Reprinted from: http://www.haaretzdaily.com:80/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=153461&contrassID=2&subContrassID=15&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Refugees from a resort town

By Hulda Liberanome

In the presidential elections held last month in the district of Istria in western Croatia, the winner was the president of the Istrian Democratic Assembly, Ivan Jakovcic. For some time now, the party's members have been pressing the government in Zagreb to find a just solution in the near future for the problem of the property of the hundreds of thousands of Italian refugees who fled from western Yugoslavia in the years after World War II. The existence of the problem has prevented the signing of a friendship pact between Italy and Croatia, as agreed at the Trieste conference last November, and it is also delaying the entry of Slovenia and Croatia into the European Union.

Italians resided on the Dalmatian coast and on the Istrian Peninsula to its north in the period of the Roman Empire; elements of Venetian architecture and culture have been apparent in the region since the 10th century. The Italians there still speak a local Venetian dialect. On the eve of World War II, there were some 300,000 Italians in Yugoslavia, mainly in the coastal area and on the Istrian Peninsula. Today, says a spokesman from the government ministry dealing with the Italian diaspora, the majority reside in Croatia and the rest in Slovenia. According to the census of 1910, during the period of Austrian rule, the Italians constituted 42 percent of the population; in 1921, they accounted for 60 percent in the Istrian Peninsula alone (under Yugoslav rule).

Nevertheless, a clause on the right of return of Italian refugees to their homeland was not included in the peace treaty between Yugoslavia and Italy that was signed in Paris in 1947, when these regions were annexed to Yugoslavia after having been under Italian and Italian-German rule during the last years of the war. By comparison with the census of 1910, the number of Italians in 1948 (under Yugoslav rule) declined by 62 percent, and in 1981, slightly more than 15,000 people declared themselves Italians. In the first years after the war, hundreds of thousands of Italians fled from these regions - some because they had collaborated during the war years with the Nazis and with the Croatian extreme right against the partisans (and in the persecution of Jews), others for fear of brutal acts of revenge by Serbs and Croats, who hurled thousands of Italians alive into deep canyons in the area. To this day, all of the bodies have not been found.

The majority of the Italians, though, fled in the wake of the Paris agreement, which forced them to choose between Yugoslav and Italian citizenship. In the massive wave of emigration of 1948, between 120,000 and 150,000 Italians left western Yugoslavia, the minority for North America and Australia. Whereas immediately after the war, the Italian minority was considered the sixth largest among the many minorities that resided in Yugoslavia, by the start of the disintegration of the federation in 1991, they were a small minority in the coastal towns and in Istria, frequently persecuted for alleged ties with the West and possessing limited cultural autonomy.

Higher standard of living

The independence of Slovenia and Croatia led to a considerable increase in the number of those who identified themselves as Italians, both because there was less fear of the authorities under the new conditions, and because of the hope that their property would be restored. In 1996, therefore, 33,000 people declared themselves Italians in Croatia, and 4,000 in Slovenia - a small number as compared with the situation in the last years of the war, says the spokesman. 

On the eve of the mass emigration of 1948, the working Italian population was divided into laborers (37.8 percent, as opposed to 30.6 percent in the population overall); farmers (37 percent, as compared with 73 percent in the total population); and craftsmen (3.7 percent), with merchants and practitioners of the liberal professions accounting for the rest. The average living standard of the Italians in the region was higher than that of the other residents; many of the Italians lived in or near the coastal towns. There were also villages and small towns in more distant areas where there had been an Italian majority of farmers, but most of these were abandoned during the wave of emigration.

Italian governments did not grant the right of return to Italian citizens who were refugees of Yugoslavia. Initially, this was due to political reasons: Italy was a defeated country that had been allied with Nazi Germany, while Yugoslavia had a glorious record of resistance and was the ally of the victorious powers. Then there was the practical economic consideration: The assumption was that none of the refugees who had integrated themselves into the booming Italian economy would want to return to relatively poor Yugoslavia, which was under communist rule.

However, the Italian authorities took a different attitude toward the considerable Italian property that was left behind by the Italian refugees and had been confiscated, nationalized or simply taken by local residents. This problem continues to put a damper on relations between Yugoslavia and Italy, and in recent years between Rome, Zagreb and Ljubljana.

If that was how it was in the past, the situation today is far more complex, when a center-right party is in power in Rome and the second largest party is the National Front (which was a neo-fascist party until 1992), which has many supporters among former refugee families in the border areas, especially Trieste. The ministry dealing with the Italian diaspora was established, and for the first time since the end of World War II, a bill has been submitted stipulating that not only partisans are eligible for a special citation, but also soldiers in Mussolini's divisions, and refugees who were forced to leave their homeland because of the "Slav occupation."

Still unanswered questions

In the peace treaty and in later agreements, Italy undertook to pay Yugoslavia compensation for damages, but about two-thirds of the amount was held back to cover the refugees' property. Italy was supposed to pay compensation for this property directly to the refugees, but in practice, all the governments returned such small sums that some people refused to accept the payment in the hope of preserving their rights for the future. In 1983, an agreement was reached under which Yugoslavia would deposit $110 million to Italy in 13 installments via a bank account in Luxembourg as compensation for the Italian property. The debt was inherited in 1999 by Slovenia ($60 million) and Croatia ($50 million). The Slovenes deposited the entire amount but the Croats made only two payments. In any event, the Italian government has so far not touched the money so as not to create the mistaken impression that the affair has ended.

In 1996, the Zagreb parliament approved a law according to which Croatian citizens are entitled to receive property that had belonged to them but had been nationalized during the period of communist rule in Yugoslavia. However, it was not until three years later, in 1999, that the Supreme Court in Zagreb ruled that this law would apply also to the Italian refugees; the court recommended that parliament enact new legislation on this subject (this has not yet been done). On the basis of the law, 46,000 requests for compensation or return of property have been submitted, of which about 3,500 have been examined and 679 approved. However, only 140 people have so far received their property back. While the issue continues to be discussed, as far as is known, no solution has yet been found for the problem of the Italian refugees who left before the signing of the Paris agreement, or for those who left but did not renounce their Yugoslav citizenship. 

Another problem involves evaluating the buildings in the towns and villages, most of whose occupants are gone but for which there are no heirs. The problem of assessing the worth of the Italian public property that was confiscated or nationalized has likewise not been solved in full.

In the meantime, over the past half a century, there has been growing interest in the property in the coastal cities and the many resort towns in the region, as a tourist boom has driven up the value of the Italian property there. In addition to the request for suitable compensation and for a solution of the questions that remain in dispute, activists of the extreme right have lately been supporting the right of return of former refugees and their offspring. They argue that the denial of that right is contrary to international laws and the United Nations Charter, even though they were signed after the Paris agreement. The Slovenian and Croatian governments did provide certain benefits for the Italian refugees and their families, but basically, they have to go through the same procedures as any foreigner who applies for citizenship.