Foibe Killings - Background

Background

Since the early Middle Ages, Latin and South Slavic communities in Istria and Dalmatia lived peacefully side by side. The population was divided into urban-coastal communities (mainly Romance speakers) and rural communities (mainly Slavic speakers), with small minorities of Morlachs and Istro-Romanians. Sociologically, the population was divided into Latin middle-upper classes (bourgeoisie and aristocracy in coastal areas and in the towns) and Slavic lower classes (peasants and shepherds inland). Some contemporary Croat studies suggest that Dalmatia's towns were settled almost exclusively by Slavic populations since A.D. 1000 and ethnic Italians emigrated there after Venetian domination.

After the Napoleonic age (1800–1815), nationalism spread among the populations of Istria and Dalmatia, with each ethnic group starting to strive for the unification of their lands with the respective fatherland. To counter Italian irredentism, which was seen as a threat to the Habsburg Empire, the government decided to "encourage an influx of Slavic populations into the coastal region". Also, German-speaking population, coming from inner parts of the Empire and mainly working in the government bureaucracy, moved to Venetia increasing the German community of Trieste to 5%.

After World War I, the whole of Istria was annexed by Italy, while Dalmatia (except Zadar) was annexed by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Each state began a policy of cultural homogenisation, a common practice in Europe at the time (see—for example—Germans in Alsace-Lorraine or in the Sudetes, Ukrainians and Lithuanians in eastern Poland, Magyars in Transylvania and Banat etc.). The remnants of the Italian community in Dalmatia (which had started a slow but steady emigration to Istria and Venice during the 19th Century) left their cities toward Zadar and the Italian mainland. Slavic communities in Istria, Trieste and the Gorizia countryside were subjected to a policy of Italianization after the end of the war.

The Italianization of the Slavic population worsened during the Fascist era, and was "exacerbated by a blatant policy of erasure of Slavic identity" and by "fascist terrorism not hampered by the authorities".

In 1927, the Italian Fascist Minister for Public Works Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli wrote, with the pseudonym Giulio Italico, in the party magazine Gerarchia, that "The Istrian muse named as foibe those places suitable for burial of enemies of the national characteristics of Istria".

Previously, in 1919, in the book "Trieste, la fedele di Roma", the future minister had written a ditty in Venetian: "A Pola xe l'Arena / la Foiba xe a Pisin / che i buta zo in quel fondo / chi ga certo morbin" ("In Pula there is the Arena, in Pazin the Foiba, into that abyss is thrown, whoever has some itching" ).

According to Galliano Fogar and Giovanni Miccoli there would be "the need to put the episodes in 1943 and 1945 within a longer history of abuse and violence, which began with Fascism and with its policy of oppression of the minority Slovenes and Croats and continued with the Italian aggression on Yugoslavia, which culminated with the horrors of the Nazi repression against the Partisan movement".

After the invasion of Yugoslavia, persecution of Croats and Slovenes, some of whom were Italian citizens, intensified in Italian-held territory, with whole villages being emptied of their inhabitants, who were removed to concentration camps such as those in Rab, Gonars, and others spread all over Italy. Between 7.000 and 11.000 people died from abuse and neglect in the camps.