Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni on Saturday condemned the vandalism of the Basovizza Foiba memorial near Trieste, calling it an offence to the entire nation.
The Basovizza Foiba Memorial, which commemorates the victims of the Foibe killings and deportations that took place during and after World War II, was defaced with graffiti in Slovenian, including the phrase “Trst je naš” (“Trieste is ours”). The incident occurred two days before Italy’s annual Foibe Remembrance Day.
“The Basovizza Foiba is a sacred place, a national monument, to be honoured with silence and prayer,” Meloni said. “Offending Basovizza with repugnant writings that recall dramatic pages of our history does not only trample on the memory of the victims of the Foibe but is also an outrage to the entire nation. What happened is an act of unprecedented gravity, which cannot go unpunished.”
The Foibe were deep natural sinkholes found in the Karst region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Istria, and Slovenia, into which victims were thrown, sometimes alive. The Basovizza Foiba, however, was a mineshaft. It is estimated that thousands of Italians, many but not all linked to the Fascist regime, were killed by Yugoslav Partisans as control of the region shifted in the final years of the war. The exact number of victims remains uncertain, in part due to the destruction of population records. In addition to the killings, many Italians fled their homes during this period of upheaval.
Italy formally established Foibe Remembrance Day in 2004 to acknowledge and remember these events, which were long overlooked in the post-war years.
