ROME, Nov 22, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A new film is shining an uncomfortable
light on the fate of thousands of Italians killed in massacres on the
Yugoslav frontier at the end of the Second World War.
“Red Land – Rosso Istria” recounts events that for decades were only
commemorated by neofascists, showing that things were not as black and white
as previously thought and provoking a wave of reactions on social media.
From 1943 to 1947, between 5,000 and 10,000 Italians were murdered in the
region around Trieste, on today’s border with Slovenia, as it was reconquered
by Tito’s Yugoslav partisans, with victims often thrown alive into deep
sinkholes known as “foibe”.
Another 250,000 people fled their homes.
What began as a “cleansing” of police and civil servants associated with
the fascist regime by Yugoslav and Italian partisans later became the
systematic murder of Italians.
Immediately after the war, Italy wanted to turn the page on its fascist
history and the crimes committed by its forces in Yugoslavia as quickly as
possible.
That meant that the massacres carried out by partisans were for years only
commemorated by those nostalgic for Mussolini.
It was only in 2004 that the right-wing government of Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi initiated a national day of remembrance for the massacres.
In 2005, Italy awarded a posthumous medal to Norma Cossetto, a 23-year-old
student and daughter of a local fascist official, who was raped, tortured and
murdered by Yugoslav and Italian partisans in October 1943.
Her story “is a metaphor” for the fate of all the other victims of the
massacres, the film’s producer Alessandro Centenaro told AFP.
The film recounts one of the partisans’ murder methods: prisoners would be
shot in the head on the edge of a “foiba”, dragging others still living to
whom they were tied to their deaths.
– “Long-hidden truth” –
“Yes, Norma was killed because she was fascist. But also because she was a
woman, educated and Italian,” Centenaro said. “There are many sides to this
story, like the character of Giorgio, the deserter who joins the Yugoslav
partisans to get rid of the fascists and ends up a victim himself,” said the
film’s Italian-Argentine director Maximiliano Hernando Bruno.
The film was premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival and also
screened this month at the Italian Senate, where it was hailed by politicians
from left and right.
Comments on the film’s Facebook page hail the “powerful story”, which
“finally does justice to the victims” and “shines a light on a truth that has
been hidden for too long”, which “should be shown in all schools”.
But some Internet commentators have also accused the director of being
fascist or revisionist.
Hernando Bruno dismisses such critics as “provocateurs who haven’t seen the
film.”
Some say that the film is being “boycotted” because it has received little
coverage in Italian media.
Unusually, far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Monday shared a
list of the around 30 cinemas showing the film with his millions of followers
on social media.
“For decades, left-wing politicians and intellectuals have done everything
to hide this truth,” Salvini said.
“Go and watch it and pass the word along, so that those who were killed
simply for being Italian may at least be honoured by our memory,” he said.