The Foibe killings or Foibe massacres refers to the killings that took place mainly in Istria during and shortly after World War II from 1943 to 1949, perpetrated mainly by Yugoslav Partisans.[2] The name derives from a local geological feature, a type of deep karst sinkhole called a foiba.[3] The term includes by extension killings in other subterranean formations, such as the Basovizza "foiba", which is not a true foiba but a mine shaft.
In Italy the term foibe has, for some authors and scholars,[4] taken on a symbolic meaning; for them it refers in a broader sense to all the disappearances or killings of Italian people in the territories occupied by Yugoslav forces. According to Raoul Pupo, "It is well known that the majority of the victims didn't end their lives in a Karst cave, but met their deaths on the road to deportation, as well as in jails or in Yugoslav concentration camps".[5] The terror spread by the disappearances and the killings eventually contributed to an atmosphere sufficient to cause the majority of the Italians of Istria, Rijeka and Zadar to flee to other parts of Italy or the Free Territory of Trieste.[6]
Other authors have asserted that "[t]he post-war pursuit of the 'truth' of the foibe as a means of transcending Fascist/Anti-Fascist oppositions and promoting popular patriotism has not been the preserve of right-wing or neo-Fascist groups. Evocations of the 'Slav other' and of the terrors of the foibe made by state institutions, academics, amateur historians, journalists and the memorial landscape of everyday life were the backdrop to the post-war renegotiation of Italian national identity.[7]
The estimated number of people killed is disputed and varies from hundreds to thousands.[8]
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The first (very disputed[9]) claims of people being thrown into foibe date back to 1943, after the Wehrmacht took back the area from the Partisans, when around 70 local people were thrown into a foiba by the Germans after the bombing of a cinema.[10]
Many of the bodies found in the Basovizza pit, and in the foibe of Corgnale, Grgar, Plomin, Komen, Socerb, Val Rosandra, Cassorana, Labin, Tinjan, Cerenizza, Heki and others were ethnic Italians, but, according to Katia Pizzi, "despite evidence that Fascist soldiers had also used foibe as open-air cemeteries for opponents of the regime, only their equivalent use on the part of Yugoslav partisans appeared to arouse general censure, enriched as it was with the most gruesome details".[11] The number of those who died in foibe during and after the war is still unknown, difficult to establish and a matter of much controversy. Estimates range from hundreds to twenty thousand. According to Katia Pizzi: "In 1943 and 1945, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Italians, both partisans and civilians, were imprisoned and subsequently thrown alive by Yugoslav partisans into various chasms in the Karst region and the hinterland of Trieste and Gorizia".[12] According to data gathered by a mixed Slovene-Italian historical commission established in 1993, "the violence was further manifested in hundreds of summary executions - victims were mostly thrown (still alive) into the Karst chasms (foibe) - and in the deportation of a great number of soldiers and civilians, who either wasted away or were killed during the deportation".[13] Some historians like Raoul Pupo or Roberto Spazzali estimated the total number of victims at about 5,000, but this is again contested by many.
The episodes of 1945 occurred partly under conditions of guerrilla warfare by Croatian and Slovenian Partisans against the Germans, the Italian Social Republic and their Slavic collaborators (the Chetniks, the Ustaše and Domobranci) and partly after the territory had been secured by Yugoslav army formations.
It was never possible to extract all the corpses from the foibe, some of which are deeper than several hundred meters. Until a few years ago it had only been possible to extract just a small number of bodies, less than six hundred,[14] while other sources are attempting to compile lists of locations and possible victim numbers.[15]
Since the early Middle Ages, Latin and South Slavic communities in Istria and Dalmatia lived peacefully side by side. 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.[17] Sociologically, the population was divided into Latin middle-upper classes (bourgeoisie and aristocracy in coastal areas and in the towns) and Slavic lower classes (peasants and shepherds inland). Some contemporary Croat studies suggest that Dalmatia's towns were settled almost exclusively by Slavic populations since A.D. 1000 and ethnic Italians emigrated there after Venetian domination.
