they were acts of political violence that had “nothing to do with nationality or religion”.

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, killed in a preventive purge of real, potential or presumed opponents of Titoism, killed 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.

The estimated number of foibe victims is disputed, varying from hundreds to thousands, 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, 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, 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. 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 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, with Italian forces committing war crimes. 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 to 2.5 million.

Origin and meaning of the term

Labin, December 1943: bodies recovered from a foiba by Italian firefighters and German soldiers. Local civilians are trying to identify relatives or friends.

The name was derived from a local geological feature, a type of deep karst sinkhole called foiba. The term includes by extension killings and "burials" in other subterranean formations, such as the Basovizza "foiba", which is a mine shaft.

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 author 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 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 [...]

Background

Main articles: Istria, History of Dalmatia, Italianization, Fascist Legacy, Italian war crimes, Julian March, Istrian Italians, and Dalmatian Italians

The eastern shore of the Adriatic was originally inhabited by indigenous Illyrian Dalmatae (for whom Dalmatia is named), Histrians and Liburnians. Rome conquered their kingdoms through a series of wars. As elsewhere, some of the populace became Latinized, particularly along the coast. From the 6th century, large migrations brought Slavs to the area, establishing Croatian, Bosnian and Serb kingdoms in Dalmatia. Starting in the 9th century, via conquest (e.g. Siege of Zadar) Venice spread its rule over Istria and Dalmatia, except for the Republic of Ragusa (nowadays called Dubrovnik), thus becoming part of Venice's overseas empire. Venetian-Italian replaced local Romance languages in coastal areas, and there was some migration from Venice to Dalmatia.

Austrian Empire

Further information: Italian irredentism in Dalmatia and Italian irredentism in Istria

Austrian linguistic map from 1896. In green the areas where Slavs were the majority of the population, in orange the areas where Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians were the majority of the population. The boundaries of Venetian Dalmatia in 1797 are delimited with blue dots.

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 the Italians in Dalmatia, Kvarner and Istria (Julian March) — Dalmatian Italians and Istrian Italians, making up more than 50% of the total population — who supported the Italian Risorgimento and demanded the unification with Italy: as a consequence, the Austrians saw the Italians as enemies and favored the Slav communities of Istria, Kvarner and Dalmatia.

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:

His Majesty expressed the precise order that action be taken decisively against the influence of the Italian elements still present in some regions of the Crown and, appropriately occupying the posts of public, judicial, masters employees as well as with the influence of the press, work in South Tyrol, Dalmatia and Littoral for the Germanization and Slavization of these territories according to the circumstances, with energy and without any regard. His Majesty calls the central offices to the strong duty to proceed in this way to what has been established.

— Franz Joseph I of Austria, Council of the Crown of 12 November 1866

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, more than 50% of the total population of Istria for centuries, made up about a third of the population in 1900. Dalmatian Italians, making up 33% of the total population of Dalmatia in 1803, were reduced to 20% in 1816, 12.5% in 1865, and 2.8% in 1910.

Zara, the Austrian capital of Dalmatia, was left the only Dalmatian city with an Italian majority, comparable to Istrian towns like Pola/Pula (45.8% Italians; 15.2% Croats; c. 39% German-speaking military) and Capodistria/Koper (92,02% Italians; 4,99% Slovenians; 2,13% Croats; 0,86% Germans).

World War I

The Trieste National Hall, the main center of the Slovene minority in Trieste, after fascists burned it (1920)

Although a member of the Central Powers, Italy remained neutral at the start of WWI, and soon launched secret negotiations with the Triple Entente, bargaining to participate in the war on its side, in exchange for significant territorial gains. To get Italy to join the war, in the secret 1915 Treaty of London the Entente promised Italy South Tyrol, Istria and parts of Dalmatia, Greece, Albania and Turkey, plus territory for Italy's North Africa colonies.

