Trieste:

The City as Displaced Persons Camp

Pamela Ballinger

(in: Sabine Rutar (ed.), Borderland Istria / Grenzland Istrien. München 2006

(Jahrbücher für Geschichte und Kultur Südosteuropas, 8), pp. 153-174)

Abstract

This article examines the dual regimes of refugee management – that of Italian state
assistance to “national refugees” and repatriates and the other consisting of international
aid to displaced persons (DPs) in Italy – that operated in Trieste in the decade after the
Second World War. The paper provides an overview of Italian state strategies for dealing
with the care and housing of displaced persons and Italian refugees. The analysis then
turns to a particular case, focusing on Trieste as a city where “normality” was recreated
only a decade after the war’s conclusion as a result of the nine-year territorial dispute
between Italy and Yugoslavia over the larger region of Venezia Giulia. The Italian state
eventually built new neighborhoods and expropriated land from other ethnic groups (such
as autochthonous Slovenes) to accommodate the approximately 100,000 Italian refugees
who resettled permanently in and around the city, thereby creating a new “normality” that
refracted the broader redefinition of the national community after the war.

Writers, politicians, and scholars have often imagined the city of Trieste as a

quintessential border or frontier space, a “nowhere” place (to use Jan Morris’ language)

that is betwixt and between.

1

The city symbolically straddles West and East, the

Mediterranean and Danubian Central Europe, the Latin and Slavic worlds, and in the

second half of the twentieth century, democracy/capitalism and communism. Between

1945 and 1954, however, the city’s liminality proved more than symbolic. As part of

Zone A in a larger territory disputed between Italy and Yugoslavia, Trieste constituted a

literal no-man’s land in which neither state had sovereignty and an Anglo-American

Allied Military Government (AMG) temporarily exercised power. Between 1947 and

1954, the city existed (nominally, at least) as a Free Territory (FTT), although in reality

AMG administration continued. Perhaps the liminality inherent to such a free territory

arrangement in a world of nation-states doomed the FTT’s success from the start.

Certainly, the territorial struggles of states over the FTT resulted in large flows of

1

Jan M o r r i s , Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, New York 2001.

1

refugees – themselves embodiments of liminality - from the Istrian peninsula and other

parts of the former Italian region of Venezia Giulia.

During the decade after World War II, Trieste and its environs hosted significant

numbers of refugees and refugee camps. In her work with Hutu refugees in Tanzania,

anthropologist Liisa Malkki has described the refugee as a liminal figure and the refugee

camp as a liminal site that nurtures a distinct sense of refugee identity in exile.

2

She

contrasted the strong form of “refugee” identity produced by residence in the Mishamo

camp she studied with the understanding of multiple identities held by other Hutu

refugees who settled in a nearby town. In Malkki’s work, the town proved a much more

cosmopolitan space than that of the refugee camp; refugees who settled in the urban area

did not see themselves primarily in terms of their refugee status. Work on the Istrian,

Julian, and Dalmatian refugees who resettled permanently in Trieste, however, has

demonstrated how a city famed for its “cosmopolitanism” under the Habsburgs became

home to refugees who maintained a distinctive identity as exiles or esuli, an identity that

has been nurtured (and often instrumentalized) through local politics in the half century

since the city “returned” to Italian control.

3

In this sense, then, the city itself became a

symbolic refugee camp, fostering a robust and durable identity for “Italian exiles” from

Italy’s lost eastern territories.

As a result of these refugee flows, Trieste changed not only demographically but also

culturally and politically, becoming an “Istrian” city in many ways, even as older groups

remained and often complained about their marginalization. Yet Trieste during the first

post-war decade also hosted non-Italian refugees coming from socialist Eastern Europe,

refugees who for the most part transited through the city after spending time in its refugee

centers, in contrast to the Italian refugees who permanently resettled there. Whereas

Trieste’s definitive return to the Italian madrepatria in 1954 appeared to Italian

nationalists as a belated post-war normalization and the end of the city’s liminal status,

this normalization entailed a nationalization that had been well under way before the

2

Liisa M a l k k i , Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in

Tanzania, Chicago 1995.

3

Pamela B a l l i n g e r , History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans, Princeton

2003. For a detailed anthropological analysis of the production of an enduring refugee identity among
resettled Asia Minor Greeks, see Renée H i r s c h o n , Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of
Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus, New York 1998.

2

city’s awarding to Italy. Sandi Volk has discerned a “bonifica nazionale,” that is, a

concerted plan to further Italianize the territory through land reclamation and

concentrated resettlement of Italian refugees from Istria and Dalmatia. Just as important

as this demographic shift, argues Volk, was the building of refugee quarters in

strategically key points near railroads and highways that connected Trieste with

Yugoslavia, in one direction, and Italy in the other.

4

In this article, I explore a different

aspect of this nationalization argument, demonstrating how the sorting out of “national

refugees” from “foreign refugees” and the different forms of relief provided them in

Trieste furthered the process of nationalization in the city. In this, the city did not prove

anomalous but actually refracted processes going on elsewhere in the Italian peninsula.

Trieste’s role as a postwar “hub for refugees”

5

has received attention from scholars

interested in the city’s large population of Istrian and Dalmatian refugees, on the one

hand, and “non-Italian” refugees, on the other. In particular, the rediscovery in the 1990s

of the history of the mass migration from Istria between 1943 and 1955 (the Istrian esodo

or exodus) has resulted in extensive documentation of the migratory flows that resulted

from the nine year territorial dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia over the Julian region

and the final redrawing of Italy’s eastern border in 1954.

