A “Not Hundred Percent Anti-Fascist
Policy”
The Ethnic Cleansing of Italians in Istria and
Trieste and the Allied Investigation
Committee, 1943 - 1945
MA Thesis in History
Holocaust and Genocide Studies Jorinde van der Meijden
6163726
Supervisor: Dr. Karel Berkhoff Date: 19 August 2016
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 4
ABSTRACT 5
INTRODUCTION 6
I. THE ALLIED INVESTIGATION COMMITTEE 12
Context of the Allied investigation 13
Ideological motives for the investigation 14
Diplomatic motives for the investigation 15
Some of the findings of the investigation 16
Conclusion 18
II. THE INVESTIGATION OF YUGOSLAV CRIMES IN ISTRIA 19
The foibe on the Istrian Peninsula 23
The nature of the violence of the Yugoslav forces 25
Findings by the Investigation Committee 27
The stories of Giovanni Radeticchio, Don Beari and Giuseppe Bari 29
Conclusion 33
III. TRIESTE: FORTY DAYS OF YUGOSLAV OCCUPATION 35
The number of victims 38
The identity of the victims 39
Sites of execution and the foibe 42
The testimonies of two priests 47
The identity of the perpetrators 49
Conclusion 49
CONCLUSION 51
APPENDIX I – Map of the Venezia Giulia area (1946) 53 APPENDIX II – Facsimile of a statement by Giovanni Radeticchio 54
BIBLIOGRAPHY 56
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This thesis would not have been possible without the advice, help and support of the academic staff at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, family and friends.
I would especially like to thank Dr. Karel Berkhoff for, very patiently, guiding me through the process of writing an MA thesis. His experience in the academic field and knowledge about structuring and organising a thesis, have helped me a lot during this process. I would also like to thank Dr. Kjell Anderson for agreeing to be the second reader of this thesis.
To conclude, I would like to thank the staff at the National Archives in London for their help with and assistance in the research of the primary sources used in this thesis.
ABSTRACT
After the armistice signed by Italy on 3 September 1943 the Yugoslav army invaded Istria, a peninsula that was granted to Italy after the First World War, and attempted to annex the area to the new Yugoslav state. During the period in which the Yugoslav authorities attempted to organise their control over the area, ending with the invasion of the German army a few months later, the Yugoslav forces intimidated, arrested, tortured and killed Italian nationals. Many of the victims were thrown, dead or alive, into natural sinkholes, called foibe (singular foiba).
When the Allied forces continued their war of liberation from the south of Italy towards the north in 1943, a race for Trieste motivated both the Allied forces and the Yugoslav forces to move quickly to occupy the strategically important port city of Trieste. The Yugoslav army took full control over the city and repeated the massacres of Italians in the same style as in Istria. The Yugoslav forces created countless sites of executions, amongst them were many foibe.
When the British army arrived and pushed the Yugoslav army across the so-called Morgan Line, the 13 Corps of Eighth Army of the Allied forces installed an Investigation Committee to excavate the corpses inside the foibe and elsewhere and to collect eyewitness accounts and testimonies from survivors and victims’ family members.
The findings of the Investigation Committee show that the Yugoslav troops committed ethnic cleansing in Istria and Trieste in their attempts to gain those territories for Yugoslavia.
INTRODUCTION
When I ask my Italian friends and acquaintances whether their history teachers at secondary school taught them about the history of the foibe (plural of foiba), natural pits, in which Italian soldiers and civilians were thrown by the Yugoslav troops, they answer that they vaguely know something about it. They don’t remember much about those history lessons but add that the schools in the region of Venezia Giulia (covering the areas of Gorizia, Trieste, and the whole Istrian peninsula, see Appendix I) do teach their pupils about this gruesome story. It strikes me as odd that these educated, intelligent and generally interested young Italians do not know much about the massacres committed by the Yugoslavs in the Trieste and Istria regions.
The secondary sources used in this thesis are predominantly books written by Italian historians such as Raoul Pupo, Roberto Spazzali and Gianni Oliva, but also American historian Pamela Ballinger and others.
Despite the factual uncertainties concerning this topic, almost all historians stick to the same context of the history of the Trieste and Istria regions, in the west and south of Venezia Giulia, respectively, during the Second World War. On July 10, 1943 the Allies arrived in Italy.1 The Allied forces consisted mostly of British troops who had an interest
in the control over the Mediterranean. Although, according to the historian Paul Ginsborg, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not have a lot of faith in the Italians, he did have some respect for Mussolini. In the early days of fascism, Churchill had even complimented Mussolini for saving Italy from the threat of communism. This meant that there was not a lot of British pressure on the fascist groups in Italy to dissolve. Meanwhile, King Vittorio Emanuele III and Marshal Pietro Badoglio tried to negotiate about war and peace with the Allies but also wanted to retain a military dictatorship.2 The Forty-Five Days, starting with the dismissal of Mussolini on 25 July
1943, ended with the armistice between Italy and the Allied forces on 3 September 1943, which was made public five days later. From then on, Italy was a co-belligerent of the Allies.
The Allies considered the Italian partisans, who were fighting Mussolini’s army and the German army and who wanted to install a leftist army, as an obstacle to Allied
1 Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, society and politics 1943-1988, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan 2003, p. 11.
victory. The cases of Greece and Yugoslavia became the examples for the British forces of failed interventions by the Allies: Greece ended up in a civil war between the communists and the monarchists and Yugoslavia became a repressive communist state under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito.3 Therefore, the Allied forces acted carefully
when dealing with the partisan groups or Tito and his army.
During the Second World War several partisan groups were present in the areas of Trieste and the Istrian peninsula. There were Italian resistance and partisan groups, organised within the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN, the National Liberation Committee). Within this committee existed groups such as the Garibaldi, Mazzini and Friuli battalions, the Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Freedom) and the Brigata Proletaria (Proletarian brigade). These are only a few examples of the many bigger and smaller resistance and liberation groups that were active during the Second World War in Italy.
There were also the Yugoslav partisan groups that were attempting to occupy Istria and Trieste. Some were organised by the Croatian, Slovene and Yugoslav Communist Party. The Croatians established the ZAVNOH, or National Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Croatia, while the Yugoslavs created AVNOJ, the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia.
As the Allied forces went further north within Italy, after the Sicily landing, the border region between Italy and Yugoslavia became more and more important to the Yugoslav troops on the one hand and the Allied forces on the other. While Churchill never trusted the communists, the Yugoslavs wanted the territory back that they lost to Italy during the peace negotiations after the First World War, most importantly the peninsula Istria and the portal city Trieste. These areas had been given to Italy as a reward for joining the fight against Germany in the First World War and Italy subsequently made sure to ‘Italianise’ the area in the twenties and thirties.
After the Italian armistice of September 3, 1943, the Yugoslav army started an offensive to take the Istrian peninsula back. When they succeeded in taking most of the area they abolished all Italian bureaucratic institutions, street names and therewith the Italian culture in Istria became marginalised.4 In 1943 a race commenced between the
Allies and the Yugoslav army, as they were trying to drive the Germans back over their former northern border, to reach the city first. In the autumn of 1945 the Yugoslav army
3 Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, pp. 41-42.