After the Napoleonic age (1800–1815), nationalism spread among the populations of Istria and Dalmatia, with each ethnic group starting to strive for the unification of their lands with the respective fatherland. To counter Italian irredentism, which was seen as a threat to the Habsburg Empire, the government decided to "encourage an influx of Slavic populations into the coastal region".[18] Also, German-speaking population, coming from inner parts of the Empire and mainly working in the government bureaucracy, moved to Venetia increasing the German community of Trieste to 5%.[18]
After World War I, the whole of Istria was annexed by Italy, while Dalmatia (except Zadar) was annexed by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Each state began a policy of cultural homogenisation, a common practice in Europe at the time (see—for example—Germans in Alsace-Lorraine or in the Sudetes, Ukrainians and Lithuanians in eastern Poland, Magyars in Transylvania and Banat etc.). The remnants of the Italian community in Dalmatia (which had started a slow but steady emigration to Istria and Venice during the 19th Century) left their cities toward Zadar and the Italian mainland. Slavic communities in Istria, Trieste and the Gorizia countryside were subjected to a policy of Italianization after the end of the war.
The Italianization of the Slavic population worsened during the Fascist era, and was "exacerbated by a blatant policy of erasure of Slavic identity" [19] and by "fascist terrorism not hampered by the authorities".[20]
In 1927, the Italian Fascist Minister for Public Works Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli wrote, with the pseudonym Giulio Italico, in the party magazine Gerarchia, that "The Istrian muse named as foibe those places suitable for burial of enemies of the national [Italian] characteristics of Istria".
Previously, in 1919,[21] in the book "Trieste, la fedele di Roma", the future minister had written a ditty in Venetian: "A Pola xe l'Arena / la Foiba xe a Pisin / che i buta zo in quel fondo / chi ga certo morbin" ("In Pula there is the Arena, in Pazin the Foiba, into that abyss is thrown, whoever has some itching" [meaning 'bad thoughts']).[22][23]
According to Galliano Fogar and Giovanni Miccoli there would be "the need to put the episodes in 1943 and 1945 within [the context of] a longer history of abuse and violence, which began with Fascism and with its policy of oppression of the minority Slovenes and Croats and continued with the Italian aggression on Yugoslavia, which culminated with the horrors of the Nazi repression against the Partisan movement".[24]
No investigation of the crimes had been initiated either by Italy, Yugoslavia or any international bodies in the post-war period until after Slovenia became an independent country in 1991.
In 1993 a study titled Pola Istria Fiume 1943-1945[25] 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".[26] The study has, however, been the subject of criticism, in that its "list of over 6,000 dead includes not just those who disappeared in the foibe or Yugoslav concentration camps but also legitimate wartime casualties, executions after due process of Fascist officials, Germans or German collaborators. Finally, many Slovenes or Croats are listed as Italians because they happened to be Italian citizens; the fact that they were from the South Slav nations persecuted by the Italian Fascists does not seem to bother the author".[27]
A 2002 joint report by the Rome "Society of Fiuman studies" (Società di Studi Fiumani) and the Zagreb "Croatian Institute of History" (Hrvatski institut za povijest) concluded that from Rijeka and the surrounding area "no less than 500 persons of Italian nationality lost their lives between 3 May 1945 and 31 December 1947. To these we should add an unknown number of 'missing' (not less than a hundred) 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 citizenship) determined after the end of war by the Yugoslav communist regime."[28]
In March 2006, the border municipality of Nova Gorica in Slovenia released a list of names of 1,048 citizens of Gorizia (Nova Gorica's Italian half) who disappeared in May 1945 after being arrested by the Partisan 9th Corps.[29] 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".[30]
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), Slovenian and Croatian anti-communists, collaborators and radical nationalists.
