Foibe massacres

Foibe massacres
Locations of some of the foibe
LocationJulian March, Kvarner, Dalmatia (Italy and Yugoslavia)
Date1943–1945
Target
Attack type
DeathsEstimates range from 3,000 to 5,000 killed,[14][15] according to other sources 11,000[16][17] or 20,000;[10][16] 4,000 deported
Perpetrators
Part of a series on
Aftermath of
World War II in Yugoslavia
Main events
Massacres
Camps

The foibe massacres (Italian: massacri delle foibe; Slovene: poboji v fojbah; Croatian: masakri fojbe), or simply the foibe, refers to mass killings and deportations both during and immediately after World War II, mainly committed by Yugoslav Partisans and OZNA in the then-Italian territories[a] of Julian March (Karst Region and Istria), Kvarner and Dalmatia, against local Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians)[9][10] and Slavs, primarily members of fascist and collaborationist forces, and civilians opposed to the new Yugoslav authorities.[7][8][2] The term refers to some victims who were thrown alive into the foibe[18][19][20] (from Italian: pronounced ['fɔibe]), deep natural sinkholes characteristic of the Karst Region. In a wider or symbolic sense, some authors used the term to apply to all disappearances or killings of Italian and Slavic people in the territories occupied by Yugoslav forces. Others included deaths resulting from the forced deportation of Italians, or those who died while trying to flee from these contested lands.

There is academic consensus that these attacks were reprisal killings, triggered by forced Italianization and fascist Italian war crimes against Yugoslavs.[10][13][5][21][1][2] In addition, some historians also describe them as state terrorism[10][22] and ethnic cleansing against Italians,[9][10] including Italian anti-fascist militias and civilians.[2][23][24] Other historians dispute this, stating that Italians were not targeted for their ethnicity,[1][2][3][4][5][6] that the majority of victims were members of fascist military and police forces,[2][7][8] and that many more Slavic collaborators were killed in postwar reprisals. Secret Communist instructions directed to cleanse, "not on the basis of nationality, but on the basis of fascism".[25] The Italian historian, Raoul Pupo, states that, “the foibe are not genocide and are not ethnic cleansing,” instead they were acts of political violence that had “nothing to do with nationality or religion”.[26]

Italian and German reports mention members of local fascist militias as the primary victims in 1943.[25] Among documented victims from Trieste in 1945, 80% were members of fascist and collaborationist forces, 97% were males, while of the 3% female victims at least half were Slovene.[27] Victims also included unarmed and uninvolved civilians, killed in a preventive purge of real, potential or presumed opponents of Titoism,[12] killed along with native anti-fascist autonomists — including the leadership of Italian anti-fascist partisan organizations, opposed to Yugoslav annexation, and leaders of Fiume's Autonomist Party, Mario Blasich and Nevio Skull, who supported local independence from both Italy and Yugoslavia – resulting in the purge in the city of Fiume, where at least 650 were killed during and after the war by Yugoslav units, tried for war crimes before military courts.[28][29]

The estimated number of foibe victims is disputed, varying from hundreds to thousands,[30] according to some sources 11,000[16][17] or 20,000.[10] Many foibe victim lists are deficient, with repeated names, victims of fascist or German forces, victims killed in combat, or who were still alive or died in completely different circumstances.[31] Italians and Germans also used foibe to dispose of victims. Italian historian Raoul Pupo estimates 3,000 to 4,000 total victims, across all areas of former Yugoslavia and Italy from 1943 to 1945,[15] noting that estimates of 10,000 to 12,000 must also include those killed or missing in combat, and states victim numbers of 20,000 to 30,000 are "pure propaganda".[32] Historians note that it is difficult to determine the ethnicity of victims, since fascist authorities forcibly Italianized people's names,[31] however of documented victims from Italian-majority Trieste, at least 23% were either Slavs or had at least one Slavic parent. [27]