4 Gianni Oliva, Foibe: Le stragi negate degli italiani della Venezia Giulia e dell’Istria, Milan:
occupied Trieste for forty days but had to retreat when the Germans launched a final attack.
During these forty days in the Venezia Giulia area, but also in the spring and summer of 1943 on the Istria peninsula, the Yugoslav army committed many atrocities against Italian citizens and army personnel. The violence consisted of executions, kidnappings, looting, violent maltreatment, deportation, forced marches and torture. People were also shot and thrown into the foibe (natural sinkholes), sometimes even alive. The estimates of the number of deaths ranges from a few hundred people to tens of thousands of people.5 Most researchers write about several thousand victims.6 This
estimate includes all the Italian victims killed by Yugoslav forces between 1943 and 1945, as well as victims of summary executions and those Italians who died in the Yugoslav concentration camps.
It is remarkable that the most prominent scholars on the topic, such as Pupo, Spazzali, Oliva and Ballinger, have not used the materials that the British Allies created by investigating the crimes committed by the Yugoslav troops in the Istria and the Trieste regions. These reports, currently archived at the National Archives in London, will be used in this thesis to provide new information on the victim group and the nature of the violence. Using these sources will give a chance to approach this topic from a different and previously unknown perspective, complementing the extensive research done by the aforementioned scholars on the foibe killings.
In the context of war and competing ideologies the Allies and the Yugoslavs were fighting side by side against nazism and fascism but they were also fighting each other over the sphere of influence of the Venezia Giulia region. The conflict only came to an end in 1954 when Trieste was officially given to Italy and Istria became part of Croatia.7
This thesis investigates what happened to the Italian victims of Yugoslav atrocities in Trieste and the Istrian peninsula between 1943 and 1945. The answer will be based, mainly, on extensive research and documentation drawn up by the Allied
5 Raoul Pupo and Roberto Spazzali, Foibe, Milan: Paravia Bruno Mondadori Editori 2003, p. 24. 6 Gianni Oliva, Foibe, p. 4. Also: Malcolm Anderson and Eberhard Bort, The Frontiers of Europe,
London: Pinter 1998, p. 77.
7 Pamela Ballinger, ‘Who defines and remembers genocide after the Cold War? Contested
memories of partisan massacre in Venezia Giulia in 1943-1945’, Journal of Genocide Research, no. 2 (2000), p. 14.
forces in Trieste. As said, these materials have not been used at all.8 All of the primary
sources were obtained from the National Archives in London. The British started an investigation into the atrocities in Venezia Giulia towards the end of the war. The 13 Corps went to the villages to get information from the civilians about the perpetrators, the victims and the details of the crimes. They found the foibe in which the victims were thrown, dead or alive. They created pages and pages of information about the victims, and to some degree also about the perpetrators. One discovery, as we will see in Chapters II and III, is that many survivors state they ‘were only persecuted because they were Italian’.
The first chapter will set out the context of the Investigation Committee of the Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) and its workings. Not much is known about the motives for starting the investigation and about its practicalities. It is nevertheless important to look at the broader ideological context surrounding the Investigation Committee and the relations between Churchill, Field Marshal Alexander (Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces in the Mediterranean), Josip Broz Tito and the Yugoslav army. This context could shed light on the motives behind starting an investigation into the Yugoslav atrocities and could also clarify why it remained unknown.
The second chapter describes the massacres on the Istrian peninsula in 1943. It combines the information from secondary sources with findings from the British Investigation Committee. Since I did not have access to the archives in Belgrade or Ljubljana, and did not research Slavic primary sources, I relied on research done by other historians on this topic. One focal point is what other academics write and argue about the identity of the victims and what happened to them. Another is on how the violence was committed and what the perception of the survivors was relating to their victimhood and the perpetrators. The chapter also deals with the statement given to the Allied forces by Giovanni Radeticchio, the only known survivor of the foibe of 1943.
The third chapter will discuss what happened in the Trieste and Gorizia regions in 1945. It will discuss what historians have written and there will be a focus, again, on the identity of the victims and the perpetrators and the nature of the violence. Primary sources will supplement the narrative that already exists in the scholarly literature.
8 The materials were merely mentioned in Gorazd Bajc, ‘Aretacije, internacije in deportacije po
prvi in drugi svetovni vojni na območju Julijske krajine: oris problematike in poskus primerjave', Acta Histriae, no. 20 (2012) p. 400, and Jože Pirjevec and others, Fojbe, Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba 2011, pp. 26, 30, 32.
Many witnesses gave their testimony to the Allied forces. Two testimonies given by priests from the Trieste region will be discussed in detail, for their position within the community gave them the opportunity to witness and describe what had happened. Because of the absence of survivor narratives, testimonies by family members of the deceased will be reviewed.
Now it is important to explain the choice for certain definitions that will be used in this thesis. As mentioned, the foibe are natural sinkholes in which the victims were thrown by the perpetrators. Over the years, the foibe have also come to mean the whole range of atrocities committed against the Italians by the Yugoslav partisans, so also the concentration camps; the death marches and executions. I will only use the word foibe to refer to the sinkholes and not to describe the Yugoslav violence in general. This is important for it enables a distinction between the varying nature of the violence, which, in turn, is important when describing the violence as ethnic cleansing.
As we will see in this thesis, Italians in Istria and in Trieste comprised the largest victim group. On various occasions the Yugoslav forces even tried to ban Italian street names, signs, and made Italians even hesitant to speak their own language. I use the terms Yugoslav troops or Yugoslav forces in order to describe the perpetrator group. The Yugoslav forces consisted of military personnel and volunteers who wanted to fight against the Germans and for the Yugoslav occupation of Trieste and Istria.9 Some of the partisans groups were under the control of Tito’s army and therefore it is difficult to distinguish between the Yugoslav army and the Yugoslav partisans. When the term Allied forces is used, it refers to the British who started the research into the foibe, unless indicated otherwise.
The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ is used according to the definition by Norman Naimark:
“The intention of ethnic cleansing is to remove a people and often all traces of them from a concrete territory. The goal, in other words, is to get rid of the “alien” nationality, ethnic, or religious group and to seize control of the territory they had formerly inhabited.”10
He adds that in Slavic and German language the word cleansing has a double meaning:
9 Gianni Oliva, Foibe, p. 72.
10 Norman Naimark, Fires of hatred: ethnic cleansing in twentieth century Europe, Cambridge,
“one purges the native community of foreign bodies and one purges one’s own people of alien elements”11. As we shall see, this addition is of great importance to the topic of the
foibe killings and the Yugoslav troops as perpetrators.
It is important to mention the difference between ethnic cleaning and genocide. The perpetrators of ethnic cleansing aim to remove a certain group from a certain area to be able to take control over this area. The perpetrators of genocide intent to get rid of a certain group of people by killing them or by letting them die in the process of forced migration and deportation. The violence that occurs during ethnic cleansing usually consists of murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, extra-judicial executions, rape and sexual assaults.