6

Another body of work focused

on various aspects of Italy’s postwar DP (displaced persons) problem sometimes includes

Trieste in its analyses (even though Trieste only officially returned to Italian control in

1954).

7

Little work, however, has considered in any depth the dual aspects of the refugee

question in postwar Trieste and the very different responses given to the “Italian” and

“foreign” refugee populations.

8

When scholars have analyzed concurrent population

4

Sandi V o l k , Esuli a Trieste: Bonifica nazionale e rafforzamento dell’italianità sul confine orientale,

Udine 2004, 316-317.

5

Barrett M c G u r n , “Trieste Still a Refugee Hub,” New York Herald Tribune 6 April 1952.

6

For just a few examples of the ever-growing literature on the Istrian exodus, go to Gloria N e m e c , Un

paese perfetto: Storia e memoria di una comunità in esilio. Grisignana D’Istria, 1930-1960, Trieste 1998;
B a l l i n g e r [fn. 3]; V o l k [fn. 4]; Raoul P u p o , Il lungo esodo. Istria: le persecuzioni, le foibe, l’esilio,
Milan 2005.

7

Literature on the broader postwar refugee crisis in Europe with discussion of Trieste includes United

Nations, The Refugee in the post-war world: Preliminary report of a survey of the refugee problem, Geneva
1951; Anthony T. B o u s c a r e n , International migrations since 1945, New York 1963; Ann L a n e ,
Putting Britain Right with Tito: The Displaced Persons Question in Anglo-Yugoslav Relations 1946-7,
European History Quarterly 22 (1992), 217-246.

8

Volk’s Esuli a Trieste provides a partial exception, though he devotes only a few pages to the demands by

pro-Italian groups in Trieste that foreign (“Balkanic”) refugees be removed from Trieste. Volk [fn. 4], 196-
199.

3

movements in postwar Trieste, they have examined the process of population

“replacement” as refugees from Italy’s former eastern lands moved into Trieste and

Triestines in search of work immigrated to countries like Australia. Panjek and de

Draganich Veranzio estimate a rough population exchange, as approximately 60,000

refugees resettled in the city and 60,000 residents left.

9

Noting the absence of detailed work on the experiences of foreign refugees in

Trieste, historian Tullia Catalan voices a common view when she labels this history of

foreign DPs in the city as constituting “a separate discourse” from that of the Italian

esuli.

10

Catalan’s comments about the foreign refugees in Trieste represent one of the few

acknowledgements of the significance of this population found in a recent four volume

study of reconstruction in postwar Trieste that accompanied exhibits commemorating the

50

th

anniversary of the city’s return to Italy. Arguing against the view that the experiences

of the foreign DPs and the Italian esuli are separate (“un discorso a parte”) and instead

contending that examining these populations and the respective regimes of refugee relief

in tandem proves analytically productive, I aim to situate the varied responses to the

displaced in Trieste in the framework of reconstruction and normalization.

In applying the term “reconstruction” to Trieste, some scholars have questioned the

appropriateness of its traditional periodization. Paola Di Biagi argues that if

reconstruction is understood as not just material rebuilding but also political and

economic restructuring, the period of Allied Military Government from June 1945 to

October 1954 proved too unstable to warrant the term reconstruction. Instead, the

immediate decade after the war constitutes a “long and precarious period of tension and

of uncertainty that represented an appendix to the Second World War.”

11

In Di Biagi’s

estimation, a genuine reconstruction began only in 1954, when Trieste’s fate became

9

Aleksander P a n j e k and Chiara d e D r a g a n i c h V e r a n z i o , Introduzione, in: Trieste Anni

Cinquanta. Ricostruzione: Trieste tra ricostruzione e ritorno all’Italia (1941-1954), ed. Ariella
V e r r o c c h i o , Tavagnacco, 2004, 8-37, here 19.

10

Tullia C a t a l a n , L’organizzazione dell’assistenza a Trieste durante il Governo Militare Alleato, in:

Trieste Anni Cinquanta. La città reale: economia, società e vita quotidiana, 1945-1954, ed. Pier Angelo
T o n i n e l l i et. al., Tavagnacco 2004, 104-113, here 112.

11

Paola D i B i a g i , Ricostruire un’idea di città, in: Trieste Anni Cinquanta: La città della ricostruzione.

Urbanistica, edilizia sociale e industria a Trieste 1945-1957, ed. Paola D i B i a g i , Elena
M a r c h i g i a n i , Alessandra M a r i n , Tavagnacco 2004, 10-19, here 11.

4

joined to that of Italy.

12

From the point of view of material infrastructure, however, both

a “banal reconstruction” (focused on repair and rebuilding of public works) and a “large

reconstruction” (destined to reconstitute the city on new principles of urban planning)

began under AMG auspices.

13

When thinking about Trieste and “reconstruction,” then,

we need to be careful to specify which aspects of rebuilding (literal and figurative) we

intend.