After World War I, Italy annexed Istria and Zadar, while Dalmatia (except Zadar) was annexed by Yugoslavia. As a result, 480,000 Slavic-speakers came under Italian rule, while 12,000 Italian speakers remained in Dalmatia. In 1919 D'Annunzio and an army of Italian war veterans seized the city of Fiume (Rijeka), arresting hundreds of local Slav leaders. With the help of local fascists Italy later annexed the city, with further anti-Slav violence. Other armed Italian irregulars tried to grab other cities with large Slav majorities, leading to unrest in Split in 1920, including attacks on local Italians, while fascists burned down the Slovene National Hall in Trieste, and the Croatian National Hall in Pula.

Italy launched a policy of forced Italianization, forbidding Slavic languages in public institutions and schools, moved 500 Slovene teachers to the interior of Italy, replaced them with Italian ones. All Slavic publications were banned, libraries closed. The government changed people's names to Italian ones. All Slavic cultural, sporting, professional, business and political associations were banned. Slavs were restricted from public sector employment. Fascist Blackshirts perpetrated anti-Slav violence. As a result, 100,000 Slavic speakers left Italian-annexed areas in an exodus, moving mostly to Yugoslavia. In a 1920 speech in Pola (Istria), Mussolini proclaimed an expansionist policy, based on the fascist concept of spazio vitale, similar to the Nazi's lebensraum:

Towards expansion in the Mediterranean and in the East, Italy is driven by demographic factors. But to realize the Mediterranean dream, the Adriatic, which is our gulf, must be in our hands. When dealing with such a race as Slavic – inferior and barbaric – we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.

— Benito Mussolini, 1920

World War II

See also: Italian war crimes in Yugoslavia

Map of areas Italy annexed after the invasion of Yugoslavia during the World War II – Province of Ljubljana, Governate of Dalmatia and the area merged with the province of Fiume. Italy further occupied half of the Independent State of Croatia (below grey line), plus Montenegro and parts of Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia (the latter annexed to Italy-occupied Albania)

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. 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, 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), 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.

Events

The first claims of people being thrown into 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.

4 November 1943: next to the Foiba of Terli are decomposed corpses of Albina Radecchi (A), Catherine Radecchi (B), Fosca Radecchi (C) and Amalia Ardossi (D)

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 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.

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 foiba of Basovizza, one of the most famous foibe (and unlikely called as such, as it was not a natural foiba but a disused mine shaft). Newspaper reports from the postwar era claimed anywhere from 18 to 3,000 victims in this 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. 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.

Area controlled by the Yugoslav Partisans (in red dots) immediately after the Badoglio Proclamation (8 September 1943)

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. 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:

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'.

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.

Istrian Italians leave Pola in 1947 during the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus

The foibe massacres were state terrorism, 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. From 1947, after the war, Italians were subject by Yugoslav authorities to less violent forms of intimidation, such as nationalization, expropriation, and discriminatory taxation, which gave them little option other than emigration. 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).

Number of victims

Changes to the Italian eastern border from 1920 to 1975.

  The Austrian Littoral, later renamed Julian March, which was assigned to Italy in 1920 with the Treaty of Rapallo (with adjustments of its border in 1924 after the Treaty of Rome) and which was then ceded to Yugoslavia in 1947 with the Treaty of Paris

  Areas annexed to Italy in 1920 and remained Italian even after 1947

  Areas annexed to Italy in 1920, passed to the Free Territory of Trieste in 1947 with the Paris treaties and definitively assigned to Italy in 1975 with the Treaty of Osimo

  Areas annexed to Italy in 1920, passed to the Free Territory of Trieste in 1947 with the Paris treaties and definitively assigned to Yugoslavia in 1975 with the Osimo treaty

The number of those killed or left in 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 (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 foibe, some of which are deeper than several hundred meters; some sources are attempting to compile lists of locations and possible victim numbers. 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 foibe located in northeastern Istria.