The foibe massacres were followed by the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus, which was the post-World War II exodus and departure of local ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) from the Yugoslav territory of Istria, Kvarner, the Julian March, lost by Italy after the Treaty of Paris (1947), as well as Dalmatia,[33] towards Italy, and in smaller numbers, towards the Americas, Australia and South Africa.[34][35] According to various sources, the exodus is estimated to have amounted to between 230,000 and 350,000 Italians. A joint Italian-Slovene commission noted that the majority of the exodus happened in the early 1950s, more than five years after the massacres, when it was clear these parts would become permanently Yugoslav, and that the exodus had multiple causes, including war-caused economic hardship and general repressive policies in the immediate postwar years.[6]

The events were part of larger reprisals in which tens-of-thousands of Slavic collaborators of Axis forces were killed in the aftermath of WWII, following a brutal war in which some 800,000 Yugoslavs, the vast majority civilians, were killed by Axis occupation forces and collaborators, with Italian forces committing war crimes. Historians put the events in the context of broader postwar violence in Europe,[36] including in Italy, where the Italian resistance and others killed an estimated 12,000 to 26,000 Italians, usually in extrajudicial executions, the great majority in Northern Italy, just in April and May 1945,[13] while some 12 to 14.5 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Central and Eastern Europe, with a death toll of 500,000[37][38] to 2.5 million.[39][40][41]

