Italy on Thursday is marking the Day
of Remembrance for the Foibe, the massacre of the thousands of
Italians by Tito's partisans in ethnic cleansing at the end of
WWII.
President Sergio Mattarella and Premier Mario Draghi are taking
part in a ceremony in the Senate in the afternoon and there will
also be commemorations at the sites of the Foibe atrocities.
The 'foibe' refers to mass killings of the local Italian
population, mainly in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Istria and Dalmatia
during and after World War II.
Foibe are narrow Carsic pits or gorges into which victims were
thrown, sometimes alive.
"The Day of Remembrance calls on the republic to come together
in reflection and solidarity with relatives and descendants of
those killed with cruelty and thrown into the foibe, of the
Italians who were torn from their homes and forced into exile,
of all those who on the eastern border had to pay the highest
human cost of the horrors of the Second World War,". Mattarella
said.
The education ministry compared the Foibe to the Holocaust,
sparking condemnation from Italian Jewish and partisan groups
and political parties.
The union of Italian Jewish communities, UCEI, said the
comparison was "disconcerting" and condemned what it called
"mystification".
It said the comparison "risks cancelling the long and patient
work on Memory conducted also thanks to the work of the ministry
itself".
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