Investigations

Recovery of a body from a foiba in Istria

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.

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. 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, 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. 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.

Memorial stone in memory of the Italian victims of Foibe and Yugoslav deportations, Padua.

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. 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 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".

A 2002 joint report by Rome's Society of Fiuman studies (Società di Studi Fiumani) and Zagreb's Croatian Institute of History (Hrvatski institut za povijest) concluded that from Fiume 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) relegated into anonymity due to missing inventory in the Municipal Registries together with the relevant number of victims having ... Croatian nationality (who were often, at least between 1940 and 1943, Italian citizens) 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 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. 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 motives

The discovery of the entrance to a mass grave in Friuli after World War II

The foiba of Basovizza, near Trieste

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.

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.

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 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 "largely ignoring the issue of Italian war crimes". Others, including members of Italy's Jewish community, have objected to Italian right-wing efforts to equate the foibe with the Holocaust, via historical distortions which include exaggerated foibe victim claims, in an attempt to turn Italy from a perpetrator in the Holocaust, to a victim. 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 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.

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".

An Italian-Slovene commission, namely the Slovenian-Italian historical-cultural commission (Slovene: 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:

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.

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.

Post-War

The 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.

So, the Italian government tactically "exchanged" the impunity of the Italians accused by Yugoslavia for the renunciation to investigate the foibe massacres. 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 hand, Belgrade didn't insist overmuch on requesting the prosecution of alleged Italian war criminals.

Re-emergence of the issue

Further information: National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe

Rome, Giuliano-Dalmata district: monument to the victims of foibe

The President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano during his speech for the National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in 2007

Concert at the Quirinal Palace in the presence of the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella on the occasion of the National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in 2015

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 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 Carlo Azeglio 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.

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:

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. ... Yugoslav 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.

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:

... already in the unleashing of the first wave of blind and extreme violence in those lands, in the autumn of 1943, summary and tumultuous justicialism, nationalist paroxysm, social retaliation and a plan to eradicate Italian presence intertwined in what was, and ceased to be, the Julian March. There was therefore a movement of hate and bloodthirsty fury, and a Slavic annexationist design, which prevailed above all in the peace treaty of 1947, and assumed the sinister shape of "ethnic cleansing". What we can say for sure is that what was achieved – in the most evident way through the inhuman ferocity of the foibe – was one of the barbarities of the past century.

— Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, Rome, 10 February 2007

The Croatian President Stipe Mesić immediately responded in writing, stating that:

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 one of the most important.

— Croatian president Stjepan Mesić, Zagreb, 11 February 2007.

The incident was resolved 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 was assured that president Napolitano's speech on the occasion of the remembrance day for Italian WWII victims was in no way intended to cause a controversy regarding Croatia, nor to question the 1947 peace treaties or the Osimo and Rome Accords, nor was it inspired by revanchism or historical revisionism. ... The explanations were accepted with understanding and they have contributed to overcoming misunderstandings caused by the speech.

— Press statement by the Office of the President of Croatia, Zagreb, 14 February 2007.

In Italy, Law 92 of 30 March 2004 declared February 10 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.

In the media

• Il Cuore nel Pozzo, a 2005 TV movie focusing on the escape of a group of children from Tito's partisans.
• Red Land (Rosso Istria), a 2018 film directed by Maximiliano Hernando Bruno and starring Geraldine Chaplin, Sandra Ceccarelli, and Franco Nero.

Note: Many books have been written about the 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 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 § Bibliography and § Further reading.