I. THE ALLIED INVESTIGATION COMMITTEE
The British Allied Forces started an investigation into the atrocities committed by the Yugoslav army and partisan groups against Italian nationals. The primary sources refer to this research with multiple terms such as the War Crimes Investigation Group, Commission of Enquiry or the Investigation Committee. In this thesis the term Investigation Committee will be used to refer to the broader context of the investigation and the people involved in the research. The investigation took place under the auspices of 13 Corps, which was commanded by Lieutenant General Sir John Harding from May 1944 until November 1946. 13 Corps was part of 8th Army, which consisted of 5 corps.12
The Chief of Command of all Allied Forces at the time was Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander. The primary sources do not mention exactly who was in charge of each part of the investigation. Therefore, this chapter can offer only a general overview.
The investigations were directed by the Intelligence and Security (G-2) Section, within 13 Corps, of the Allied Forces Headquarters (AHFQ) and, to cite, “the investigation consisted in ascertaining and proving the validity of official and unofficial reports pertaining to large scale atrocities, wholesale indiscriminate arrests and deportations, and other abuses and excesses committed by the Yugoslav Army and Yugoslav partisans in Venezia Giulia between May 2 – June 12, 1945.”13 The report is
based on different types of sources, such as military agencies, the Military Government, the Italian Liberation Committee, the Italian Red Cross, individual civilian sources, personal interrogations and censorship intercepts. The information was sorted in eight categories: 1. Atrocities and torture committed against an individual that can still personally testify; 2. Torture reported by witnesses; 3. Indiscriminate arrests and deportations of civilians and military personnel; 4. General abuse against civilians; 5. Intimidation of civilians by strong-arm squads or emissaries; 6. Testimonies about the Yugoslav concentration camps; 7. The treatment of Allied personnel in Yugoslav concentration camps and 8. Reports by various censorship agencies that confirm the
12 Robert Palmer, A Concise History of: 8 Army (History and Personnel) and A Concise History of: 13
Corps (Western Dessert Force (History and Personnel)), www.britishmilitaryhistory.co.uk, consulted on 30 May 2016.
13 WO 204/12494, ‘Report of investigation (part 1)’, dated 27 September 1945, from the
previously mentioned reports.14 Even though officially the investigation only researched
the crimes committed between 2 May and 12 June, it also mentioned crimes committed in 1943 in Istria.
The primary sources do not show if and when the Investigation Committee was abolished. However, the sources do show a continuing communication between the British Army, Churchill and Tito focussing on solving the border issues between Italy and the Croatian and Slovene parts of Yugoslavia.
Context of the Allied investigation
As the Second World War drew to an end it became clear to Churchill that the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were enlarging their sphere of influence in Europe and the same was being done by the Allied forces. Trieste became one of the key places where an ideological battle was to be played out between the British and American forces and the Yugoslav troops. Trieste had already been the centre of a border dispute during and after the First World War, when Venezia Giulia was given to Italy after Italy joined forces against Germany. The Second World War, in which Yugoslavia was formed as a state, gave rise to a renewed belief that Venezia Giulia should be part of Yugoslavia. When Italy signed the armistice on September 8, 1943, the Allied forces saw a chance to incorporate the whole of Italy in the ‘western’ sphere of influence. Historian Kerstin von Lingen explains the British attitude towards Italy as the following. Italy was led into a war by corrupt politicians under Mussolini and was to be regarded as the ‘innocent little brother’ of Germany. In this view, Italy could be saved whereas Germany could not. This meant that Italy was progressively portrayed as a victim of the war instead of an aggressor.15 Besides this, von Lingen argues that the Allied forces in Italy were more
threatened by the Yugoslav partisans and Tito than the Soviet army. In the first days of May 1945 the Yugoslav troops had already taken Trieste, even though the New Zealand force was sent to the port city to occupy it before the Yugoslav troops could get there.16
Capturing Trieste was of such importance that Field Marshal Alexander readied his army in order to attack quickly and swiftly if Tito’s forces were not prepared to leave
14 WO 204/12494, ‘Report of investigation (part 1)’, dated 27 September 1945, from the
National Archives, London.
15 Kerstin von Lingen, Allen Dulles, the OSS, and Nazi War Criminals: the dynamics of selective
prosecution, New York: Cambridge University Press 2013, pp. 108-110.
the city. The occupation of Trieste by the Yugoslav troops is most commonly called ‘the forty days of Trieste’. During this occupation the Yugoslav troops committed most of the crimes that are discussed in chapter three. The New Zealand forces were in Trieste as well and they witnessed the mass arrests and the deportation of Italian civilians to remote areas. Most of the arrestees have not been seen since.17 On 12 June 1945 the
Yugoslav troops left Trieste to be installed east of the Morgan Line. After this, the British Allied forces and the New Zealand forces that were already there could take control of the city and start their investigation into the violence committed against the civilians.
Ideological motives for the investigation
The reports about the violence committed by the Yugoslav forces are extensive and 13 Corps collected many eyewitness accounts. When one compares the vastness of the reports, communications and results with the little time (approximately six months in which the British mainly focused on the crimes committed by the Yugoslav forces and not the later border issues) it was conducted in, one could say the British forces saw great importance in doing this investigation. It is therefore striking that the results were never made public; no trials were held to punish the perpetrators even though the British did put war tribunals in place in Italy that could have been used to provide some justice for the victims. Besides this, it is also remarkable that the Yugoslav army gave Trieste up after the forty days of occupation despite the fact that Tito and his government strongly desired the annexation of Venezia Giulia to Yugoslavia. It seems extraordinary for the Yugoslav communists to give up the fulfilment of this ideological dream if it was not for a very lucrative deal with the Allied forces. Unfortunately it is very difficult to prove, but it seems that the Allied forces made a deal with Tito to obtain the Trieste region for the Western sphere of influence. Both parties would have had reasons to keep such a deal secret, especially towards Stalin and the anti-communists in Western Europe, especially Italy.
The start of the Cold War had a great influence on the operations of the British Allied forces in Venezia Giulia. Churchill already understood the importance of acting carefully in order to prevent a growth of communist influences in Europe. Therefore, an investigation into the crimes committed under communism (ergo, by the Yugoslav
17 Richard Lamb, War in Italy 1943-1945: a brutal story, London: Penguin Books 1995, pp.
forces) could be a useful tool during the post-war negotiations in order to convince the Italian state to reject communism as state organising system. The telegrams sent between Churchill and Field Marshal Alexander show how carefully they approached the situation in order not to deteriorate the relations with Yugoslavia even further. In a telegram from Churchill to Alexander, sent in May 1945 when Yugoslav troops are still in control in Trieste, he underlines the importance to leave negotiations about the border between Italy and Yugoslavia until the war was officially over and peace talks could begin.18
Diplomatic motives for the investigation
While trying to establish the facts and details about the investigation, it became clear that this would become a more difficult task than initially thought. The reports of the investigation hardly mention any names of the people involved in the actual research, only the people in the higher echelons of command are sometimes known by name. One example is Lieutenant General Harding, commander of 13 Corps. He has written and signed some of the telegrams used for this thesis. However, it turned out to be very difficult to create a more detailed picture of his role into the investigations. His wartime diary, kept at the Imperial War Museum in London, finishes at the end of 1944 and there is no coverage of the investigation period. In a similar way, the investigation is not mentioned in publications on the Allied forces in Italy during the Second World War. Most of the telegrams sent between London and the AFHQ in Italy deal with the results of the investigation (in numbers and locations of bodies) but one can only hypothesise about the reasoning behind the investigation. As mentioned earlier, the rise of the Iron Curtain and the future peace negotiations are most probably of great influence of the start of the investigation, as to give the Allied forces something to bargain with and to show the Italians in a more positive light, as victims instead of aggressors. The fact that the results have not been made public in Great Britain and nothing has been done with the information discovered by the research to help the victims to seek justice, implies that publishing about the massacres committed by the Yugoslav forces was not the priority for the British army, and possibly even considered detrimental, if there was indeed a British deal with Tito.
