The exodus of italians from istria and dalmatia, 1945-56

Abstract

Between 1945 and the mid-1950s about 250,000 Italians were forced to leave the cities and villages along the eastern border of Italy in which they and their families had lived for generations. These cities and villages were situated along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, from the Gulf of Trieste and down along Istria and Dalmatia. This historical event-known in Italy as ‘the Exodus’- has been repressed in the Italian collective memory and has not received much attention from historians. In his seminal work on exiles and refugees in Europe in the twentieth century, Michael Marrus does not even mention it, while Schechtman devoted to it barely half a page.1 The numbers involved were relatively small in comparison with similar mass expulsions or transfers that took place in Europe during the same period. It was, however, a unique phenomenon in modern Italian history, which left in its wake family tragedies and a considerable number of victims. Furthermore the Exodus was a caesura in the ancient and rich history of the Italian presence along the eastern Adriatic, exemplified in the artistic and cultural splendour of the main coastal towns such as Parenzo/Poreč, Fiume/Rijeka, Zara/Zadar, Spalato/Split and Ragusa/Dubrovnik.