Istria’s Violent Past Still Haunts Croatia and Italy

What happened there - not just at the end of World War II, but before the war - is far from a clear-cut story.

Tajani was speaking at a ceremony held to honour the victims of the Yugoslav Partisans' 40-day rule over the city of Trieste.

For the Partisans, Trieste was a legitimate territorial target and unfinished business. They saw the territorial settlement at the end of World War I, which saw Trieste and all of Istria incorporated into Italy, as completely unjust.

But the Yugoslavs' brief reign over Trieste, which the Allies rapidly terminated, was not a true act of liberation, either.

It saw summary executions in the city and its surroundings, including in the village of Basovizza, which is where Tajani and Foreign Minister Matteo Salvini were speaking.

How many so-called collaborators and Fascists were dumped in sinkholes in the karst and mineshafts in these so-called "Foibe massacres" is disputed.

Neither post-war Italian nor Yugoslav governments pursued the matter for years. The lowest estimates put the figure at several hundred, the highest at thousands.

But that was just the beginning of the disaster for the Italians of Istria.

After the Allies forced the Yugoslavs from Trieste, the Partisans got busy expelling almost the entire Italian community from the rest of Istria.

Piazza Unita, Trieste. Photo: Wikipedia

Some 300,000 people left in waves, according to most estimates - about one-third of the population.

The 1910 census conducted under Austria-Hungary showed 36 per cent of the population of Istria spoke Italian as their first language. The 1953 census, under Yugoslavia, showed only 36,000 remained.

This act of ethnic cleansing went almost unnoticed in the chaotic years after 1945,...