In taking reconstruction as the rebuilding and reconstitution of the urban fabric, for

instance, a widespread model of urban growth and renewal centered on the construction

of semi-autonomous peripheral settlements ringing cities (the model of città-satellite)

characterized much of Italy in the 1950s. In Trieste, this transformation of the urban

structure took off after 1954, though initial building began during the AMG period,

14

highlighting commonalties between reconstruction in the FTT and the rest of Italy. Many

of these peripheral communities in Trieste were designed for Italian refugees from Istria

and Dalmatia. The resettlement and integration of these Italian refugees, in contrast to a

clear policy of non-settlement for those who became classified as “foreign” refugees,

proves part of a larger process of nationalization of the border zone around Trieste.

The Displaced in Postwar Italy

The experience of foreign refugees in Italy after the war, the attitudes of both local

Italians and state officials, and the policies of international organizations charged with

“care and maintenance” of the refugees cannot be understood in isolation from the fact

that Italy also had a large share of its “own” refugees to deal with. When I use the term

Italian refugee or “national refugee” here, I refer not to Italians internally displaced

within the peninsula by the events of the war – these individuals usually returned home

on their own or with assistance shortly after the cessation of hostilities – but rather to

those “citizens” who came to the peninsula from a variety of territories that formerly had

12

In his analysis of architecture and reconstruction during the AMG period, however, Massimo Mucci

notes that after the city’s return to Italy in 1954 members of the Circolo della Cultura e delle Arti di Trieste
(CCA) no longer used the term reconstruction. Rather, they strove to bring art and architecture into line
with Italian trends. Massimo M u c c i , Architettura e ricostruzione nel periodo del Governo Militare
Alleato, in: Trieste Anni Cinquanta. La città delle forme. Architettura e arti applicate a Trieste, 1945-1957,
ed. Fulvio C a p u t o and Maria M a s a u D a n , Tavagnacco 2004, 118-139, here 136.

13

D i B i a g i [fn. 11], 12-13.

14

Ibid., 15.

5

been part of fascist Italy.

15

Those Italians internally displaced within the peninsula were

deemed sinistrati. As an UNRRA letter put it, sinistrati referred to “those persons whose

homes were partially or completely destroyed by enemy action who lost most or all of

their belongings, who did not leave their town of residence either voluntarily or through

evacuation. In general they are crowded in with friends and relatives or are billeted in

homes or shelters in their own community by local authorities.”

16

Another gloss on

sinistrati describes them as “bomb-damaged persons.”

17

International observers had

assumed that returning these sinistrati to their homes would not be a prolonged or

complicated process. As UNRRA personnel E. R. Fryer put it in an August 1944 letter,

“Apparently, the Italians who are displaced in Italy are not displaced at any substantial

distance from their homes ... I have made, therefore, no provision in this budget

specifically to care for displaced Italians in Italy.” Fryer added, “The schedule for

repatriation will be considered as a relatively short-term operation.”

18

As the war ended, however, it became clear that returning some of the “internally”

displaced Italians to their homes did not prove an easy task, as in the case of those

Italians who had come from territories no longer in Italian control. Whether Italian

refugees from former possessions counted as “internal” refugees would become an issue

for UNRRA and IRO, whose mandates excluded as ineligible for assistance the internally

displaced. At times, the Italian government and the international bodies differentiated

15

These terminological differences between types of refugees reflects the reality that no one definition has

been universally accepted for “refugee,” pointing to its nature as an essentially contested concept. See Rune
J o h a n s s o n , The Refugee Experience in Europe after World War II: Some Theoretical and Empirical
Considerations, in: The Uprooted: Forced Migration as an International Problem in the Post-War Era, ed.
Göran R y s t a d , Lund 1990, 227-270, here 229. A 1951 United Nations publication sought to define
refugees in these terms:

In everyday speech, a refugee is any person who, as the result of some disaster, has been
compelled to abandon his home . . . In international law, the definition of a refugee is
both narrower and stricter . . . The limitations which the social and legal definition of a
refugee applies to the popular conception are as follows:

(1) Refugee status is determined exclusively by events arising out of the relations between a

State and persons or categories of persons who are either nationals of that State or
resident in its territory;

(2) Such persons or categories of persons must be outside the territory of the State in

question.

United Nations [fn. 7], 3.

16

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Archive (UNRRA), United Nations, New York, S-520, Box

295. Letter from A.A. Sorieri to Thomas Cooley (31 December 1944).

17

C a t a l a n [fn. 10], 105.

18

UNRRA [fn. 16], S-520, Box 295. “Budget for Camps in Italy” (24 August 1944).

6

between Italian refugees of this latter sort as profughi or sfollati and other displaced

(foreign) persons as rifugiati stranieri, though the terms profughi and rifugiati were often

applied to both Italian and foreign refugees; sfollati, in turn, was sometimes used for

Italians internally displaced within the peninsula, suggesting a lack of consistent usage of

such labels.

19

The international agencies like IRO further divided the “foreign” DPs into

“local refugees” and “transit refugees”; the former referred to refugees already in Italy or

who made their way there on their own, the latter to DPs transferred to Italy by IRO for

the sole purpose of processing an immigration abroad.

20

Initially, too, the Allies,

UNRRA, and the Italian government restricted eligibility for aid to those persons

displaced by the war, thereby excluding post-hostility refugees. The impracticality of this

approach soon became evident.