18 PREM3/495/6, ‘Telegram from War Cabinet London to Field Marshal Alexander, no 867/5’,
Some findings of the investigation
The earliest deport by the Allied forces about the foibe killings refers to the period of May 1 to June 12, 1945. In this report it becomes clear that the Allies have started an investigation into the arrests, deportations and executions in Venezia Giulia, committed by the Yugoslav partisans. The message gives some facts about the Yugoslav atrocities. The CLN (National Liberation Committee) of Venezia Giulia estimated that 18.000 people in the region had been arrested. Another 5.000 people from Gorizia and 50.000 from Istria were still missing. These numbers had been confirmed by other sources as well, according to the Allied report. In Trieste, 8.000 people were released after arrest, about 4.000 were executed and another 6.000 were still interned at the time the report came out.
Soon after the Allied forces took Trieste in mid-June 1945 the CLN had contacted 13 Corps with the message that “the Yugoslav troops” had killed hundreds of people in a mineshaft near Basovizza.19 The reason for the Allies to execute this research becomes
clear in the communications from the Planning department of the Allied Communications Headquarters in Rome to the Allied Forces Headquarters and 13 Corps in Venezia Giulia. The message shows that former Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden considered a full investigation into the atrocities committed by the Yugoslavs in Venezia Giulia. Mr. Eden and Field Marshal Alexander shared the opinion that the investigation must be carried out to avoid accusations towards the British and American governments by the Italians of suppressing evidence of crimes committed by the Yugoslav Army and Yugoslav partisans. The British Embassy also recommended giving the investigation as much publicity as possible.20 According to Colonel Nichols at the Allied Forces
Headquarters, the purpose of the investigation was to assemble material for future publicity purposes and to discover the truth about the arrests and executions.21
Unfortunately, the intention to publicise the results never became reality.
The first initial report was drafted by 13 Corps on 3 August. The report gives an overview of the information given by civilians or Allied sources about the atrocities.
19 WO 204/12753, ‘Alleged War Crime – Basovizza Mine Shaft’, dated 1 July 1945, from the
National Archives in London.
20 WO 204/12753, ‘Message from Headquarters ALCOM (Allied Communication) in Rome to
AFHQ G-5 (Special Operations Section) information headquarters for 13th Corps in Venezia
Giulia’, dated 1 August 1945, from the National Archives in London.
21 WO 204/12753, ‘Outgoing message: Colonel E. Nichols to 8th Army’, dated 2 July 1945, from
Some of the civilians feared reprisals from the Yugoslavs if they talked to the Allied forces and therefore were reluctant to come forward and share information with the Allies. The report stated that lists were drawn up with numbers of people that were most likely executed. The overview per area was as follows: Trieste: 1.500; Gorizia: 1.000 to 1.500; Pola: 500 to 600 and Monfalcone: 150. These numbers are not completely accurate because of some difficulties the British forces encountered. As mentioned before, civilians feared reprisals and did not cooperate fully. Besides this, there was a lack of police reports, and therewith essential information, and some individuals probably fled with the Germans or were killed otherwise than at Yugoslav hands.
In addition, some of the victims were not from Venezia Giulia and did not have relatives in the vicinity to report their disappearance. In the Trieste area about 17.000 were arrested between 1 May and 12 June of which 8.000 were released soon afterwards. About 3.000 persons were executed and 6.000 were still interned at the moment the first report was drafted in August 1945. An unknown, and according to the report, reliable source stated that 3.000 people were interned at the Borovnica concentration camp, situated 30 kilometres south west of Ljubljana. In the Gorizia region, between 1.500 and 2.000 of the 3.000 to 4.000 arrestees were liberated shortly after being interned. Among the arrestees were a vast number of CLN members. Underneath the heading Executions the report stated that between 2 and 14 May 1945, 150 people from Trieste have been shot. This number does not include the hundreds of people who were killed in the Basovizza foiba.
The report mentioned personal feelings of victory and hate after being oppressed by the Italians as the motives for the perpetrators to commit violence. The perpetrators applied “indiscriminate arrests”22 as a way to deter the Italians from taking action
against the Yugoslavs. However, it is not clear how the term ‘indiscriminate arrests’ has to be interpreted. It could concern the arrestees as being Italian, indiscriminate of their potential Fascist affiliations. It could also mean that not only Italians were arrested, but also non-Italians that happened to be in the area. Unfortunately, the authors of the report did not focus on this detail, while it could have considerate consequences for the interpretation of the violence committed by the Yugoslav troops. Apart from deterrence
22 WO 204/12753, ’General report on Jugoslav arrests and executions in May/June 1945’, p. 3,
as a reason for the arrests and deportations, another reason mentioned was to forcefully mobilise men between the age of 17 and 50 to report for duty with the Yugoslav army. Proof of a leaflet was send to the headquarters of 13 Corps on 22 May 1945. There were also reports of house-to-house conscription, enhanced by intimidation and violence.23
Conclusion
This chapter identified several reasons for the start of the Investigation Commission. The external reasons were to portray Italy as the ‘innocent little brother’ of Germany in order to make Italy appear as a victim instead of an aggressor. This would help the Allied forces to win Italy for the Western sphere of influence in the starting Cold War. Another external reason possibly has been the fact that the New Zealand Army was in Trieste when the Yugoslav army occupied the city. The New Zealand Army was not allowed to help the Italians and this could be seen as a big mistake by the Allied forces. The decision to investigate what happened to the people in the area might have stemmed from the will to compensate for the Allied mistake.
Another ideological reason has been touched upon briefly already: to prevent the communist sphere of influence to spread into Italy. The investigation above all had a diplomatic background: the results could be, and probably were used in the negotiations with Yugoslavia after the war, so as to pressure Tito into submission. This seems all the more reasonable when it is taken into account that the results of the investigation were not made public and the results were not used to do justice to the victims and their families.
23 WO 204/12753, ’General report on Jugoslav arrests and executions in May/June 1945’, p. 3,
II. INVESTIGATION OF YUGOSLAV CRIMES IN ISTRIA
In 1940 Italy joined the Second World War by attacking France. A year later, Italy started an offensive in Yugoslavia. This event brought turbulence within the Istrian peninsula. The Communist Party of Croatia and the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia commenced a push for Istria in the summer of 1941. In 1942 the Yugoslav partisans had to deal with a severe blow to their advance when the Italian army stroke back.24 Various armies were present on the Istrian peninsula between 1941 and
September 1943; the Italian army, German troops that occupied the coastal cities and the Yugoslav partisans.
