Poster for Foibe killings remembrance day 2015

Every year on 10 February, the Italian state celebrates the Foibe killings remembrance day, established by law 92 of 30 March 2004 “in order to keep and renew the memory of the tragedy of the Italians and all others who fell victims of the foibe massacres, of the exodus of the populations from Istria, Dalmatia and Fiume in the aftermath of WW2 and of the more complex events that unfolded at the Eastern border of Italy”.

Foibe are karstic sinkholes situated in the area of Istria and Dalmazia, where from 1943 and 1947 nearly 10,000 Italians, dead or alive, were thrown. As early as on the day of the armistice, 8 September 1943, the Slavic partisans of the People's Liberation Committees sentenced to death hundreds thousand Italians, fascists and non fascists, who were accused of being invaders and potential enemies of the future communist State that they meant to create.

In 1945, when Yugoslavia occupied Trieste, Gorizia and Istria, the Slavic army again attacked the Italians, throwing into the foibe fascists, catholics, liberal-democrats, socialists, priests, women, elders and children. The persecution went on until 1947, when the border between Italy and Yugoslavia was set.

The symbolic place of the massacre is the Foiba of Basovizza, in the area of Trieste, which was set up as national monument in 1992.