21

The majority of the national refugees came to Italy after 1945 and the war’s end, in

particular (but not exclusively) as a result of the terms of the Peace Treaty of 1947 that

decreed that persons who had been resident in the ceded territories (the Dodecanese

Islands, southern Istria, and parts of Valle d’Aosta and Alto Adige) on or before 6 June

19

On sfollati as a descriptive term for internally displaced Italians, go to Matteo S a n f i l i p p o , Per una

storia dei profughi stranieri e dei campi di accoglienza e di reclusione nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra,
Studi Emigrazione/Migration Studies XLIII, n. 164 (2006), 835-856, here 838 (fn. 16).

20

International Refugee Organization Archive (IRO), Archives Nationales, Paris, Fond AJ 43, 407,

Program Committee Paper No. 1 (15 November 1949). During the war, the Allied Expeditionary Force
distinguished “refugees” (stateless civilians) from “displaced persons” (individuals displaced out of their
everyday environment in terms of state, language, and family). DPs were then further sub-classified as
“United Nations Displaced Persons” (displaced individuals from Allied or neutral states) and “Enemy DP”
(DPs from enemy states) or “Ex-Enemy Displaced Persons” (individuals from states like Italy). Gerald
S t e i n a c h e r , L’Alto Adige come regione di transito dei rifugiati (1945-1950), Studi
Emigrazione/Migration Studies XLIII, n. 164 (2006), 821-834, here 821.

21

As a letter dated 12 November 1946 from V.E. Simcock in the DP Division at the Allied Commission

Headquarters stated,

No one should now be admitted direct to a D.P. camp in Italy proper, unless the
individual is either already in possession of a D.P. card or can offer conclusive proof that
he or she was displaced by reason of the war prior to 8 May 1945, and is otherwise
eligible for Allied care. The burden of proof in such cases should rest with the applicant.
This ruling will permit genuine displaced persons, who have hitherto succeeded in
supporting themselves in Italy, being admitted to Allied Commission Camps when their
funds run out.

UNRRA [fn. 16], S-0527-0980, PAG-4/3-0-14-3-0-1, UNRRA Subject Files 1944-1949, D.P. Operations
(Italy).

On the problematic nature of the classification “post-hostility refugees,” go to Kim S a l o m o n , The

Cold War Heritage: UNRRA and the IRO as Predecessors of UNHCR, in: The Uprooted: Forced Migration
as an International Problem in the Post-War Era, ed. Göran R y s t a d , Lund 1990, 157-178, here 166.

On changes in eligibility for assistance for Italian refugees from Istria and Dalmatia once the Italian

government had assumed responsibility for them, see V o l k [fn. 4], 83.

7

1940 could “opt” for Italian citizenship if they satisfied several criteria (the most

significant being Italian as “language of customary use”). Opting for Italian citizenship

required relocating to a territorially diminished Italy. By 1952, Italy had also lost all of its

possessions in Africa (Libya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea), with the exception of Somalia, which

Italy administered under a UN mandate for a decade. An estimated 400,000-450,000

persons returned from the former colonies, with as many as an additional 250,000 coming

from the territories in Venezia Giulia ceded between 1947 and 1954.

22

These “national” arrivals joined a large population of foreign refugees. Indeed, after

1945, among the European nations only Germany received greater numbers of refugees

than did Italy. Studies done at the time explicitly link the impact of Italy’s “own”

refugees with the country’s inability to effectively absorb the influx of foreign displaced

persons.

23

Italy’s chronic unemployment problems, housing shortages, widespread

poverty, and tradition of defining citizenship in ethnic-linguistic terms (according to the

principle of ius sanguinis) meant that few foreign DPs could hope for naturalization.

24

A

UN report published in 1951, for example, admitted, “The refugee problem in Italy thus

became how to get rid of refugees [i.e foreign refugees]; this is still the most pressing

need to-day.”

25

At the same time, Italian refugees typically receive short shrift in such

22

The 1951 United Nations Preliminary Report of a Survey of the Refugee Problem cited 400,000 from the

lost African colonies. Underscoring the interderminancy of some of these national refugees, the author’s
report added, “To make things worse, over 100,000 people – again quoting the official estimate – fled to
Italy from Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, and nobody seemed to know quite what sort of refugees many of
them were.” United Nations [fn. 7], 238. According to a recent publication commemorating the work of the
Committee for Assistance to Refugees of Venezia Giulia, 1,089,516 "national refugees" received assistance
in the fifty year period between 1947 and 1997. I s t i t u t o R e g i o n a l e p e r l a C u l t u r a
I s t r i a n a , Esodo e Opera Assistenza Profughi: Una Storia Parallela, Trieste-Roma 1997, 5. These
numbers are, not surprisingly, the object of contestation and political manipulation, particularly in the
Julian case.

The numbers of persons returning to the Alto Adige were small when compared to the Julian refugees

and colonial repatriates. Approximately 74,500 persons emigrated from the South Tyrol to Austria and
Germany as the result of the 1939 option brokered between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. In 1945,
around 38,000 of these optants were in the Bundesland in the Austrian Tyrol; their reacquisition of Italian
citizenship and repatriation to the Italian Tyrol occurred only in 1948. Gerald Steinacher notes that these
South Tyrol optants constituted only a fraction of displaced persons coming into Italy through the Alps.
S t e i n a c h e r [fn. 19], 827-828. Likewise, they constituted only a fraction of the former Italian citizens
coming back to Italy; they differed from the Giulian refugees and colonial repatriates in that they had
renounced Italian citizenship for that of the Reich and then had to reacquire it.

