Today, October 5th, is the 50th Anniversary of the signing of "the Memorandum of Understanding signed in London on 5 October 1954" that finally returned Trieiste to Italy, but also lost forever most of Istria, Fiume, and most of the city of Gorizia, in Friuli.

The roots of the problem go deep.

The history of Trieste is an intricate patchwork of a sleepy seaside village in the 18th century that was transformed into a large European port, by the Hapsburgs, with interruptions of rule by Venetian, Spanish and Napoleonic. Trieste, which had grown to 150,000 remained subjugated by the Hapsburgs until 1918.

In keeping with the irredentist movements that were taking hold all over Europe, many inhabitants of Trieste began to show their support for Garibaldi's forces and the Risorgimento.

The largest reason that Italy did not stay neutral in WWI, and joined the Allies, was was the promise of the British and French in the Treaty of London of 1915, for a return/liberation of the "Irredenta" territories, Trieste, Fiume, Istria, Dalmatia, all which had large Italian populations. Italy was also promised German and Turkish Colonies.

Even though Italy suffered the greatest physical and economic damage of the Victors in WWII, Britain and France reneged on Fiume, Istria, Dalmatia, and German and Turkish Colonies.

The desolation endured, along with the resentment felt, created a climate that not only facilitated Mussolini's acceptance, but is said to have influenced Mussolini's entry in WWII against the British and French.

Italy lost the war, and Trieste was invaded by Tito's Yugoslavian troops. The thousands of Italians who spoke out against the Communist regime were killed in large underground rock cavities called "foibe".

The Yugoslavian were eventually swept out of Trieste after 5 weeks, thanks to the intervention of Allied troops and the city with feelings of both euphoria and disorientation came under US Military rule until 1954. It was at this time that Trieste was finally and definitively returned to Italy and it became the administrative seat of the  Friuli Venezia Giulia region.

It has only really been in the past twenty years that Trieste has been able to carve out a new niche for itself. It has now become the most important center for scientific research in Italy and this is a sector which is providing work for an increasing number of young people.

Numerous research institutes can be found in the city including the Area di Ricerca (one of the largest technology parks in Europe), the Synchrotron Electra, the International Center of Physical Theory, the Laboratory of Marine Biology, the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and many others, as well as the avant-garde university which was built under Fascist rule in the 1920s.

Contemporaneously, and during the next nine years, some 400,000 Italians were at the point of guns, forcibly displaced by Tito's troops, with NO Compensation in  "The Julian March"

Who has previously heard of the "Foibe", or the "Julian March"??

How can perhaps Tens of Thousands be Killed, and Hundreds of Thousands Displaced and it is Ignored???

Is because this was a Communist "atrocity", and the "tilt" of our Historians would not
"permit" such an examination??? [Nor any attention to the Italians soldiers "lost" to the Communist Gulag, or the Italian Communist Partisans causing German "slaughter" of 15,000 innocent Italian Civilians??]

Are they too busy, trying their best to continue to attempt to "discredit" Fascism and Mussolini ad naseum, that there is no time nor inclination to explore those aspects that might be "embarrassing" to our "Comrades???

1. TIMELINE BY GIORGIO IRACI
2. ITALY AND FORMER YUGOSLAVIA- MEMENTO MORI -The Economist
3. FIFTY YEARS OF TRIESTE IN ITALY- Rete Civica Trieste-

In World War I (1915-18), a date just as meaningful is Nov 4, 1918 (date of the armistice between Italy and Austria, with the latter surrendering, 7 days before German surrender to the Allies on the Western front).

May 3, 1945: surrender of the last German troops occupying Trieste.

June 12, 1945: Allied troops force the Yugoslavian ones out of Trieste after 5 weeks of their occupation, a nightmare for the Italian population (majority). The Yugoslavian chieftain, Josip Broz (a.k.a."Marshal" Tito), declares that the whole of the "Venezia Giulia" region is Balcanian (hence, Yugoslavian).

Feb 10, 1947: Peace Treaty signed. Dalmatia (a region where the signs of civilization are those left by the Venetian republic -, and that supplied the Republic with some of its most devoted troops, the "Schiavoni"), most of Istria with Pola (now, "Pula") and Fiume (now, "Rijeka") go to Yugoslavia. The city of Gorizia, in Friuli, is split into an Italian and a Yugoslavian section, with apartments having the bedroom in one sector, and the kitchen in the other one.

Oct 8, 1953: USA and GB determine that the administration of Trieste should be given back to Italy.

Nov 4, 1953: the Italians of Trieste give a massive demonstration of feeling such, exposing the Italian flag. Reaction of the Allied military police, the revolt extends to the whole city: 6 youths shot and killed.

