Arrigo Petacco. A Tragedy Revealed: The Story of ltalians From Istria, Dalmatia, and Venezia Giulia, 1943-1956.

Arrigo Petacco. A Tragedy Revealed: The Story of ltalians From Istria, Dalmatia, and Venezia Giulia, 1943-1956. Trans. Konrad Eisenbichler. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2005.

For more than fifty years, historical attention to the tragedy of ethnic cleansing enacted by Yugoslavians upon Italians during and after World War II has received short shrift. The weight of political correctness negated open and honest discussion primarily for two reasons. First, the Italian government, trying to set itself aright in the dopoguerra, had insufficient political clout to gain international assistance that could have curtailed Yugoslavian aggression. This lack of power made the leading party, the Christian Democrats, look ineffective and weak. Second, since communists led by Marshal Tito (Josep Broz) were behind the brutal massacres, open discussion of the catastrophe would have fostered negative perceptions of Italian Communism. Both the political Left and Right did not want to grapple with what took place. Fortunately, however, since the end of the Cold War, Italian intellectuals have had greater freedom to discuss episodes of the past previously held as taboo.

In tackling the subject of the foibe, Arrigo Petacco offers an exhaustive volume--originally entitled L'esodo" la tragedia negata degli italiani d'Istria, Dalmazia e Venezia Giulia (Milano: Mondadori, 1999)--that helps lift the shroud of silence surrounding the calamity, and Konrad Eisenbichler's careful translation has made the events accessible to the English speaking academic community. Petacco does not provide a definitive scholarly history of events, but as an eminent journalist, he crafts a superb popular history that reads as a long investigative report. As indicated, his primary focus centers upon the brutality of the foibe--those deep mountain crevasses into which Tito's partisans murdered and dumped over an estimated 10,000 Italians. In this manner, Petacco splays a festering wound in the Italian collective imagination since thousands had been affected by ruthless reprisals and forced evacuation but had little official venues to address their grievances. Petacco removes a gag by bringing a skeleton out of the closet, and in psychological parlance, he helps those affected to own the tragedy, even through the collective vestiges of memory.

The book is divided into three main chapters. The first, entitled "The Julian Question," sets the stage for comprehending how the victorious Allies went about divvying up Istria together with the Yugoslavs at the conclusion of World War II. The demarcation of the Morgan Line that carved Istria in Zone A for Italy and Zone B for Yugoslavia took no effective consideration of Italian ethnicity in Zone B, a point that ultimately would force thousands of ethnic Italians to flee Zone B when it passed to the Yugoslavs. To help readers comprehend Slavic retaliation in this ethnically contested area, Petacco reviews policies and practices that Fascists implemented to erase traces of Slavic family names and cultural identity after Istria had passed to Italy at the end of World War I. He also provides ample coverage of the tangled military situation in the Balkan theater of operations in World War II and how both German and Yugoslavian forces overpowered the Italians.

As soon as Italy signed the 8 September 1943 Armistice, Tito masterfully sent his forces into Istria to enact revenge for Fascist abuses. As Petacco recounts, Yugoslavian partisans with methodical determination sought to exterminate all Italians, Fascist or not, who opposed designs of annexation. During a forty-day period from September to October 1943, they captured, jailed, and tortured Italians, herding their victims in droves to the foibe, tying their hands with wire, and lining them up in single file. They would execute the first few and shove them into the chasm. The others would follow, falling hundreds of meters to their death. Only a very few survived and lived to recount their ordeal.

In the second chapter, entitled "The Adriatisches Kustenland," Petacco examines the state of affairs in Istria during the German occupation, focusing in part on how the elite Decima MAS sought to retain an autonomous command in the fight against Italian and Yugoslavian partisans. He also discusses the treachery at Porzus when Tito's bandits gunned down several Italian partisans; among them was Pier Paolo Pasolini's brother, Guido. In addition, he analyzes Nazi efforts to round up and ship Italian Jews to extermination camps. Finally, he discusses Allied efforts to occupy Istria at the war's end and how Tito managed to outfox Churchill and Truman in the race to capture Trieste. With Slavic communists in control of large tracts of Istria, the massacres of the foibe began again with new vengeance and lasted throughout 1946 and 1947 in Zone B.

The third chapter, entitled "Goodbye Istria," examines the exodus of thousands of Italians from Zone B, in particular those in Pola, and how successive ltalian governments did little either to obstruct or to aid the flight. In discussing the dire situation at Pola, Petacco makes ample use of Indro Montanelli's reportage for the Corriere della Sera and the diary entries two sisters who became separated in the diaspora. He also brings to light the little known attempt by the PCI to counter the exodus by sending willing party members into Pola and Zone B as a show of international communist solidarity. Known as the Monfalconesi, many of these immigrants ended up imprisoned in Yugoslavia for their loyalty to Stalin after the Soviet premier's political schism with Tito.

The last flight of Italians from Istria occurred between 1953 and 1955 when an AngloAmerican delegation declared that only Zone A would pass to Italy. Twenty-two years later in 1975, the Treaty of Osimo finally put to rest any Italian claim to Zone B. Effectively, however, Tito's purges and the terror it instilled years earlier to cause mass emigration, coupled with Italian political miscues, had already made the accords fait accompli.

Scholarly attention to the ethnic cleansing during Tito's ferocious campaign to wrest Istria from Italy has been slow in coming. Still today, many Italians believe that Tito only wielded his violence in Istria upon ex-Fascists and Mussolini loyalists. But, as Petacco illstrates, this understanding is far from accurate, and only since the early 1990s with the dissolution of the First Republic have more open appraisals of events begun to take place.

Petacco provides an excellent study of the tragic events surrounding the foibe and the Italian flight from Istria in the dopoguerra, and his efforts were recognized when the volume won the Premio Acqui Storia in 2000 for the best work in popular history (la storia divulgativa). But more scholarly work, with even more thorough historical detail, is needed to recount the facts surrounding the Yugoslavian butchery of Italian citizens. To this end, Eisenbichler's translation certainly provides a welcome springboard for English-speaking scholars.

ALAN R. PERRY

Gettysburg College