According to Gianni Oliva, the foibe killings could take place in Istria because of a power vacuum. The Germans had occupied the cities on the Istrian peninsula and in Venezia Giulia, such as Trieste, Pola, Gorizia, Monfalcone and Fiume (nowadays Rijeka), and took control over these areas. They focused their attention on the cities and not on the areas in between. Therefore the military detachments were positioned in and around the cities but not along the main connecting roads. The Germans had not taken over the social and administrative powers, only the military focus points at the coast. The Yugoslav partisans grew more powerful in this vacuum and unlawful killings, such as the foibe killings, sometimes with show trials, started. In this area, a hundreds of people were labelled as ‘enemy of the people’ and as such sentenced to death. At this time, right after the armistice of September 1943, insecurity and uncertainty ruled in the borderlands between Italy and Yugoslavia. The foibe killings had started off but were not organised (yet) and this corresponds in time with the uncertainty of the major military changes, concerning the Allied forces, the attack by the German army and the chaotic situation of the Italian army, in Italy in September 1943.25
On the one hand, says Oliva, there were the Italian partisans in Istria and the Yugoslav partisans with headquarters in Lika and Gorskj Kotar (both are nowadays regions in Croatia) who took over the power in the Istrian interior ‘in the name of the people’, without meeting much resistance from the people. On the other hand there were resistance groups consisting of farmers, who had taken up the military machinery that was left behind by the fleeing Italian soldiers. They targeted Italians and took away
24 Marino Manin, ‘On human losses and the exodus from Istria during the Second World War and
the post-war period’, Review of Croatian History, no. 1 (2006), pp. 74-75.
their possession.26
The first group, the organised partisans, were dependent on the 13th Division of
the NLA (National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia). They crossed the pre-war border into Italy on September 8, 1943, and were joined by other small partisan groups, including the Slovene partisans. They took refuge in former Italian barracks and used Italian war equipment left behind by the retreating Italian army. A partisan centre was set up in Pisino on September 12. Pinguente became another headquarter for the partisans. In the days that followed, the partisans went to the villages surrounding these two cities to take over civil power as well, next to the military power. They moved into military buildings and offices; replaced the Italian flags with Yugoslav flags and an office on the main square of Pinguente became a military command centre and a police station.27
The partisans had a characteristic manner of ‘converting’ the people to the Slav domination of the area. On the basis of a combination of nationalistic slogans, socialist motives and political demands the partisans made an appeal on the loyalty of the Istrian population that included a ‘redemptive’ promise of a triple liberation; in this sense liberation meant salvation from the former oppressor, the Italians, the class struggle against the elite who claimed property over the land; and a fight against fascism. Gianni Oliva argues that Josip Broz Tito made the following equation: Italian = Master = Fascist.28 In this way, the Italian people became a threefold enemy: national enemy, class
enemy, and ideological enemy. The process of equating the Italian nationality with a higher social class and a fascist ideology is of great importance to the establishment of a victim group by the Yugoslav forces (and will reappear in Chapter III about the ethnic cleansing in Trieste in 1945). In other words, the Italians were ‘de-Italianised’ and Istria was supposedly liberated from the Italian yoke. By physically and culturally removing the Italians from the area, the Yugoslav forces were guilty of ethnic cleansing, in accordance with Naimark’s definition.
In order to keep the Germans out, the partisans destroyed the connecting roads to important places such as Trieste, further north in Venezia Giulia, and Pola in the south of Istria, where the Germans were still stationed. They also blew up bridges and railways. They isolated themselves from the external enemy, so as to be able to focus on
26 Gianni Oliva, Foibe, p. 72. 27 Ibidem, pp. 72-73. 28 Ibidem, p. 73.
the internal enemy such as Fascists and landowners.29
The farmer groups are more difficult to trace and characterise. When the Italian army crumbled, large numbers of citizens saw the opportunity to take actions and avenge the twenty years of fascist rule. Their goal was to defeat every bit of ‘Italianess’ in the region by destroying the Fascist archives that held information about Istrian citizens; change the Italian street names to Slavic street names and, obviously, the Italian government institutions. In this way they tried to take back their refused Slav identity.30
Thus, there were two groups of partisan fighters, each containing several smaller groups: an organised group and a group of farmers that saw their chance fit. Oliva stresses that one should not assume that the latter group was a real populist insurrection, as is often done in Yugoslav/East European historiography. According to Oliva the creation of this partisan group was only possible because of the power vacuum created by the German army that only occupied the militarily strategic cities and not the interior of the Istrian peninsula. Another important factor was the confusion and chaos after the armistice was declared. The Germans occupied some of the cities but in the interiors of Istria the Italians had lost their power because they switched sides by signing the armistice. This meant that the Yugoslav partisans did not encounter any authorities that needed to be overthrown. The only Italian control that was left in the area consisted of small groups of disbanded soldiers. Oliva suggests it is better to interpret the partisan groups as “spontaneous movements” that found fertile ground in the chaos after the armistice and interpret the emergence of the farmer’s ideals as sparked by the appearance of the Croat partisans that arrived in the area soon after the armistice was signed. The “spontaneous movements” saw their control legitimised as a countervailing power against the arrival of the Croat partisans.31
The emergence of the “spontaneous movements” as a countervailing power resulted in police actions against ‘enemies of the people’, organised from the headquarters of Pisino. The popular anger among the citizens was channelled into hate for their ‘enemies’. Public execution places emerged. Within this ‘legitimate’ violent atmosphere personal feuds were settled and petty crime swelled.32
According to Raoul Pupo the Istrian CPL (Comitato Popolare di Liberazione), the
29 Gianni Oliva, Foibe, pp. 74-75. 30 Ibidem, pp. 74-75.
31 Ibidem, p. 75. 32 Ibidem, p. 75.
People’s Liberation Committee, declared the annexation of Istria by Croatia on September 13, 1943. This was later verified by the ZAVNOH (State anti-fascist council for the national liberation of Croatia) and AVNOJ (Anti-fascist council for the national liberation of Yugoslavia). This declaration was accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of Istrian Italians in the weeks following the armistice. Pupo argues that the communists used ethnicity to make their claims on territory belonging to Italy since the end of the First World War. Even though there were cities that were predominantly Italian, they were to be considered as ‘islands in a [Slav] see’.33 The communists had already set up
bodies of power that were considered the only legitimate centres of power in the Istrian area, Fiume and the Slovene coast.
During this consolidation of power, the Yugoslav liberation movements and their Italian counterparts were drawn into a struggle regarding the authority over the people living in these areas. The Croat and Slovene partisans considered the liberated areas to belong to the Yugoslav state. It was expected by the Istrian Italians that the Croat communist party would be replaced by the Italian communist party that would cooperate with the Istrian activists but under the command of the Yugoslav army.34 This
shows that even though the Italians had fought alongside the Yugoslav partisans, the Yugoslav army would be the most powerful entity in the area. So alongside the annexation of the former Italian territory and the development of communist centres of power, the Yugoslav army would rule over the area meaning that the consolidation of power was executed on different levels.
