"A wall of silence and oblivion - a mixture of embarrassment, political opportunism and sometimes serious superficiality - formed around the terrible suffering of thousands of Italians, massacred in foibe
or swallowed up in concentration camps, driven en masse to abandon their their homes, their possessions, their memories, their hopes, the lands where they had lived, faced with the threat of imprisonment if not physical elimination".
The President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella said this during the celebration of "Remembrance Day" at the Quirinale.
"The ferocity that was unleashed against the Italians in those areas
cannot be classified under the heading of acts, however ignoble, of revenge or summary justice against the occupying fascists;
whose rule had been - we know - intolerant and cruel for the Slavic populations , whose requests for autonomy and linguistic and cultural protection had been denied and repressed for many years", he added.
"The disappearances in the foibe or after internment in prison camps, the killings, the torture committed against the Italians in those areas, in fact, affected officials and soldiers, priests, intellectuals, employees and simple citizens who had nothing to do with the dictatorship of Mussolini. And even partisans and anti-fascists, whose only fault was that of being Italian, of fighting or even just of aspiring to a future of democracy and freedom for themselves and their children, of hindering the annexation of those territories under the communist dictatorship".
Mattarella recalled that Remembrance Day was voted for by a very large majority in Parliament.
"Almost eighty years have passed since the terrible events that affected the eastern border areas and twenty years since the institution of the Day of Remembrance, approved by Parliament with a very large majority - he stated -. Day dedicated to the tragedy of the Italians and all the victims of the foibe, of the exodus of the Istrians, Fiumeans and Dalmatians from their lands after the Second World War".
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