Oct 5, 1954 (today's anniversary) in London: signature (USA, GB. Yugoslavia and Italy) of the "Entente Memo" by which Trieste returns to Italy.

Oct 26, 1954: Italian troops re-enter Trieste to substitute the Allies, received by a population in a delirium of joy.

Nov 4, 1964: Italy reassumes the direct administration of Trieste and of the "A" Zone. The administration of the "B" Zone is assigned to Yugoslavia, even though sovereignty on it is recognized to Italy.Yugoslavian persecution of the Italian population (already initiated with the killing of tens thousand Italians in the "foibe" in 40 days) makes countless Italians emigrate, with just their clothes on and leaving
all the rest behind, with main destination Italy - then, maybe, other countries including the USA. Their homes and properties, to be assigned to Yugoslavians by the Tito government (do I remember an historical precedent, in Mittel-Europe?).

The 9 years between 1945 and 1954 had seen the perpetuation of the nightmare (persecution, killings, pogroms). Numbers smaller (hundreds of thousand people instead of millions), but the principle was the same: Italian, instead of Jewish ethnicity, at the hands of yet another dictatorship.

Nov 10, 1975: Italy and Yugoslavia sign the "Treaty of Osimo", with which sovereignty over the "B" zone is definitely assigned to the latter: final loss of Istria.

Today, Oct 5, 2004, is the 50th anniversary since Trieste's return to Italy after WW2.

I have extracted and summarized the above from an article on today's (Oct 5, 2004) "Il Giornale", page 1 (continuing on 30).

There is a final comment by a Renzo de Vidovich, 20 years old in 1954, hence 70 now, then a leader of the students' movement that had organized the manifestations of Nov 4, 1953: "the "Risorgimento" ended, for us, on Oct 5, 1954".

MEMENTO MORI
>From The Economist
Aug 26th 2004 | ROME

A new diplomatic row about an old piece of barbarism
GRIEVANCES run deep in Europe. Nowhere more than between the old European Union of 15 and its new, ex-communist members.

Witness a row over a television series that has not even been completed. “Il Cuore nel Pozzo”, being shot by the Italian state-owned RAI network, recalls a particularly barbaric episode. Between 1943 and 1947, thousands of Italians were dragged from their homes by Yugoslav partisans, often tortured, bound hand-and-foot and tossed (sometimes alive) into deep chasms known as foibe.

The killings occurred in and around the Istrian peninsula, which were returned to Italy at the end of the first world war (The Irredenta) but was lost to Yugoslavia after the second...

The RAI project has been criticised in the Serbian and Croatian media...

Italy's telecommunications minister, Maurizio Gasparri. “The truth is the Slovenes are not prepared to see this issue confronted.”...  But in this instance history needs correction. The murders of so many Italians were ignored after 1947 for reasons of cold-war diplomacy.

Italian governments did not want to upset Yugoslavia, whose independence from Moscow offered a buffer against the Soviet block.

The Communist opposition was not eager to draw attention to a shameful page in Communist history.

Those days are now over. In February, an Italian parliamentary motion to declare a day of commemoration for the victims passed by an overwhelming 502-15, and even won support from the formerly communist Democrats of the Left.

Party's leader, Piero Fassino, said: The crimes committed during the "foibe”, can not be justified.

Economist.com | Italy and former Yugoslavia
http://www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3136394

On 26 October 1954 Trieste officially returned to Italy after an absence lasting nine years.  On that day, on behalf of the Italian State, an Italian official – General Edmondo De Renzi – substituted the Allied Military Government which had run the city since 12 June 1945, the date which marked the end of the Yugoslavian occupation.

Those nine years were some of the most difficult and tragic for Trieste, marked by mourning and suffering.  Today the Municipality commemorates this event not only in remembrance of a national identity which the city ceaselessly reaffirmed, even at the cost of human life, but also because it appears legitimate and right to go over the events of its own recent history, so that the members of the younger generation – who did not live through those events – are aware of the historical memory preceding them, without which even the future appears uncertain.

As part of the 50th anniversary celebrations, the Municipality has the aims of reviewing those events, reproducing moments of daily life through exhibitions and displays, tackling the difficult and complex events of those nine years with a rigorously historical outlook open to all cultural components of the city, and reliving the sentiments and anxiety which moved the inhabitants of Trieste at that time through photographs and period films.

This is to be done without rhetoric, but rather with the desire to render a service to both those who remember those times with the same emotion today as they felt half a century ago, and those who are approaching the subject for the first time and need to be informed to be able to recognise themselves in this complex and marvelous national sentiment.