23

B o u s c a r e n [fn. 7], 25.

24

On citizenship in postwar Italy, see Pamela B a l l i n g e r , Borders of the Nation, Borders of Citizenship:

Italian Repatriation and the Redefinition of National Identity after World War II, Comparative Studies in
Society and History 48, no. 3 (2007), forthcoming.

25

United Nations [fn. 7], 239.

8

treatments, as a result of the administrative division of labor that placed most such

national refugees out of the purview of the international agencies.

26

As the UN report

puts it, the situation of such Italian refugees “however interesting, is of no concern of this

survey, even though they are considered as refugees by the Italian Government.”

27

This comment reflects the practical and conceptual division of labor for refugee

care that emerged at war’s end. During the last year of the war and prior to the formation

of UNRRA, all refugees in Italy had been the concern of the Allied Commission Camps

(ACC) with the Italian Refugee Branch looking after Italian civilians and the Displaced

Persons Sub-Commission charged with the care of refugees of any other nationality.

28

After the war, agreements made by UNRRA and its successors IRO and UNHCR meant

that the Italian government assumed responsibility for “national refugees” whereas the

international bodies became responsible for those individuals displaced from (and

therefore outside of) their home country.

29

Voluntary agencies such as the National

Catholic Welfare Conference and the War Relief Services – grouped together in the

American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Italian Service - also began to care for

foreign refugees.

26

But on IRO and debates over Italians from Venezia Giulia, consult Pamela B a l l i n g e r , Opting for

Identity: The Politics of International Refugee Relief in Venezia Giulia, 1948-1952, Acta Histriae 14
(2006), 115-140.

27

United Nations [fn. 7], 340.

28

UNRRA [fn. 16], S-0520 Box 295, “The Problem of ‘Italian Refugees’ and ‘Displaced Persons’ in

Liberated Italy. (Secret) Intelligence Memorandum” (19 May 1944).

29

For the agreement regarding the transfer of responsibility for displaced persons from SACMED to

UNRRA, go to UNRRA [fn. 16], S-0527-0980 PAG 4/3-0-14-3-0-1, UNRRA Subject Files 1944-1949.
Even when such arrangements had been made, interpreting them and putting them in practice did not
always prove so clear cut. A 1946 letter from S.M. Keeny, Chief of UNRRA Mission, to Italian Prime
Minister De Gasperi notes the confusion created by the mistranslation from English into Italian of the word
“ultimate.” This had led to the false impression on the part of the Italian authorities that UNRRA held them
“responsible for the assistance, maintenance and repatriation of refugees,” whereas the original English
versions had read that UNRRA recognized the “ultimate authority and responsibility” of the Italian
government. Keeny added further clarification when he stated, “non-Italian displaced persons ineligible for
UNRRA assistance, are not the responsibility of UNRRA and remain the responsibility of the Allied armed
forces. The maintenance and repatriation of such persons will remain the responsibility of the Allied or
eventually of the Italian Government, in accordance with whatever relations may exist between the Allied
armed forces and the Italian Government.” UNRRA [fn. 16], S-0527-0846 PAG-4/3.0.14.0.2:4, UNRRA
Subject Files 1944-1949. “Displaced Persons Agreement (SACMED)” (29 July 1946).

In the minutes from the 1946 meetings of the Displaced Persons Committee of the UNRRA Italian

Mission, internal debates over who UNRRA should assume responsibility for reveal differing opinions over
whether UNRRA had any obligation to help Italians from “abroad” returning to Italy as refugees. The
UNRRA Repatriation Office actually assisted some Italians in Italy wishing to return to the former
colonies, particularly Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. UNRRA [fn. 16], S-0527, Box 864. “Minutes of the First
Meeting of the Displaced Persons Committee, UNRRA Italian Mission” (4 July 1946).

9

Given the international agencies’ mandate to assist refugees outside of their own

country, UNRRA and IRO staff considered refugees in the Italian peninsula coming from

formerly Italian lands who could demonstrate their Italian-ness as within their home

country and thereby ineligible for aid. The practical task of determining identity,

however, proved anything but simple, particularly in the case of the linguistically and

culturally mixed border populations of Venezia Giulia. This resulted in extended debates

within the IRO organization about displaced persons from Venezia Giulia and a

questioning of a policy that permitted ethnic “Slavs” (who had not reacquired Italian

citizenship) from the territory to receive IRO aid. In the end, IRO did permit some

exceptions for ethnic “Italians” from Venezia Giulia and allowed a limited number to

emigrate under IRO auspices.

30

The change in IRO policies nonetheless remained an exception that proves the

rule,

31

as the emerging international regime of refugee management continued to enforce

a strong distinction between those displaced outside of their home countries and the

internally displaced. Notes Guy Goodwin-Gill, after World War II “[a]part from those

countries actually having to deal with large populations of ‘national refugees’, a

consensus emerged that such refugees were not ‘an international problem’, and did not

require international protection.”

32

Even in Italy, where there did exist a large population

of national refugees, the broad division of labor – i. e. that national governments took

care of their own refugees and international agencies assisted foreign DPs – held for the

most part.

