History is full of Carneades and Fire Brigade Harzaric is one of them;
he had the pitiful and even dangerous task of going to sinkholes and revealing the secrets that the karst caves hid: hundreds, thousands of bodies of Italians dragged away from their homes in Istria and Dalmatia and thrown there, often still alive, for the reprisals of the Slavic partisans.
Remembrance Day
Law no. 92 of 30 March 2004, establishing the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the massacres in the Giuliano-Dalmatian territory, allowed to lift the blanket of oblivion that for over 60 years covered what President Napolitano on 10.2.2007 defined a real 'ethnic cleansing' against the Italians.
Ethnic cleansing, added the President on the same occasion, which was the subject of a conspiracy of silence aimed at covering particular interests never fully clarified.
Italians, without distinction of ideology, sex, religious belief. The Slavs wanted the coast from Zadar to Trieste and the Italian presence had to disappear …… .physically.
The Mar.llo Harzaric went to sinkholes, protecting his face from the miasma of the rotting of the bodies with wet handkerchiefs, and carried out the pitiful work of returning to families, when recognizable, the remains of their loved ones.
He went to the Foiba di Vines, Villa Surani, Terli, Basovizza, the only one today in Italy in 1992 declared a National Monument by President Scalfaro.
We said that his task was also dangerous, the Slavs, in fact, tried to intimidate him by shooting at his house repeatedly at night.
His task ...
He returned the bodies of many Italians certainly committed to the side of a government that the Slavs considered invading together with those of the opposition parties. We mention the Christian Democrats Carlo Dell'Antonio and Romano Meneghello, the socialist Licurgo Olivi, the shareholder Augusto Sverzutti. He could never find Don Francesco Bonifacio since 2008 Blessed of the Holy Roman Church “In Odium Fidei”. Humble people like the Fosca sisters, Caterina and Albina Radecchi, held in a Slavic commando for weeks doing humble services during the day and treated as sexual amusement at night. They were found by the Marshal in the Terli Foiba: tied to each other but only one was hit by firearms, the others had been dragged into the cave still alive and died of starvation.
The Mar.llo Harzarich found Norma Cossetto, perhaps the most significant victim of the massacre, in the Foiba of Villa Surani. A 20-year-old girl, a graduate of elementary school, enrolled at the University of Padua was surprised by the tragic events of September 1943 at her parents' home in Istria.
On 26 September she was arrested by the Slavs, until 4 October she was held prisoner in the village school; she was raped continuously as a neighbor told her sister, on the night between 4 and 5 October she was thrown into the pit. She also had no gunshot wounds, she was probably thrown still alive in the cavity.
His father, posting to his desperate search, was killed on 7 October by the Slavs.
The Law 30.3.04, n. 92 wants the Italians to remember the martyrs Giuliano-Dalmati, we think that the Marshal of the Fire Brigade also deserves a special memory. Arnaldo Harzarich.
