The massacres were committed mainly against the local ethnic Italian population by Yugoslav communists who occupied the Istrian peninsula during the last two years of the war.
“The suffering, deaths, uprooting, and exodus forced on tens of thousands of families in the areas of the eastern border, of Istria, of Fiume, of the Dalmatian coasts, are inscribed with an indelible mark,” Mattarella said.
“The crimes against humanity unleashed in that conflict did not exhaust themselves with the liberation from Nazi-Fascism, but continued in their persecution and violence, perpetrated by another authoritarian regime, the communist one.”
Up to 15,000 Italians were killed, with many of them tortured, shot or pushed to their deaths into the deep, natural sinkholes or chasms known as foibe.
The killings occurred in 1943 and again in the weeks before and after the end of the war in 1945.
The exact number of victims of these atrocities is unknown, in part because Tito’s forces destroyed local population records to cover up their crimes.
The Giorno del Ricordo, marked annually on February 10, commemorates the victims of the ethnic cleansing as well as the exodus of Italians who left their homes in Dalmatia and Istria in the years after 1943.
With ANSA