Alongside Pupo’s argument of using ethnicity as a means to claim territory, Pamela Ballinger argues that the Yugoslav authorities used retribution killings to secure their monopoly of power in Istria. According to Ballinger, the communist authorities did not discuss or decide on how to deal with the ‘losers’ of the war, which created room for interpretation among the various partisan groups. Ballinger mentions historian John Lampe who argues that the killing of ideological opponents was used, firstly, to eliminate the opposition but secondly to create a justification for expanding of the Yugoslav security service OZNA (the Organization for People’s Defence). Ballinger argues that there was third factor to the retribution killings: to consolidate the authority of the command within the partisan divisions:
33 Raoul Pupo, Il lungo esodo: Istria: le persecuzioni, le foibe, l’esilio, Milan: RCS Libri 2005, pp.
69-70.
“Indulging the desire for vengeance thus probably consolidated the communist leadership’s position among its own faithful. This use of large-scale retributive violence helped the communist leadership make a more exclusive claim (even a monopoly) on the revolution.” 35
The foibe on the Istrian Peninsula
Let us now turn to the actual events of the foibe killings. As stated by Oliva, an oversimplified interpretation of the equation of Italian and Fascist in combination with personal feuds and grievances culminated into ethnic cleansing. In the first stage, this violence was used in the interest of claiming power in the region. The first acts of “cleansing” were detaining, persecutions, confiscation of property, interrogations and arrests of the ‘enemy’. The arrestees from the south of Istria were brought to Pinguente but the majority were taken to Pisino. In both cities Popular Tribunals were put in place to ‘sentence’ the guilty, although the suspects could not defend themselves and the charges usually led to the death sentence. Once arrested, the suspect was already guilty of whatever would be claimed by the judges during the trial. The group of judges in Pisino consisted of educated people of influence, an employee of the secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade and his sister who would become the captain of the Yugoslav Secret Police (OZNA), as well as grass roots individuals who knew more about the person on trial, such as the milk woman from a nearby village and a primary school teacher.36
The victims of these show trials and executions were first of all the squadristi and the local elites who were in power before the armistice.37 The squadristi were fascists
who belonged to the armed forces of Mussolini.38 After these two groups, the state
representatives, chief magistrates, taxmen and carabinieri (the military police) became suspects. Nowadays in court, a judge looks at personal accountability and guilt but during these show trials personal accountability was not taken into consideration. The purpose was to punish those who had installed a system in which the Croats had to pay tax to a regime they did not agree with and those who exploited the Italian police power
35 Pamela Ballinger, 'At the Borders of Force: Violence, Refugees, and the Reconfiguration of the
Yugoslav and Italian States', Past and Present, Vol. 6 (2011), pp. 163-165.
36 Gianni Oliva, p. 76. 37 Ibidem, p. 77,
38 Roberta Sussi Valli, ‘The Myth of Squadrismo in the Fascist Regime’, Journal of Contemporary
over the citizens. But the violence was not only restricted to those who had worked for the previous power to dismantle the political framework.
Two aspects that channelled the violence are important to mention. Firstly, the partisan movement in Istria shaped the convictions of the narodnjaci, the Croat local elders, who adhered to a traditional form of Croat nationalism. These beliefs resulted in a tense atmosphere of anti-Italianism that accompanied the destruction of the Italian political powers. Secondly, the communist authority endeavoured to erase everything that indicated ‘Italianness’, with as a final goal the cleansing of Italianism from the region.39
The definition of the target group expanded: first it contained the squadristi, then the people representing the former state and later it also encompassed ‘public people’ such as teachers, doctors, cleaners etc. In some cases the partisans also attacked Italians without any clear reason, only to destroy the victim’s Italian sentiments.40 It is clear that
in the process of defining the target group, the partisans made three definitions overlap: Fascist, Italian and landowner. This made it possible to target anyone for a wide range of reasons.41
The killings in Istria climaxed in October 1943 when the Germans pressured the Slovenes and Croats to abandon the area. The show trials were abandoned, the killings now also took place during the day (and not only during the nights as was the case before), and the faces of the victims were no longer covered. The uncovered face of the victims potentially took away the anonymity of the victims and by doing so would function as a stronger deterrence and a bigger threat to the Istrian people. During this period, political motivations for the killings faded into the background, and personal revenge became more important. The combination of violence stemming from the logic of deterrence and the German occupation of Yugoslav territory made the Yugoslav partisans even more ruthless.42 It is likely that the violence escalated out of fear for the
Germans but also because of a future-orientated look: the Yugoslavs would come back to claim Istria after the war was over because Istria ‘belonged’ to Yugoslavia. To achieve this, as much ‘work’ as possible had to be done before the Germans arrived. So, the use of violence escalated in October 1943 and the veil of legitimacy (such as show trials) was
39 Gianni Oliva, Foibe, p. 77. 40 Ibidem, pp. 77-78. 41 Ibidem, pp. 77-78. 42 Ibidem, p. 81.
dropped.
The nature of the violence of the Yugoslav forces
The type of violence that was used by the Yugoslav forces is a very important part when studying these violent events. It is important to know if the victims of the Yugoslav ethnic cleansing were, for example, humiliated or sexually abused before they were killed and in what way the perpetrators addressed the victims because this reveals something about the perpetrators and their motives. Few historians address this aspect. It is mentioned in a sentence or two and then left for what it is.
Historian Raoul Pupo and journalist Roberto Spazzali, who are both born in Trieste and are two of the most important scholars focussing on the foibe massacres, write about the research done under the command of Arnaldo Hazarich at the end of 1943 and in early 1945. The primary sources studied for this thesis did not clarify exactly who ordered this research and who was in command. Pupo, Spazzali and Oliva do not elaborate on the context of the research. Nevertheless Hazarich’s research was important because of its early findings and therefore will be addressed here. Hazarich was the head of a team of fire fighters who started excavating the foibe in Istria and bringing up the bodies of the victims of ethnic cleansing. In April 1945 Hazarich had to leave Istria and brought his collection of documents and photographs to the Allied forces in occupied Italy.43 He and his men had found 26 people in the Villa Suriani foiba. Among
them were also Norma Cossetto and her sisters who were brutally assaulted and tortured over several days before being killed. Cossetto was found with a piece of wood inside her genitals and her breasts cut off. The other women also showed signs of sexual violence. Two of Norma’s sisters were thrown into the pit alive.
The probable pretext for the incarceration, torture and murder of the Cossetto sisters was that their father was an employee of the local fascist secretary. Other victims had been stabbed, stoned and beaten. Some men were found with their genitals in their mouths.44 The types of violence used against Norma Cossetto, her sisters and many
others are consistent with the violence used in other ethnically motivated conflicts and can be qualified as ethnic violence leading to ethnic cleansing, according to Naimark’s definition of ethnic cleansing, of the Istrian peninsula. The fear that was spread by
