The other blood of the vanquished. The silent one. The foibe they remain the unpunished shame to be recalled only on February 10th. It’s the Remembrance Dayin honor of the killed compatriots and the 300 thousand exiles. Eternal embarrassment on the left. A mixture of attempted removal and reassuring oblivion. These are the crimes, often denied, of Tito’s Yugoslav communists. And it is not only a historiographical amnesia, but also a judicial one. Because that too was covered up, after one atrocious testimony after another resurfaced.
It was a snotty military prosecutor from Padua who wanted to shed light: Sergio Dini. In 2002 he began to unleash the police throughout Italy, looking for survivors and orphans. He finds eyes filled with tears and words of embarrassment. He reconstructs dates, names, victims, executioners. Until the Supreme Court decides to remove the investigation from them: they wouldn’t have been war crimesbut only ethnic hatred. «Like a settling of scores between neighbors», Dini explains to Panorama today. As yet another anniversary slips away, the magistrate denounces the justice denied: «The investigations into the Nazi massacres continued, those into the foibe did not. The Germans lost the war and were put on trial, the Slavs won and it was decided to keep quiet.”
Dini is now a prosecutor in the Paduan prosecutor’s office, but he hasn’t forgotten. The people who disappeared in Gorizia, the concentration camp across the border, the carabinieri killed with pickaxes above Tolmezzo.
The investigation into the crimes of Tito’s partisans
The investigation also identifies the commander of the Slovenian partisans of the IX Corpus. Tito’s army unit occupied Gorizia between May and June 1945, ordering arrests and killings of Italians. A month and a half of barbarism. Hundreds of people disappeared: military prisoners and civilians. A survivor reported to the magistrate: «We were in line with a small bowl to get a ladle of dirty water and potatoes. The one in front of me tried to scrape the bottom of the pot. The partisan guard hit him with a rifle shot, piercing his chest. The camp commander arrived. After taking aim, he gave him the final blow by shooting him in the back of the head.”
The military prosecutor’s office continues to search. He also identifies those responsible for the massacre of 12 carabinieri at Malga Bala, near Tarvisio. The details still emerge from yellowed judicial papers. The prisoners had been forced to drink caustic soda and black salt. And while they were there on the ground, with their wrists tied, they were killed with pickaxes and beatings.
They travel around Italy, those carabinieri. They search for unspeakable truths, buried together with the bodies in the karst cavities. It’s not easy. Many survivors also want to forget, but they cling to the most painful memories to reconstruct episodes and faces. Like that of the “Boro” commander, accused of leading the Borovnica concentration camp in Slovenia. The war was over, but not the ferocity of the victors. From May to December 1945, dozens of Italians died of beatings and starvation. They were Bersaglieri, above all. The notice of closure of the investigations details the accusations against “Boro”: «He ordered the killing by firing squad of the following Italian military prisoners of war, subject to torture and beatings». An endless list follows.
The decisions of the Supreme Court and the investigations closed
The Prosecutor’s Office is certain that it has identified four of Tito’s executioners. One of the lawyers appeals: these are not crimes under the jurisdiction of military courts. The General Prosecutor’s Office of Cassation agrees: «The use of violence is not a typical product of war operations». Rather, he continues, it arises «from reasons of hateful political and ethnic persecution in implementation of a very specific program of territorial annexation». On the other hand, the context was “a complex political and military scenario that was not yet fully delineated”. That is to say? The conflict had nothing to do with it.
«A disconcerting motivation», argues Dini. «They wrote that they were common murders, when they were clearly war crimes. It was the reason for getting the investigation out of the way: better not to let it land in the courtroom. A public trial would have been uncomfortable.”
The voluminous file is transferred to the ordinary prosecutor’s office in Gorizia. After some time, however, it is discovered that one of the victims is the daughter of a magistrate. It would be the offended party. The 16 folders end up in Bologna. The checks are progressing wearily. “Boro” is heard with an international letter rogatory. He assures that, in that period, he was only the secretary of the Slovenian communist party in Gorizia. In July 2005 the investigation was closed, dismantling the evidence collected by the Military Prosecutor’s Office of Padua: despite dozens of confirmations, it would not be possible to prove the guilt of the Tito leader.
Testimonies and trials without outcome
Moreover, the complaints about the sinkholes have always stagnated in the pool of preliminary checks. And in the very rare cases in which they continued, the fog enveloped everything. Also the investigation by the deputy prosecutor of Rome, Giuseppe Pititto. Dozens of people were interviewed, including by the Digos of Trieste. A witness, for example, tells the magistrate about when the remains of his father and uncle were found in a bauxite quarry: «They were naked. Their hands were tied with barbed wire. His genitals had been cut off and his eyes removed. In the end, twenty-three bodies were recovered.”
Another recalls the punishment inflicted on two Lombards: «Approaching them elbow to elbow, they tied them with wire by the earlobes, piercing them with a red-hot iron. They kicked and punched them until they tore off their ears.”
Another survivor, with terror still in his eyes, reveals: «The partisans ordered two young carabinieri to undress. They tied their hands and feet and pushed them into the hole. While they covered them with earth and stones, they could hear each other screaming.” They were recovered a month later, without a single wound. They had been buried alive.
Pititto manages to indict three Croatians, considered responsible for disappearances and deaths between Istria and Fiume. The rebounds begin. One exception after another, we arrive at the third request for indictment. When it is finally accepted, two defendants are already dead. Meanwhile, the magistrate denounces threats, interference and pressure. They take the investigation away from him. The first degree trial ended in October 2001: Oskar Piskulic, former head of the political police in Fiume, was acquitted of two crimes and obtained amnesty for one of the murders. On appeal, the attorney general asks for a life sentence. The judges object: “Lack of jurisdiction”. He cannot be tried in Italy.
The closet of shame and two-speed justice
Of course, other crimes have received different treatment. It was precisely the Military Prosecutor’s Office of Padua led by Dini, in 1994, who also denounced the cover-up of Nazi-fascist war crimes. It turns out theCloset of shamethe famous secret archive of the Italian judiciary. For decades, thousands of files were hidden. A scandal that outraged. For the massacres of Marzabotto, Sant’Anna di Stazzema and the Fosse Ardeatine there were trials and life sentences. Like that of Erich Priebke, who was extradited from Argentina. On the foibe, however, justice decided not to take its course. Not even a small commission of inquiry. And the stunning Italian-style hoax: some supposed executioners, as Panorama revealed, even took the INPS pension.
Remembrance Day and contested memory
In 2004, at least, the Remembrance Day: February 10th, exactly. Flags at half-mast on the facade of Montecitorio and Palazzo Madama. Heartfelt condolences from the government, words from the opposition. “We are here to ask for forgiveness once again, on behalf of the institutions of this Republic, for the guilty silence that has surrounded the events of our eastern border”, said the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, during the last visit to the sinkholes of Basovizza. State silence. And unforgivable indifference, which persists on the left. This year too, the commemoration tried to sweep away that conspiracy of silence. But the other blood of the defeated remains. No justice for the unpunished winners.
