Italy Film Recalls Pain Of Forgotten WWII Massacres

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.

Rome, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Nov, 2018 ) :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.