The ANNOTICO Report

This is a follow up to my Report on February 5, that gives the details of
"The Foibe" and the Julian March".

This New York Times article points out the reasons for the 60 years of
"Amnesia"

(1) The Reluctance of the Italian left chose to overlook the massacre,
because it was an embarrassing stain on the reputation of Communist
partisans whom they cast as heroes,
(2)Western allies were reluctant to investigate the killings after
Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet Union in 1948.
(3) Italy wanted to get on with reconstruction and reconciliation after a
disastrous war.

To the credit of certain members of the Left, they condemned the silence
after the massacre.
To the discredit of the Yugo Slavs, they attempted to make excuses, and
criticize the memorialization.

New York Times
By Jason Horowitz
February 13, 2005

ROME, Feb. 12 - After decades of willful amnesia, Italy turned its
attention this week to the thousands of Italians who were massacred by
Yugoslav partisans and dumped into mountain crevices at the end of World
War II.

The killings occurred in and around Trieste, in the north, when, in 1943
and 1945, Communist partisans from neighboring Yugoslavia rounded up
Italians in anti-Fascist raids and condemned them to execution by firing
squads. Between 5,000 and 15,000 people were shot and dropped into the pits
of the Carso mountain range. Some were alive when they were forced into the
ditches.

"If we look back at the 20th century, we see pages of history that we wish
we could forget," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday of the
massacre. "But we cannot forget, and we do not want to forget."

For 60 years, however, Italy did seem to forget, and whether reviving the
subject now is a good idea has been a subject of debate.

Many in the Italian left chose to overlook the massacre, because it was an
embarrassing stain on the reputation of Communist partisans whom they cast
as heroes, liberating the country from Fascism. Western allies were
reluctant to investigate the killings after Yugoslavia broke with the
Soviet Union in 1948. Perhaps most significant, Italy wanted to get on with
reconstruction and reconciliation after a disastrous war.

"All of Europe at that time was looking ahead and closing their eyes to
what was behind them," said Gianpaolo Valdevit, a historian at the
University of Trieste. "It's important that the country knows."

On Thursday, flags flew at half-staff, and Parliament observed a moment of
silence for the first "day of memory," commemorating the tragedy, which
President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi called "an integral part of our national
consciousness." Earlier in the week, a film depicting the atrocities was
aired on Italy's RAI government-owned television.

While more than 10 million Italians watched the film, "A Heart in the Pit,"
Professor Valdevit said he suspected that the week's ceremonies, speeches
and screenings meant less to the country's common citizens than to its
power players. "It's largely political," he said.

Indeed, the National Alliance, a coalition partner of the conservative
government that came to power in 2001, has long sought to counter criticism
of its neo-Fascist roots by shining a national spotlight on the crimes of
Communist partisans in Trieste.

That effort seemed to culminate Thursday in a somber pilgrimage to the
chasms by Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, who is also the National
Alliance leader.

But not everyone has appreciated the new attention to the massacres.

When the Slovenian foreign minister, Ivo Vajgl, heard last year that the
RAI film was planned, he dismissed it as an "offense and provocation." The
Italian association against Fascism and Nazism, Promemoria, protested in
front of the Trieste offices of RAI this week, dismissing the film as
Fascist propaganda.

Some critics in the extreme left have argued that the brutality of Benito
Mussolini, who took control of Trieste and the Istrian Peninsula after
World War I and violently forced the "Italianization" of the region,
prompted the revenge killings.

But some of Italy's most prominent left-wing politicians condemned the
silence after the massacre and sought a greater sense of comity.

"What I have seen here is witness to a guilty silence, even involving the
left, the Communists," Rome's mayor, Walter Veltroni, said last month
during a visit to the Trieste pits. "It is necessary to know that it is not
by feeding hatreds, divisions and conflicts that these wounds are healed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/i
nternational/europe/13italy.html?ex=11089
62000&en=f9523a5988c8076d&ei=
5040&partner=MOREOVERNEWS