  1. ^ a b c Siviero, Tommi (27 December 2022). "Italian Right Stirs Up Grievances About Yugoslavs' WWII 'Foibe Massacres'". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 25 April 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Troha, Nevenka (2014). "Nasilje vojnih in povojnih dni". www.sistory.si (in Slovenian). Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino. Retrieved 4 June 2023. By this definition, among the 601 victims [documented from the Trieste region], 475 were members of armed formations and 126 were civilians.
  3. ^ a b Baracetti 2009.
  4. ^ a b Zamparutti, Louise (1 April 2015). "Foibe literature: documentation or victimhood narrative?". Human Remains and Violence. 1 (1): 75–91. doi:10.7227/HRV.1.1.6.
  5. ^ a b c Pupo, Raoul (15 May 2021). "Le foibe giuliane". Archived from the original on 15 May 2021. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
  6. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ a b c Baracetti 2009, p. 664, "That fascists were specifically targeted by the repression is also confirmed by various Italian sources. A letter attached to the Hazarich report on the excavations carried out in the foibe in 1943 mentions corpses of fascists thrown there; another the extractions of the bodies of "our unfortunate squadristi (members of the fascist militia). An Italian report on "the grim fate of Pisino" (a city in istria) mentions only the killings of squadristi, which contrasts markedly with the subsequent report on the German offensive: random shootings of civilians, burning of houses and bombings".
  8. ^ a b c d Baracetti 2009, "In 1947, British envoy W. J. Sullivan wrote of Italians arrested and deported by Yugoslav forces from around Trieste: "There is little doubt, while some of the persons deported may have been innocent, others were undoubtedly active fascists with more than mere party memberships on their conscience. Some of these have returned to Trieste but have kept well out of the Allied authorities, not participating in enquiries about the deportations for fear of arrest and trial 'for their former fascist activities'".
  9. ^ a b c Bloxham & Dirk Moses 2011.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i Konrád, Barth & Mrňka 2021.
  11. ^ Rumici 2002, p. 350.
  12. ^ a b Italian-Slovene commission.
  13. ^ a b c Lowe 2012.
  14. ^ Pupo & Spazzali 2003.
  15. ^ a b Boscarol, Francesco (10 February 2019). "'Foibe, fascisti e comunisti: vi spiego il Giorno del ricordo': parla lo storico Raoul Pupo [Interviste]". TPI The Post Internazionale (in Italian). Retrieved 19 October 2021.
  16. ^ a b c Rumici 2002.
  17. ^ a b Micol Sarfatti (11 February 2013). "Perché quasi nessuno ricorda le foibe?". huffingtonpost.it (in Italian).
  18. ^ "Foibe, oggi è il Giorno del Ricordo: cos'è e perché si chiama così". La Repubblica (in Italian). GEDI Gruppo Editoriale. 10 February 2021. Retrieved 19 October 2021. La ricorrenza istituita nel 2004 nell'anniversario dei trattati di Parigi, che assegnavano l'Istria alla Jugoslavia. Si ricordano gli italiani vittime dei massacri messi in atto dai partigiani e dai Servizi jugoslavi. [The anniversary [was] established in 2004 on the anniversary of the Paris treaties, which assigned Istria to Yugoslavia. We remember the Italians victims of the massacres carried out by the partisans and the Yugoslav services.]
  19. ^ "In Trieste, Investigation of Brutal Era Is Blocked". The New York Times. 20 May 1997. Retrieved 3 April 2023.
  20. ^ "Italy film recalls pain of forgotten WWII massacres". France 24. 22 November 2018. Retrieved 3 May 2023.
  21. ^ Baracetti 2009, pp. 657–674.
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference Rai was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ Società di Studi Fiumani-Roma, Hrvatski Institut za Povijest-Zagreb Le vittime di nazionalità italiana a Fiume e dintorni (1939–1947) Archived October 31, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali – Direzione Generale per gli Archivi, Roma 2002. ISBN 88-7125-239-X, p. 190. "Therefore, the largest number of Italians from Rijeka and the former Kvarner province died immediately after the end of the Second World War, were tried before military courts and accused of war crimes"
  24. ^ "Le foibe e il confine orientale" (PDF) (in Italian). Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
  25. ^ a b Baracetti 2009, p. 667.
  26. ^ Hazareesingh, Sudhir (12 December 1991), "French Intellectuals and the Communist Party: Roots of Affiliation", Intellectuals and the French Communist Party, Oxford University Press, pp. 62–104, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198278702.003.0003, ISBN 978-0-19-827870-2, retrieved 6 January 2024
  27. ^ a b Troha 2014.
  28. ^ Società di Studi Fiumani-Roma, Hrvatski Institut za Povijest-Zagreb Le vittime di nazionalità italiana a Fiume e dintorni (1939–1947) Archived October 31, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali – Direzione Generale per gli Archivi, Roma 2002. ISBN 88-7125-239-X, p. 190. "Therefore, the largest number of Italians from Rijeka and the former Kvarner province died immediately after the end of the Second World War, were tried before military courts and accused of war crimes"
  29. ^ "Le foibe e il confine orientale" (PDF) (in Italian). Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
  30. ^ Hedges, Chris (20 April 1997). "In Trieste, Investigation of Brutal Era Is Blocked". The New York Times. Section 1, Page 6. Retrieved 19 October 2021.
  31. ^ a b Baracetti 2009, p. 660.
  32. ^ Pupo 1996.
  33. ^ Georg G. Iggers (2007). Franz L. Fillafer; Georg G. Iggers; Q. Edward Wang (eds.). The Many Faces of Clio: cross-cultural Approaches to Historiography, Essays in Honor of Georg G. Iggers. Berghahn Books. p. 430. ISBN 9781845452704.
  34. ^ "Il Giorno del Ricordo" (in Italian). 10 February 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2021.
  35. ^ "L'esodo giuliano-dalmata e quegli italiani in fuga che nacquero due volte" (in Italian). 5 February 2019. Retrieved 24 January 2023.
  36. ^ Konrád, Barth & Mrňka 2021, p. 20.
  37. ^ Ingo Haar, "Herausforderung Bevölkerung: zu Entwicklungen des modernen Denkens über die Bevölkerung vor, im und nach dem Dritten Reich". "Bevölkerungsbilanzen" und "Vertreibungsverluste". Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der deutschen Opferangaben aus Flucht und Vertreibung, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2007; ISBN 978-3-531-15556-2, p. 278 (in German)
  38. ^ The German Historical Museum puts the figure at 600,000, maintaining that the figure of 2 million deaths in the previous government studies cannot be supported.Die Flucht der deutschen Bevölkerung 1944/45, dhm.de; accessed 6 December 2014.(in German)
  39. ^ Kammerer, Willi. "Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste — 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg" (PDF). Berlin Dienststelle 2005. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 June 2017. Retrieved 28 October 2017.the foreword to the book was written by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily
  40. ^ Christoph Bergner, Secretary of State in Germany's Bureau for Inner Affairs, outlines the stance of the respective governmental institutions in Deutschlandfunk on 29 November 2006, [1]
  41. ^ "Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus den Gebieten jenseits von Oder und Neiße", bpb.de; accessed 6 December 2014.(in German)


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