43 Raoul Pupo and Roberto Spazzali, Foibe, p. 52. 44 Gianni Oliva, Foibe, pp. 78-79.
publically executing Italian citizens in Pinguente and the torture of unlawfully arrested Italians had a deterring effect of the Italians still living in Istria, resulting in the exodus of thousands of Italians from 1944 onwards.45
According to Oliva it was possible, after the excavation, to establish what had, most probably, happened at the mouth of the pits. The faces of many of the victims had been covered with their hoods or scarves. Others were thrown into the foiba naked to avoid identification by clothing of personal assets. In some occasions, the partisans blew up the opening of the pit after the massacre to make it impossible to excavate the pit. The partisans also used bauxite mines for their executions; the mine would be blown up afterwards so the bodies would be covered with rocks and sand. In the coastal areas, the perpetrators tied stones to the bodies before throwing them into the sea.46
The researchers who led the excavations made a remarkable discovery. In several pits they found one or more dead black dogs together with the victims. These findings show a macabre ritual that Oliva traces back to old Slav rituals. The story goes that killing a black dog takes away the sins of the man that killed a human being. There are also other version of this myth: that the dead dog prevents the spirit of the deceased to go to heaven and take revenge on the killer or that the dog protects the unburied dead. The presence of the black dogs in the foibe suggests that the killings needed to be justified by a popular myth; in other words, the political motivations did not suffice as a justification for ethnic cleansing.47 It could also mean that the perpetrators were not
properly trained in brutally killing others and thus needed a ritual to be able to cope with their actions, and perhaps were locals who had not killed before at all. Unfortunately it will be very difficult to get to the bottom of the performance of this myth but the presence of the black dogs is clearly of importance to the understanding of the violence committed by the perpetrators. Oliva suggests that the ethnic cleansing was committed in a rush and with improvisation, and in combination with the use of an old myth, make the massacres even more tragic and dramatic.48
The Yugoslav forces started by targeting member of the Italian Fascist Party (PNF) but soon broadened the scope of culprits by including the carabinieri and other policing organisations, the mayor and his employees, teachers and mail carriers. They
45 Raoul Pupo, Il lungo esodo, p. 13. 46 Gianni Oliva, Foibe, pp. 79-80. 47 Ibidem, p. 81.
targeted landowners and burned down registers that kept information about the civilians. They also attacked women, as is shown with the case of Norma Cossetto. Pupo mentions that a few workers at a mine were killed for transporting goods from Sardinia to Istria.
It is more difficult to establish the number of deaths. Pupo and Spazzali estimate that about 500 Italians were killed between September and October 1943. During excavations in the area 217 bodies were retrieved from the foibe, of which 116 were civilians and the rest soldiers. In Fiume approximately 500 persons disappeared, among which 242 civilians, between March and August 1945. Pupo and Spazzali mention a report written by the American and British Allied forces in 1945 stating that another 500-600 people from Pola were missing, although the source does not state the nationality of the missing people. The Displaced Persons office of the Allied controlled area in the Venezia Giulia region refined the number in 1947 to 827, of which 673 were civilians.49
Findings by the Investigation Committee
One of the British army reports summarises what happened in Pinguente in Istria during a call for a plebiscite in August 1945. Several testimonies made clear that the Yugoslav communists called up the heads of the Italian families in the area to sign a plebiscite that proclaimed that Pinguente was under Yugoslav rule and made the Italian families vow to abide by the new communist laws. It was said during a committee meeting that everyone who would not sign would be condemned to being considered a fascist and an enemy of the people’. These allegations were very serious and as soon as the Yugoslavs started their home visits, the Italian families signed the plebiscite. The British report states that threats were made while visiting the Italian families: everyone who would not sign opposed Yugoslav rule and would be treated as a counterrevolutionary. Another threat mentioned the foibe and asked the question who would save the Italians after they are thrown into a foiba.50
The same report also shows that about 200 Italians from Cherso and Lussino (islands that are now part of Croatia) were arrested and deported to Yugoslav concentration camps. Almost all of their cattle were brought to the mainland and their
49 Raoul Pupo and Roberto Spazzali, Foibe, pp. 26-30.
50 FO 137/59396, ‘Jugoslav petition for the annexation of Istria by Jugoslavia’, dated 25 August
houses were looted. The report estimates that about 1.800 men from these islands were recruited into the Yugoslav army. Italians, who arrived in Trieste after being released by the Yugoslavs, gave the statements on which the report was based. Other statements mention that about 600 people from Pola were arrested and taken to the mainland on a ship that hit a mine. When the ship started to sink, the Yugoslavs started shooting the prisoners. The people who made it to the beach were arrested again and sent to a Yugoslav concentration camp, possibly Borovnica near Ljubljana. This information was sent from the CLN (Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale, National Liberation Committee) to the Investigation Committee.51
The Investigation Committee also took witness statements from Italian refugees from Fiume (nowadays Rijeka, Croatia). One person states that it was dangerous to speak Italian on the street after the Yugoslavs took over the power in Fiume. Many Italians were arrested and, according to the witness, many of them were still missing. About 1.000 people were arrested in Fiume by the Yugoslav partisans of whom approximately one third was or had been a fascist. This was estimated by the CLN.52
Estimates like the one just mentioned should be treated with caution because the definition of ‘a fascist’ could be different for a member of the CLN due to the antifascist character of the organisation. It is possible that a smaller part of the 1.000 people mentioned identified themselves as fascists or had other non-ideological motives for working for the Italian government.
Although it is not always clear when the testimonies were given and when the events exactly took place, it does show that Italians were targeted again in 1945. The Yugoslav terror resulted in large numbers of Italians fleeing to Trieste, other parts of Italy and even abroad. By doing so, the area would be purged of Italians and the Yugoslavs would thus be able to make a better case for annexing the area based on the nationality of the civilians.
Many foibe were discovered in Istria in 1943 and again after 1945, for instance, near Pola, Fianona, Capodistria, Castelnuovo d’Arsia and Pisino. According to an unknown source consulted by the British research team approximately 50.000 people
51 FO 137/59396, ‘Jugoslav oppression on Cherso Island’, dated 25 August 1945, from the
National Archives in London.
52 FO 371/59396, ‘Section I: Jugoslav oppression of Italians and anti-communist elements’, dated
from Istria had been arrested and were still missing. The report adds that this number has been confirmed by other sources.53
The testimonies of Giovanni Radeticchio, Don Beari and Giuseppe Bari
Three testimonies are discussed here at some length to take a look at the personal experiences of some of the victims or otherwise affected Italians. The story of the only known survivor of the foibe massacres, Giovanni Radeticchio, is very remarkable because it tells the detailed story of how the Yugoslav forces treated the victims.54
Radeticchio (sometimes written as Radechicchio) escaped from the barracks at Marzana, near Verona, where he served with the Territorial Defence Militia (the militia worked for the German SS) on 20 April 1943. He had joined the militia in order to make money for his family. After his escape he went to the nearest Yugoslav headquarters. He was sent away but on May 2, 1943 he was taken away by the armed Yugoslavs while being at the house of a friend. Together with other prisoners he was taken to Lisignano and later on foot to Arsia. The other prisoners were beaten but, for unknown reasons, he was not. He did have to give up his good clothes in exchange for rags. On the way to Arsia the treatment deteriorated. The guards did not give the prisoners any food and the prisoners had to hand over all of their personal belongings. In Pozzo Littorio some of the prisoners (Borosi, Cossi and Ferrarin, first names unknown) were tortured by the Yugoslav guards by being forced to run full speed into a brick wall. After this they were beaten with pieces of wood and this process was repeated. After 30 hours without food they got a bit of pasta. Bound two by two they were taken on foot to Fianona. The wire was so tightly bound that their hands were swollen and started to become very painful. In the evenings they were not beaten because it was dark.
