Foiba of Basovizza: the Pit, the Monument, the Memory, and the Unknown Victim. 1945-1965.

The “Foiba of Basovizza” is a mine pit located in the outskirts of Trieste, on the western side of the border between Italy and the former Yugoslavia, in the contested and multiethnic Julian March region. For the Italian, Slovenian, and Croatian public opinion, foibas are related to the killings committed by Tito\u27s partisan forces after the armistice between the Allies and the kingdom of Italy (September 1943), and throughout the Yugoslav military occupation of the whole Julian march in May 1945. Soldiers and civilians were thrown into such pits, sometimes still alive or after being tortured. Numbers of victims and causes of these massacres remain a disputed issue for the national historiographies of the three countries. After WWII, local and national Italian leaders raised strong concerns with regard to the memory of the September 1943 and May 1945 Yugoslav violence. The exploitation of these public memories was manifold; it was mainly directed to ease the Italian position at the peace conference, to gain political control of an area sorted characterized by an uncertain sovereignty, and to strengthen the Italian national identity during the beginning of the Cold War. Among those slaughters, the Basovizza case received special attention: the article analyzes the genealogy of the “Foiba di Basovizza” as a site of memor