In the WWII tragedy, there were so many massacres that it is difficult to find a country where no one had been carried out.
Of course, the massacres committed in the Holocaust against the Jews are known. It is the best known and documented. The one committed in Eastern Europe against the Slavs, more than three million Russian prisoners killed by hunger in a few months, the fastest and largest slaughter in history is less known, and the slaughter of millions of Slavs in German-occupied areas is almost unknown.
Along with these great massacres there are numerous, also almost unknown, and not all committed by the Germans, these were like the demons who gave free rein to the worst savagery of their collaborators, Baltics, Romanians, Ukrainians, etc., and sometimes of all against all, Poles. against Ukrainians, Ukrainians against Poles, Romanians against Hungarians and vice versa.
At the end of the war, there was a logical repression against the Germans, expelling them from areas that they had inhabited for centuries, in Czechoslovakia, Poland or some Baltic states, including Romania, but even though German historians amplify everything they may have suffered at this time, these expulsions were unparalleled with the killings committed by the Germans during the war, neither in number nor in cruelty.
In a very brief history of the Istrian peninsula, this was Italian (from the Republic of Venice) from the year 1000, approximately, to 1797 when it passed to the Habsburgs, in 1918 after the First World War, it passed again to Italy, until 1947, when it was divided into two zones, A and B under Allied rule, and later in 1954, zone A with Triestre passed back to Italy and zone B to Yugoslavia. Subsequently Zone B in 1991 was divided into two independent countries, Slovenia and Croatia.
A part of Istria was dividen between A and B zones.
The peninsula was always populated mainly by Italians and Slavs.
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| Italian presence 1900-1910 |
Istria with Fiume and some regions of Dalmatia, including Zara), were annexed to Italy after the First World War, realizing the longing of the Italian irredentists. But at the end of World War II, the former Italian territories of Istria and Dalmatia became part of Yugoslavia under the Paris Peace Treaty (1947), with the sole exception of the municipalities of Muggia and San Dorligo della Valle. The last territory that passed into the hands of the Yugoslavs from Tito was that of Pola in southern Istria: in February 1947 almost 30,000 of its 33,000 inhabitants (almost all Italians) left the Istrian city and joined the exodus, prompting action demonstrative and vengeful of Maria Pasquinelli (who killed the British general De Winton, head of the allied troops in Pola).
Italian sources estimate that some 350,000 Italians (along with a few thousand anti-Communist Slovenes and Croats) were forced to flee these areas as a result of the conflict. Many were terrorized by Tito's paramilitary forces, who massacred thousands of Italians in the Foibes and requested indiscriminate bombardment by the allies of the Italian civilian population, such as in small Zara.
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| Italian victims |
After the exodus, a few hundred Italians remained in Dalmatia and a few thousand in Istria (especially in the Istrian areas of the Free Territory of Trieste).
In any case, in various municipalities in Croatia and Slovenia, the 2001 census data shows that there are still a certain number of Italians living in Istria, such as 51% of the population of Grisignana / Grožnjan, 37% in Verteneglio / Brtonigla and 39.6% in Buie / Buje.
Foibes massacres
The name was derived from a local geological feature, a type of deep karst sinkhole called foibe, because the murderers threw their victims at those foibes.
After the Italian defeat, these actions became widespread, now directed exclusively towards the Italian population and in greater numbers, from several hundred to many thousands of people, according to Slavic or Italian sources.
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| Some places of killings |
Tens of thousands of Italian fascists, anti-fascists and also civilians were thrown into the foibe. Some were first shot; other times they were thrown alive; or they were tied two by two, only one received the shot and they were thrown together to death in the pit [appointment required]. Many of these corpses are still there, not located, since in the Istrian area alone, more than 1,700 narrow sinkholes up to 200 meters deep are cataloged.6 170 bodies have already been extracted from these graves.7 Some of the associated names to this massacre would be those of Norma Cossetto or Francesco Bonifacio.
Norma Cosetto´s story deserves to be remembered.
Norma Cossetto was born in Visinada (Western Istria) in 1920, into an Italian bourgeois family from Istria. From a young age she joined the Italian youth organizations of Pola and enrolled in 1939 at the University of Padua to graduate as a professor of Italian literature.
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| Norma Cosetto |
In September 1943 (after the Italian Armistice) Norma was preparing her graduation thesis (entitled "Istria Rossa"), when she was kidnapped by Tito's troops and imprisoned for having refused to collaborate with the partisans against the Italians.
On October 5, 1943, after being repeatedly tortured and raped, she was thrown alive in a foiba, along with three dozen other Italians. Out of extreme contempt, Norma (who was a physically beautiful girl, 2) had her breasts amputated by executioners before being thrown into the chasm. A week later, his remains were found by German troops, who shot some of his torturers.
The foiba where student Norma Cossetto was thrown alive is located near Pirano, in northwestern Istria.
After the Second World War his death has been prosecuted as emblematic of the Foibe massacres and the ethnic cleansing carried out by Slavs in Istria: in 1949 the University of Padua awarded him the laurea "honoris causa" and at the beginning of 2005 the Italian President Ciampi awarded him the "Medaglia d'oro al merito civile".
In July 2011 the cities of Trieste and Narni (Terni) dedicated a street to it.
Some italians films, and books, deal with the subject.
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