We talk about Foibe, history can not be erased

   

(by Maurizio Giannotti) Like every year all over the world, last January 27 was the Day of Remembrance in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and February 10 is the Day of Remembrance, the civil solemnity established in Italy in 2004 to to honor the memory of the Martyrs of Foibe as well as the exodus of Istrians and Italian Dalmatians from their lands.

Rai3 on February 8th broadcast the film RED LAND - Rosso Istria the prime movie that reconstructing the sad and atrocious affair of Norma Cossetto illuminates the tragedy of the foibe and the atrocities committed for a long time in those lands by bands of bestial murderers.

Red Land is a historical film where the director was able to accurately render the reality of the moment and the drama that was being carried out, a tragedy whose crescendo is well represented in the poster.

I had the opportunity to see Red Land already last December in my city thanks to the initiative of the local management of FdI which made it possible to show a film otherwise out of the normal schedule.

2 hours and 30 min. of projection that made me live on the skin and in the soul the tragedy of that relatively distant time.

I relived in an even stronger way what I already felt in the early nineties when on several occasions I was in Slovenia and Croatia during the Serbo-Croatian conflict and I got to know truly extraordinary people who after the fall of the "Berlin Wall" and the death of Tito have managed with great difficulty to redeem themselves from a dictatorship that is nothing short of monstrous.

The Croatian friends, not only those who live in Dalmatia, have always shown themselves open with me showing in every occasion a deep respect and esteem for Italy, a sentiment that comes from afar as I have repeatedly pointed out.

Together it often happened to talk about the past, about World War II and on some occasions we talked about the sinkholes, of which I always remembered as soon as I crossed the border in Trieste; a difficult subject for my friends who have always said on several occasions that the Croatian people had nothing to do with that tragedy, contrary to what is said about the nationalist movement of the Ustasha of Ante Pavelic.

It was pointed out to me that the Croatian has never felt resentment for Italian, indeed the affinities rather than the differences that characterize the two peoples and history proves it just think of the importance of Dalmatia in Roman times and in the centuries following it. close relationship with the Serenissima, times of peace and prosperity, obviously within the limits allowed by those periods which are still quite eventful.

Conversely, it was pointed out to me that the Kingdom of Yugoslavia never managed to keep together the souls that made it up, Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia to name the main ones, and the conflicts between these peoples were continuous and violent with large-scale cleaning operations. ethnic genocide, most of the time by resorting to information.

In addition to ethnic resentment, there is also a strong religious hatred which, it is said, also saw the participation of the clergy in the most heinous crimes and this occurred in 1940-'41; a hatred lived and dealt with in a massacre way that included ethnic rape and mass murder as we saw with the Yugoslav wars that broke out in 1991.

From '91 to '95 the siege of the main Croatian cities of the Dalmatian coast by Serbia was really tightened with night raids made to terrorize the population, the bell towers of the churches were methodically shelled with the main purpose of demolishing the cross placed on the top and it was fatal to move outdoors with caution in order to avoid entering the sights of the many Serbian snipers everywhere well distributed on the territory.

Those implemented by the Serbs were real terrorist actions made to keep cities like Split, Sibenik and Zara in check, just to mention the main ones; operations made to affect almost exclusively the civilian population and especially children, women and the elderly.

The same modality was used between 1943 and '45 by the communist partisans, the so-called Tito, who with the information they were experts in massacred thousands and thousands of hated Italians and Slovenian and Croatian opponents.

RED LAND - Rosso Istria is a very good docu-film that helps to restore the truth and that it would be right to project as soon as possible in our schools.

Before the intolerance and indifference take the upper hand, thanks to the widespread misinformation and counter-information nowadays always widespread, would it not be better to produce some docu-film about the massacres of communism, about the annihilation of the Armenian people ...?