At night they were taken one by one to a torture room and were hit repeatedly while their hands were tied behind their backs. The guards consisted of four men and one woman. They used different equipment to hit the prisoners. This is how Radichicchio described the torture:
53 FO 371/59396, ‘Section I: Jugoslav oppression of Italians and anti-communist elements’, dated
14 November 1945, from the National Archives in London.
54 See Appendix II, page 1 and 2, for the statement of Giovanni Radeticchio, WO 204/12494,
Various testimonies by Giovanni Radeticchio, Giuseppe Fino, Armando Tosello, Armando Lasagna, Carlo Gitti etc., dated 5 October 1945, from the National Archives, London.
“There were five ruffians against me, bound and helpless as I was, one of them was a girl. One of them kicked me, another beat me with a whip made of twisted wire, a third with a piece of wood, the girl with a leather belt. They chased me from one to another and in turn they trampled on me.”55
One day at dawn, the date is unknown, Radeticchio’s hands were bound behind his back again and with five others they were marched to the mouth of the pit. On the way they were beaten again. At arrival the guards tied a stone of 10 kilograms to each of the prisoners and put them in a line. Giovanni was placed after Graziano Udovisi who was ‘invited’ to jump into the foiba. They fired a few shots after every prisoner who jumped. The stone that was tied to Giovanni’s arms came loose due to a hit by one of the bullets and this prevented him from drowning in the water at the bottom of the pit. He tried to swim with his hands still tied while the other prisoners were still jumping into to pit. After everyone was in the water, the guards threw a hand grenade in the pit to kill anyone who was still alive. Radeticchio managed to break the wire around his wrists, severely hurting himself by doing so, and stayed there for a couple of hours.
He climbed out of the pit when it was dark and the perpetrators had left. He knew the guards would return the next night because Radeticchio had overheard them say that more people were going to be thrown into another part of the pit. He walked back to Pozzo Littoria and at the fifth night after his escape he arrived at Sissano. A member of the Yugoslav partisans must have heard he was still alive because his sister and brother were interrogated. His sister was arrested but later released. When he considered himself and his family to be safe, he reported to the Allied Headquarters to tell them his story.56 Don Giorgio Beari, who knew Giovanni Radeticchio and who was
the director of the Triestine newspaper Vita Nuova, gave a statement that verified the story of Radeticchio. Don Beari also claimed that Radeticchio was investigated by medical personnel at the Allied Headquarters and that their findings were consistent
55 WO 204/12754, ‘Statement by Giovanni Radettichio of Sissano (Subject of Appendix D)’, part
of corrections made to an earlier report of 25 August 1945, dated 27 September 1945, from the National Archives in London.
56 WO 204/12754, ‘Statement by Giovanni Radettichio of Sissano (Subject of Appendix D)’, part
of corrections made to an earlier report of 25 August 1945, dated 27 September 1945, from the National Archives in London.
with Radeticchio’s story. There were marks of the beatings on his back.57 The medical
assessment was done under supervision of Doctor Pegorari from Trieste.58
Don Beari, director of the newspaper Vita Nuova, confirmed Radeticchio’s story with the Investigation Committee and subsequently wrote a very striking piece that summarises the tragedy of the massacres:
“The anguished shouts and the fair denunciation by the “Vita Nuova” of the “concentrations camps” opened by the so-called “Bolshevik liberators” found a deep echo in the hearts of the Istrian people who cry without calming their destinies and their victims, already without numbers. The macabre tragedy of the “foibe” of 1943 has been exceeded in cruelty and barbarity. There is no, one could say, corner or point in Istria where one does not almost always talk in soft voices because of the terror working everywhere, of the pits that have swallowed many persons and are not satisfied yet.
The grim and agonizing moans of the tortured people, bound and then thrown into devilish caves, moans accompanied not seldom by coarse laughs, with bestial curses of the hangmen, unworthy of the name of humankind, are resounding to deafen many ears. One talks with horror about the revolting stench of the cadavers in dissolution in unwieldy air; like for example at Castelnuovo d’Arsa and Checchi (train station in between Pisino and Canfanaro), where they had to force the farmers to throw soil and stones in the abyss to realise the nauseating stench. In addition, other “foibe” have been specified in Carnizza, S.Domenica di Albona, Antignana, Briono, Monte Maggiore, Basovizza etc. as tombs of soldiers, bourgeois, workers, farmers, almost all innocent or guilty of being Italians and of not sharing the communist ideas, like occurred to more than a few Croats and Slovenes. “Il Lavoratore” could deny them [the foibe] and accuse us of slander, but it would be better to provoke a visit to the foibe on the part of the Allies and C.R. [Red Cross]. […]”
It is interesting to notice that Don Beari uses the term foibe to describe the massacres and not only the phenomenon of natural sinkholes. He also describes the fear and the torture. He mentions a couple locations of the foibe and even describes the victim group as ‘guilty of being Italian’. He continues:
57 WO 204/12753, ‘Statement by Don Beari’, dated 18 August 1945, from the National Archives
in London.
58 WO 204/12753, ‘Elemento uscito vivo da una foiba presso Fianona’, dated 4 August 1945,
“The rest of what the partisans of Tito cynically said and wrote has come true– when the pitiful hand of the fire brigade of Pola … [excavated?] the shapeless bodies from certain foibe from September until October 1943: “The fire fighters have done well to make room in the foibe for those of you who we will throw in at our return”. They kept their word barbarically. […]”
Here Don Beari describes a certain level of knowledge and consciousness that he and others had of the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Istria. It also shows there was some communication between the Yugoslav forces and the population about the violence.
In another part he writes:
“In a previous article we have denounced the destiny reserved for the Italians who are detained in Slovene and Croat concentration camps. Now we cannot silence the fate reserved for dense groups of arrested people at Trieste and in the rest of Venezia Giulia, which is not occupied by the Allied forces, in the first days of March. According to doubtful testimonies these unfortunates were to be thrown in innumerable foibe in Carso, the foibe in Corgnale, San Servolo, Racizze en Scandaussina, not to mention that some, especially those with wide openings, and vertical shafts were best suited to commit such systematic massacres. In the “Pozzo della Miniera” a small distance from Basovizza, about a thousand persons have been sacrificed with wide action of the inhabitants of the close area. The details are being murmured everywhere with a mix of horror and terror. Of the victims some persons are killed before, but the majority is thrown in [the foiba] alive. They were arrested in the first days of March with or without reason, simply denounced and arrested for mere suspicion; there appear to be numerous female victims and they [the Yugoslavs] demonstrated that their suspicion had fallen down on everyone, even the children of tender age were missing. The Allies got suspicious because of the circulating voices and have started the research into this pit […]. 59
Even though we cannot completely confirm or deny the facts stated in this article, it gives a good image of how the victims perceived themselves and their victimhood: they were innocent and the Yugoslavs were barbarians.
A third Istrian citizen, Giuseppe Bari, testified that in the first weeks of May 1943 Yugoslav communists murdered people from the villages alongside the Istrian coast. He mentioned that between Muggia and Capodistria people had been thrown into pits, sometimes only because of personal reasons. He said that the pits were at times too full
59 WO 204/12753, ‘Article written by Don Beari for the catholic journal “Vita Nuova”’, dated 4
