Foibe Killings - Events

Events

The first (very disputed) claims of people being thrown into foibe date back to 1943, after the Wehrmacht took back the area from the Partisans, when around 70 local people were thrown into a foiba by the Germans after the bombing of a cinema.

Many of the bodies found in the Basovizza pit, and in the foibe of Corgnale, Grgar, Plomin, Komen, Socerb, Val Rosandra, Cassorana, Labin, Tinjan, Cerenizza, Heki and others were ethnic Italians, but, according to Katia Pizzi, "despite evidence that Fascist soldiers had also used foibe as open-air cemeteries for opponents of the regime, only their equivalent use on the part of Yugoslav partisans appeared to arouse general censure, enriched as it was with the most gruesome details". The number of those who died in foibe during and after the war is still unknown, difficult to establish and a matter of much controversy. Estimates range from hundreds to twenty thousand. According to Katia Pizzi: "In 1943 and 1945, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Italians, both partisans and civilians, were imprisoned and subsequently thrown alive by Yugoslav partisans into various chasms in the Karst region and the hinterland of Trieste and Gorizia". According to data gathered by a mixed Slovene-Italian historical commission established in 1993, "the violence was further manifested in hundreds of summary executions - victims were mostly thrown (still alive) into the Karst chasms (foibe) - and in the deportation of a great number of soldiers and civilians, who either wasted away or were killed during the deportation". Some historians like Raoul Pupo or Roberto Spazzali estimated the total number of victims at about 5,000, but this is again contested by many.
The episodes of 1945 occurred partly under conditions of guerrilla warfare by Croatian and Slovenian Partisans against the Germans, the Italian Social Republic and their Slavic collaborators (the Chetniks, the Ustaše and Domobranci) and partly after the territory had been secured by Yugoslav army formations.

It was never possible to extract all the corpses from the foibe, some of which are deeper than several hundred meters. Until a few years ago it had only been possible to extract just a small number of bodies, less than six hundred, while other sources are attempting to compile lists of locations and possible victim numbers.