MIL-OSI Europe: Statement by President Meloni on day of remembrance for the victims of the Foibe massacres and the exodus from Istria, Rijeka and Dalmatia

‘Ricordare’, the Italian for ‘to remember’, means ‘to bring back to the heart’, or in other words, to place what is dearest to us back at the centre of our being.  Today, we ‘bring back to our hearts’ hundreds of thousands of stories, restoring the dignity they deserve. Today, we honour the memory of the martyrs of the Foibe massacres and once again embrace all our compatriots who chose to leave everything behind rather than give up their identity. Italians twice over: by birth and by choice. 

On this day of remembrance, we bring back to our hearts each and every story of that tragedy, and renew a solemn promise. We will continue to write new pages in our history and to tell the younger generations about what happened to the people of Rijeka, Istria and Dalmatia. For their story does not belong to just a section of the border or what remains of the community of exiles; it belongs to the whole nation. It is a story that has overcome a conspiracy of silence and no attempt to deny or justify what happened will ever again be able to hide or erase it.

[Courtesy translation]