From July 1945, the Ministero per l’Assistenza Postbellica (MAP) began to care for

national refugees in Italy, taking over the work of the Alto commissariato per l’assistenza

morale e materiale ai profughi di guerra. The Ufficio per la Venezia Giulia (UVG),

subsumed within the Interior Ministry and soon transferred under the Presidenza del

30

On this, see B a l l i n g e r [fn. 26].

31

Rune Johansson asserts, “The question of in-homeland refugees or ‘national refugees’ also poses certain

problems . . . Changes in state sovereignty and state borders apart, it is however problematic to consider a
person a refugee if he is still in his home country. There have been certain cases of ‘national refugees’, i.e.
individuals who have once been considered to be refugees and then been repatriated, but they have
generally not been accorded status as refugees.” J o h a n s s o n [fn. 15], 237.

32

Guy S. G o o d w i n - G i l l , Different Types of Forced Migration Movements as an International and

National Problem, in: The Uprooted: Forced Migration as an International Problem in the Post-War Era, ed.
Göran R y s t a d , Lund 1990, 15-46, here 28.

10

Consiglio dei Ministri, came into existence in January 1946, with the aim of both aiding

refugees coming from the disputed territory of Venezia Giulia and with demonstrating the

essential Italian-ness of that territory; by the end of that year, the Office for Venezia

Giulia had been replaced by the Ufficio per le Zone di Confine (UFZ), which also had the

task of assisting national refugees displaced by the redrawing of the borders with Austria

and France.

33

From the start, then, aid to Italy’s national refugees, became caught up in

the politics of territorial claims and the “propaganda for Italian-ness (italianità).”

34

These various offices coexisted alongside the Comitato Nazionale per i Rifugiati

Italiani (CNRI), a parastatal entity that came into being in 1947 to assist refugees from

Italy’s lost territories, and its successor the Opera per l’Assistenza ai Profughi Giuliani

Dalmati, whose focus narrowed to aiding Italians coming from the ceded Adriatic

regions.

35

In 1967, the scope of the organization widened again, when the OAPGD gave

way to the Opera per l’Assistenza ai Profughi Giuliani e Dalmati e ai Rimpatriati

(OAPGDR).

36

In addition, numerous private associations, as well as the Vatican’s relief

arm (Pontificia Opera di Assistenza), helped the refugees in a variety of ways.

Reconstructing the story of such assistance proves challenging for many reasons, not

least of which is the wide dispersal of many of the documents throughout ecclesiastical,

local, regional, and national archives in Italy and loss of the archive of the

OAPGD/OAPGDR.

37

Even the exact number of Italian refugee camps and their final

33

V o l k [fn. 4], 64-66.

34

Liliana F e r r a r i , Gli Esuli a Trieste (1947-1953), in: Storia di un esodo. Istria 1945-1956, ed. Cristiana

C o l u m m i et. al., Trieste 1980, 419-468, here 433; also V o l k [fn. 4], 71.

35

A 1952 law (Law 137) recognized four official categories of Italian refugees: refugees from the former

colonies, from those territories ceded by the terms of the 1947 Peace Treaty, from foreign territories, and
from national territories devastated by war. Spazzali claims that the Italian state offered aid to over a
million national refugees. Roberto S p a z z a l i , Assistenza, come?, in C.R.P. Per una storia dei campi
profughi Istriani, Fiumani e Dalmati in Italia (1945-1970), ed. Piero D e l b e l l o , Trieste 2004, 45-47, here
45. The OAPGD later became the Ente Nazionale Lavoratori Rimpatri e Profughi (ENLRP), which was
dissolved in 1977. V o l k [fn. 4], 94.

36

For the complex picture of (para)statal refugee relief for refugees from Venezia Giulia, as well as various

private advocacy committees and associations, see V o l k [fn. 4]. On the OAPGD, I s t i t u t o
R e g i o n a l e p e r l a C u l t u r a I s t r i a n a [fn. 22].

37

Enrico N e a m i , Campi profughi in Italia: Tanti archivi per un archivio?, in: C.R.P. Per una storia dei

campi profughi Istriani, Fiumani e Dalmati in Italia (1945-1970), ed. Piero D e l b e l l o , Trieste 2004, 29-
43, here 36-38. On the challenges posed by the sources on displaced persons and refugees in Italy, which
are widely dispersed and some of which remain inaccessible (such as those for the Pontificia Opera di
Assistenza), consult S a n f i l i p p o [fn. 19], 835-836, 855. Ironically, Sanfilippo’s inaccurate portrayal of
the status of Italian “national refugees” reflects the potential dangers created by the diffused nature of the

11

closure remains imprecise; one scholar (Ernesto Susigan) estimates 76 such camps. Volk

counts 106 camps, including camps for Italian refugees from other former possessions.

38

A request for aid to the Commune of Trieste from a group of refugees in the camp at

Prosecco reveals that as late as 1974, some Italian refugees had not yet been resettled

outside the camps.

39

The Opera per l’Assistenza ai Profughi Giuliani e Dalmati and its successor

(OAPGDR) dedicated considerable attention to finding employment for Italian refugees,

to assisting elderly refugees, providing education, and to carrying out a census of the

refugee population. The absolute priority, however, consisted in providing housing for

the refugees, with the two entities building 7,733 housing units in 39 provinces for over

35,000 refugees from Italy’s lost territories.