See also

• Istrian-Dalmatian exodus
• National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe
• World War II in Yugoslavia
  • List of mass executions and massacres in Yugoslavia during World War II
• Carso
• Norma Cossetto
• Francesco Bonifacio
• Mass killings under communist regimes

Notes and references

Bibliography

• Baracetti, Gaia (2009). "Foibe: Nationalism, Revenge and Ideology in Venezia Giulia and Istria, I943-5". Journal of Contemporary History. 44 (4): 657–674. doi:10.1177/0022009409339344. ISSN 0022-0094. JSTOR 40542981. S2CID 159919208.
• Bartoli, Matteo (1919). Le parlate italiane della Venezia Giulia e della Dalmazia (in Italian). Tipografia italo-orientale. p. 16.[ISBN unspecified]
• Bloxham, Donald; Dirk Moses, Anthony (2011). "Genocide and ethnic cleansing". In Bloxham, Donald; Gerwarth, Robert (eds.). Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge University Press. p. 125. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511793271.004. ISBN 9781107005037.
• Ferreto Clementi, Silvia. "La pulizia etnica e il manuale Cubrilovic". Foibe ed esodo: una storia negata a tre generazioni di italiani (PDF) (in Italian). Retrieved 5 November 2022.
• Konrád, Ota; Barth, Boris; Mrňka, Jaromír, eds. (2021). Collective Identities and Post-War Violence in Europe, 1944–48. Springer International Publishing. p. 20. ISBN 9783030783860. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
• Lowe, Keith (2012). Savage continent. London. ISBN 9780241962220.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Oliva, Gianni (2003). Foibe. Le stragi negate degli italiani della Venezia Giulia e dell'Istria [Foibe. The denied massacres of the Italians of Venezia Giulia and Istria] (in Italian). Oscar Mondadori. pp. 4–25–36–71–72–148. ISBN 88-04-51584-8.
• Peričić, Šime (19 September 2003). "O broju Talijana/talijanaša u Dalmaciji XIX. stoljeća" [About the number of Italians in Dalmatia, XIX century]. Radovi Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Zadru (in Croatian) (45): 327–355. ISSN 1330-0474.
• Petacco, Arrigo (1999). L'esodo: la tragedia negata degli italiani d'Istria, Dalmazia e Venezia Giulia (in Italian). Milano: Mondadori. ISBN 88-04-45897-6.
  • English edition: Petacco, Arrigo (2005). A tragedy revealed: the story of Italians of Istria, Dalmatia, and Venezia Giulia, 1943–1956. Translated by Eisenbichler, Konrad. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-3921-9.
• Pizzi, Katia (1 February 2002). A City in Search of an Author. A&C Black. p. 91. ISBN 9780567244970.
• Pupo, Raoul; Spazzali, Roberto (2003). Foibe (in Italian). Bruno Mondadori. pp. 4–5–29–30–35–39–110–126–127–162–219–366. ISBN 88-424-9015-6.
• Pupo, Raoul (2005). Il lungo esodo. Istria: le persecuzioni, le foibe, l'esilio (in Italian). Rizzoli. ISBN 88-17-00562-2.
• Pupo, Raoul (April 1996). "Le foibe giuliane 1943-45". L'Impegno, A. XVI, N. 1 (in Italian). Istituto per la storia della Resistenza e della società contemporanea nel Biellese, nel Vercellese e in Valsesia. Archived from the original on 15 May 2021.
• Rumici, Guido (2002). Infoibati (1943–1945). I Nomi, I Luoghi, I Testimoni, I Documenti (in Italian). Ugo Mursia. ISBN 978-88-425-2999-6.
• Seton-Watson, Christopher (1967). Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 1870–1925. Methuen. p. 107. ISBN 9780416189407.
• Tobagi, Benedetta (2014). "La Repubblica italiana". Treccani, il portale del sapere (in Italian). Treccani. Archived from the original on 14 June 2017. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
• Tomasevich, Jozo (October 2002). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-7924-1.