Others see the main motive for the killings as 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.[31]
However, others point out Josip Broz Tito's political aim of adding the Istrian territories as far as Trieste and the city itself to the new Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. The ethnic map of the area could potentially be a decisive factor in a treaty of peace with Italy and for this reason, according to some Italian historians, the reduction of the ethnic Italian population was held desirable. However, the Istrian exodus, which reduced the Italian population of Istria and Dalmatia, started before the killings had spread.
Pamela Ballinger in her book History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans wrote[32]
| “ | I heard exiles' accounts of "Slavic barbarity" and "ethnic cleansing," suffered in Istria between 1943 and 1954, as well as Slovene and Croat narratives of the persecution experienced under the fascist state and at the hands of neofascists in the postwar period. Admittedly, I could not forget--as many exiles seemed to do--that the exodus from Istria followed on twenty years of the fascistization and Italianization of Istria, as well as a bloody Italian military campaign in Yugoslavia between 1941 and 1943. Nor could I countenance some exiles' frequent expressions of anti-Slav chauvinism. At the same time, however, I could not accept at face value the claim by some that the violence the Slavs suffered under fascism justified subsequent events in Istria or that all those who left Istria were compromised by fascism. Similarly, I came to reject the argument that ethno-national antagonism had not entered into the equation, as well as the counterview that the exodus represented simply an act of "ethnic cleansing". | ” |
The report by the mixed Italian-Slovenian commission describes the circumstances of the 1945 killings as[33]:
| “ | 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. | ” |
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.
Another reason for the neglect of the foibe can be found in the high degree of ideology historically present in the public debate in Italy. Many Istrians concealed their origins for fear of being identified by other communist Italians, who tended to believe that Italian Istrians who left after the war likely co-operated with the Fascists, since they were abandoning a "Socialist heaven".
Moreover, when the Cold War broke out, in order to maintain good relations with Tito, the foibe were a dangerous topic to broach.
So, the Italian government tacitly "exchanged" the impunity of the Italians accused by Yugoslavia for the renunciation to investigate the foibe killings.[34] 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.[35] On the other side, Belgrade didn't insist too much in requesting the prosecution of alleged Italian war criminals in order to avoid investigations on the foibe and responsibility on their part.
Thus, both Italian war crimes and Yugoslav war and post-war mass killings were forgotten in order to maintain a "good neighbour" policy.
For several Italian historians these killings were the beginning of organized ethnic cleansing.[36] Others assert that the number of victims was too small for this to be true, and that the killings were mostly restricted to fascists, both military and civilian, who might have committed war crimes during World War II in Yugoslavia.
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. However, the conciliatory moves by Ciampi and Veltroni were not endorsed by all Italian political groups.
Nowadays, a large part of the Italian Left acknowledges the nature of the foibe killings, as attested by some declarations of Luigi Malabarba, Senator for the Communist Refoundation Party, during the parliamentary debate on the institution of the National Memorial Day: "In 1945 there was a ruthless policy of exterminating opponents. Here, one must again recall Stalinism to understand what Tito's well-organized troops did. (...) 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."[37]
However, Malabarba and his party maintained that discussion of the massacres was being manipulated by the right-wing parties and that the new Memorial day was part of a general attempt to criminalize anti-fascism and Italian Resistance.
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:[38]
...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 consumed - in the most evident way trough the inhuman ferocity of the foibe - was one of the barbarities of the past century.—Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, Rome, 10 February 2007[39]
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.
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[42]
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 alleged 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. Since the topic seemed especially appealing to the far right, there is an overrepresentation of authors that are affiliated with neo-fascism.Many authors from the left wing have maintained that the foibe were either an exaggeration (or an invention) of the extreme right for propaganda purposes,[43] since the fascist crimes in the same areas dwarf even the most lavish of the foibe allegations.[34] Since a definitive investigation on all foibe has not yet been carried out, and is unlikely to be carried out anytime in the near future due to technical and political difficulties, the subject is still controversial, and one should approach any book in this bibliography with a critical spirit.
Report of the Italian-Slovene commission of historians (in three languages)