40

In some areas, concentrated settlements for

refugees were built, as in the case of the Villaggio Giuliano-Dalmata in the EUR district

in Rome, the agricultural settlement of Fertilia in Sardinia, and the Villaggio dei

Pescatori in Duino, near Trieste. The city of Trieste and its environs became a kind of

vast refugee camp, with a concentration of national refugees from Istria and Dalmatia

initially living in camps and private accommodation. For the most part, by the second

half of the 1960s these refugees had received or found housing in apartment blocs in

newly built quarters ringing the city; the 1974 request from refugees in Prosecco,

however, reminds us that not all Italian refugees were so lucky. Historian Sandi Volk

estimates that of 11,872 apartments created for all residents of the province of Trieste in

the 21 years following the war, 4,302 were allocated to Italian (i. e. “national”)

refugees.

41

During the same period, Trieste continued to host camps for foreign refugees

coming from Central and Eastern Europe. Yugoslavs constituted the principal group of

foreigners in Trieste, though the city also hosted White Russians (many of whose

naturalized Yugoslav citizenship had been revoked by the socialist regime), Bulgarians,

Hungarians, Greeks, Poles, Czechs, Romanians, Volksdeutsche, and Albanians.

42

relevant archival sources; Sanfilippo uses only documents from the Italian archives, missing key
dimensions of the international response to refugees of various stripes in Italy.

38

V o l k [fn. 4], 75.

39

N e a m i [fn. 37], 32.

40

I s t i t u t o R e g i o n a l e p e r l a C u l t u r a I s t r i a n a [fn. 22], 7-9; V o l k [fn. 4], 99-103.

41

V o l k [fn. 4], 314.

42

On the “situation of foreign refugees in the zone of Trieste,” see the telespresso of 4 August 1950 from

the Ufficio Consigliere Politico Italiano Trieste. Ministero degli Affari Esteri (MAP), Affari Politici (AP),

12

Perhaps nowhere on the Italian peninsula did the different tracts of refugee relief

response for nationals and non-nationals and their different respective goals - integration

versus resettlement abroad - appear in such sharp contrast as in the city of Trieste, an

irony given that Trieste only returned to Italian control in 1954 after nine years of Anglo-

American Allied Military Government (six years of which Trieste nominally existed as a

Free Territory of Trieste). Trieste’s liminal position, of course, made its nationalization

all the more crucial for the Italian state. Italian authorities and groups pushed for

resettlement of Istrian and Dalmatian refugees in the city even before its territorial

disposition had been decided. The British and American administrators of Zone A instead

initially worked to discourage resettlement by either Italian or “foreign” refugees in the

area, only shifting their policy on Italian refugees after 1950.

43

The Displaced in Trieste

In Trieste, the establishment of Allied assistance was delayed as a result of the forty-

day period of Yugoslav military presence in the city, which ended in June 1945 with the

Yugoslav withdrawal. An Anglo-American Allied Military Government then assumed

administrative control until the final disposition of the city and surrounding territory

could be determined. Beginning in July 1945, the AMG directed both national and

foreign refugees needing immediate aid to the Ente Comunale di Assistenza (ECA).

Figures for November of that year reveal among the aid recipients 3660 national refugees

from Istria and Dalmatia.

44

An Italian Comitato per l’Assistenza Postbellica began

operating in the zone in March of 1946.

45

Soon after, though, the Allied Military Government began to direct its attention to

aiding non-Italian DPs. By March 1949 the AMG had elaborated a relatively complex

structure for aid and assistance, with the Department for Social Assistance serving as an

umbrella for the smaller offices of Public Assistance, Social Insurance, Aid to Infants and

1950-57 Jugoslavia, b. 546. Also M c G u r n [fn. 5]. For various rolls on displaced persons in the FTT
between 1949 and 1954, consult the United States National Archives, Washington, D.C., AMG.FTT, Box
873 165.66; Box 874 165.70. Some of these foreign refugees in Trieste organized themselves into
“National Refugee Committees”; on the Bulgarian section, go to MAP, AP [fn. 42], 1950-57 Trieste, b.
514,, “Trieste: Comitati bulgari” (23 October 1951).

43

F e r r a r i [fn. 34], 427-430, 454.

44

C a t a l a n [fn. 10], 110.

45

V o l k [fn. 4], 159.

13

Children, Refugees, Tracing for missing persons, statistics and accounting.

46

The AMG’s

Office of Social Assistance collaborated with the Italian representatives of the

reconfigured Ufficio Provinciale di Trieste della Assistenza Post-Bellica in Trieste, which

commenced operations in Trieste in 1949 and focused its energies on aiding Italian

refugees from Istria and Dalmatia. The Ufficio Provinciale acquired the informal

designation of the “Palutan Committee,” taking its name from the President of the Zone

(Gino Palutan).

47

In contrast to these pro-Italian groups like the Palutan Committee, however, the

AMG did not actively support resettlement of Italian refugees in Trieste until 1952. In

response to the mass exodus of the residents of the Istrian city of Pola/Pula, formerly in

Zone A and then awarded to Yugoslavia by the Peace Treaty of 1947, refugees making

their way to Trieste found themselves transferred to nearby towns in Italy such as Grado,

Monfalcone, and Padova.

48

This reflected the AMG’s rejection of requests by the Italian

state and pro-Italian groups to settle the Pola/Pula refugees en masse in Zone A.