• (in English) Pamela Ballinger, History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans, Princeton University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-691-08697-4.
• (in English) Benjamin David Lieberman, Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe, Ivan R. Dee, 2006 – Original from the University of Michigan 9 Jun 2008, ISBN 1-56663-646-9.
• (in English) Glenda Sluga, The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border: Difference, Identity, and Sovereignty in Twentieth-century Europe, SUNY Press, 2001 ISBN 0-7914-4823-1.
• (in Italian) Joze Pirjevec, Foibe: una storia d'Italia, Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 2009, ISBN 978-88-06-19804-6.
• (in Italian) Gianni Bartoli, Il martirologio delle genti adriatiche
• (in Italian) Claudia Cernigoi, Operazione Foibe—Tra storia e mito, Kappa Vu, Udine, 2005, ISBN 978-88-89808-57-3. (The first edition of the book, published in 1997 as Operazione foibe a Trieste and limited in scope to the Trieste territory, is available online)
• (in Italian) Vincenzo Maria De Luca, Foibe. Una tragedia annunciata. Il lungo addio italiano alla Venezia Giulia, Settimo sigillo, Roma, 2000.
• (in Italian) Luigi Papo, L'Istria e le sue foibe, Settimo sigillo, Roma, 1999.
• (in Italian) Luigi Papo, L'ultima bandiera.
• (in Italian) Marco Pirina, Dalle foibe all'esodo 1943–1956.
• (in Italian) Franco Razzi, Lager e foibe in Slovenia.
• (in Italian) Giorgio Rustia, Contro operazione foibe a Trieste, 2000.
• (in Italian) Carlo Sgorlon, La foiba grande, Mondadori, 2005, ISBN 88-04-38002-0.
• (in Italian) Pol Vice, La foiba dei miracoli, Kappa Vu, Udine, 2008.
• (in Italian) Atti del convegno di Sesto San Giovanni 2008, "Foibe. Revisionismo di Stato e amnesie della Repubblica", Kappa Vu, Udine, 2008.
• (in Italian) Gaetano La Perna, Pola Istria Fiume 1943–1945, Mursia, Milan, 1993.
• (in Italian) Marco Girardo Sopravvissuti e dimenticati: il dramma delle foibe e l'esodo dei giuliano-dalmati Paoline, 2006.
• (in Italian and Croatian) Amleto Ballerini, Mihael Sobolevski, Le vittime di nazionalità italiana a Fiume e dintorni (1939–1947) – Žrtve talijanske nacionalnosti u Rijeci i okolici (1939.-1947.), Società Di Studi Fiumani – Hrvatski Institut Za Povijest, Roma Zagreb, Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali Direzione generale per gli archivi, Pubblicazioni degli Archivi Di Stato, Sussidi 12, ISBN 88-7125-239-X.

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.

Further reading

• Pamela Ballinger, History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans Archived 12 June 2016 at the Wayback Machine, princeton.edu; accessed 14 December 2015.
• "In Trieste, Investigation of Brutal Era Is Blocked", nytimes.com, 20 April 1997.

Report of the Italian-Slovene historical-cultural commission (in three languages):

• "Period 1941–1945". Slovene-Italian Relations 1880–1956. Koper-Capodistria. 25 July 2000. Archived from the original on 23 February 2020.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• "Periodo 1941–1945". Relazioni italo-slovene 1880–1956 (in Italian). Archived from the original on 12 November 2020.
• "Obdobje 1941–1945". Slovensko-italijanski odnosi 1880–1956 (in Slovenian). Archived from the original on 7 November 2020.

External links

• Claudia Cernigoi, Operazione foibe a Trieste by Claudia Cernigoi (in Italian)
• Le foibe (in Italian)
• Gian Luigi Falabrino, Il punto sulle foibe e sulle deportazioni nelle regioni orientali (1943–45) (in Italian)
• Marco Ottanelli, "The truth about the foibe" (in Italian)
• Istituto regionale per la storia della Resistenza e dell'Età contemporanea nel Friuli Venezia Giulia, "Vademecum per il giorno del ricordo" Archived 12 February 2019 at the Wayback Machine (in Italian)

Videos

• 1948 Italian newsreel