In this respect Trieste is a city which in those nine years yearned to be Italian.  The city’s sense of national identity arises from a difficult and troubled choice: denied the right to return to the homeland, Trieste had the resolve and the courage to resist and to constantly feed that sense of national belonging.  In a certain sense it was lucky because in the end its request was granted, being reunited to Italy with the Memorandum of Understanding signed in London on 5 October 1954.  For other cities and other areas the same Memorandum sanctioned the end of hope and signified the definitive handing over of the “B zone” to Yugoslavia, a transfer which was sanctioned by the Osimo Treaty in 1975.

The vicissitudes which led to the reunification of Trieste to Italy demonstrate the extent of this desire.

On 30 April 1945, at the end of the second world war, Trieste was occupied by the troops of the IX Yugoslavian Corps.  Tito insisted on drawing the border with Italy at the Isonzo river, and for two cities, Gorizia and Trieste, a severe see-sawing of options began.  In the forty-five days of the Yugoslavian occupation, Trieste suffered violence and deportations directed at the Italian inhabitants and the “well-to-do”, regardless of political affiliation: in fact victims of the violence also included many antifascists who saw the inclusion of Trieste within the Italian state as a logical solution.  The outlook of communist totalitarianism which inspired Tito’s Yugoslavia aimed not only at the denationalisation of those areas, but also at the end of the economic elites established there for decades, in favour of a collectivist vision of goods and property.

This situation, which lasted for only forty-five days, was to be the cause of not only the phenomenon of the foibe or mass graves, but also the deportation of defenceless people to Yugoslavian concentration camps.  In Istria, Fiume-Rijeka and Dalmatia on the other hand, the situation drew out for months, forcing more than 300 000 people to abandon those regions so as to maintain their own national identity.

On 12 June 1945 the Allies forced Tito to leave the city, which was then administered by the Allied Military Government.  The Julian area was divided into two zones: the A Zone under direct Anglo-American control and the B Zone administered by Yugoslavia.

The Peace Treaty signed in Paris by the Italian government on 10 February 1947 officially sanctioned the division of the two zones within the Free Territory of Trieste, a political-administrative unit which extended from Duino to Cittanova-Novigrad in Istria and which encompassed 360 000 inhabitants.  The political life of the years of the Allied Military Government was lived out according to the book in the A Zone, whereas the B Zone immediately suffered the Yugoslavian action of violent coercion against the Italian communities, which were numerous and in the majority particularly along the Istrian coast.  In Trieste the local elections held in 1949 and 1952 were a clear sign of the inhabitants’ desire to be Italian.

1953 was an eventful year marked by a number of tragic episodes.  Following an agreement reached by the United States and the United Kingdom on 8 October 1953 which anticipated the withdrawal of the allied troops from the A Zone and their substitution with Italian troops, Belgrade held that the destiny of Trieste was definitively compromised and Tito decided to manifest his opposition with a hard line in the face of the allied decisions.  The Italian government, at the time led by Giuseppe Pella, strongly reacted against the Yugoslavian protests, which led to the events of 3-4 November.  Trieste had already seen violent clashes in March which caused dozens of injuries.  On 4 November, faced with the refusal of the allied commander to allow the flying of the Italian flag outside the town hall, a request made by the mayor Gianni Bartoli, the city arose.  In the clashes which followed between 4 and 6 November six demonstrators lost their lives, struck by a police force which reacted disproportionately in the face of the unarmed demonstrators.

By December secret negotiations began between the Allies and the Yugoslavian government to define the situation.  The talks lead to the aforementioned Memorandum of Understanding which established the handing over of Trieste to Italy and the B Zone to Yugoslavia.

So ended the complex events of the eastern border, which nonetheless left open wounds, with a human cost – the foibe and the exodus – which can not easily be erased.  The situation of the Italians who remained across the border was a cause for controversy, owing to the difficulties that the Italian communities faced for a long period in openly expressing their own cultural identity.

Today, in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the return of Trieste to Italy, there is the conviction that the defence of the respective cultural identities no longer means nationalistic abuse of power, but simply the respect for the history, culture and sentiments of a people.  The European perspective will be able to heal old wounds, in a broader outlook which nonetheless maintains the sense of cultural belonging and the respective national identities and which transforms those diversities, which were the cause of mourning and tragedy, into mutual enrichment.  This is not a simple perspective, but the European project, if it is not limited simply to a different management of the borders, may prove to be an important resource for cooperation and peace in this region.

- Rete Civica Trieste -
http://www.retecivica.trieste.it/new/
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