49

Likewise, other refugees from Fiume/Rijeka and southern Istria who had opted for

Italian citizenship by terms of the treaty for the most part transited through Trieste to

camps in Udine and other parts of Italy. In Udine, the AMG ran dual camps for non-

Italian and Italian displaced persons.

50

In Trieste, out of four AMG run camps only a

single center – the Silos, near the train station – was available for Italian refugees up and

through 1947 as the result of the AMG’s desire to use the city as merely a transit point for

Italian refugees in order to avoid antagonizing the already delicate political relations in

the cities between pro-Italian and pro-Yugoslav groups.

Both AMG policy and the economic and housing difficulties in Trieste discouraged

large-scale settlement there by Italian refugees at that time.

51

By 1950, however, the

46

S p a z z a l i [fn. 35], 47.

47

F e r r a r i [fn. 34], 433. See also the letter from Castellani at the Ministero degli Affari Esteri Presidenza

Consiglio Ministri (20 May 1950). MAP, AP [fn. 42], 1950-57 Italia, b. 571. See also the letter (30 June
1949) from F.G.A. Parsons at AMG HQ to the Italian Mission Trieste. MAP, AP [fn. 42], 1950-57 Italia, b.
571.

48

F e r r a r i [fn. 34], 427.

49

V o l k [fn. 4], 158, 164,169.

50

F e r r a r i [fn. 34], 428. Also refer to the Confidential letter to David Hunter from Karel Ornstein,

“Repatriation to Central and Eastern European Countries through the AMG Evacuation Camp at Udine”
(12 June 1946). UNRRA [fn. 16], S-0527-0998 PAG 4/3-0-14-3-1-1-2, UNRRA Subject Files 1944-1949.

51

F e r r a r i [fn. 34], 430.

14

Italian Government had authorized funds to build permanent and emergency housing for

the Istrian and Dalmatian refugees, including in the contested Zone A.

52

This project was

the fruit of an agreement between the AMG and the Italian Government, signaling the

beginning of a shift in AMG attitudes about the possibilities of resettlement by Italian

refugees in Zone A.

53

Volk traces this shift to the larger transformations in the British-

American view of Trieste after Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform in 1948.

Previously, Trieste’s Western administrators had viewed the city as a place to halt the

advance of state socialism and as a useful propaganda tool in Italy’s 1948 elections (in

which the electoral victory of the Italian communists remained a real possibility). As

these perceived roles became less important after the electoral success of the Christian

Democrats in 1948 and Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform that same year,

Trieste’s Anglo-American governors redefined Zone A as a strategic buffer zone between

East and West and stressed their role there as neutral mediators.

54

Given this redefinition of security interests and reconceptualization of Trieste’s place

in the Cold War order, the newfound willingness of the AMG to permit some Italian

refugees to remain permanently in Trieste seems paradoxical. Why would an

administration stressing its neutrality in the Italo-Yugoslav dispute concede to the desire

of Italian interests to settle Istrian and Dalmatian refugees in the city? Volk maintains that

the change in policy represented the AMG’s tacit acceptance of a population exchange

between Zone A and Zone B in order to facilitate the eventual resolution of the dispute

and thereby stabilize relations with Yugoslavia,

55

now seen as a useful buffer between

the democratic and socialist blocs in Europe. Volk’s claims that a significant number of

Slavs from Zone A migrated to Yugoslavia requires further evidence and study in order

to validate the reality of a two-way population exchange or transfer. Regardless,

however, the AMG’s shift in attitude towards Italian resettlement in Zone A marked the

beginning of widespread resettlement in and around the city.

52

Ibid., 454.

53

V o l k [fn. 4], 82.

54

H.W. B r a n d s , The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World,

1947-1960, New York 1989; Beatrice H e u s e r , Western Containment Policies in the Cold War. The
Yugoslav Case, 1948-53, London 1989; Ann L a n e , Britain, the Cold War and Yugoslav Unity, 1941-
1949, Brighton 1996.

55

V o l k [fn. 4], 337-340.

15

Beginning in 1952, the OAPGD with the technical assistance of UNRRA-Casas

began to build refugee housing in and around Trieste, having finally received AMG

permission to operate in the Zone.

56

Ferrari interprets the siting of these emergency

barracks and permanent settlements in areas heavily inhabited by autochthonous Slovenes

as a political choice to foster stability and consensus among the population of displaced

Italians and shore up areas that historically had not been ethnically Italian,

57

a theme

elaborated by Volk in his study. Volk notes that Italian leaders and pro-Italian groups of

the time explicitly described the establishment of semi-autonomous refugee quarters

(borghi) in and around the city as a “bonifica nazionale” or national reclamation.

58

By contrast, neither the Italian authorities nor the AMG encouraged foreign DPs to

settle in Trieste, seeing it purely as a transit point. From the Italian view point, the hard

work of nationalizing a historically mixed population should not be undermined by the

settlement of diverse refugee populations in Zone A. Pro-Italian groups worried most of

all about the large numbers of displaced Slavs from Yugoslavia (especially Slovenes and

Croats, though other Slavic and non-Slavic Yugoslav refugees also swelled the ranks of

the DPs in Trieste) but also feared the settlement of other peoples from Eastern Europe,

who became subsumed under the misnomer “Balkanic refugees.”

59

Though inaccurate in

identifying the origins of many of these foreign DPs, the “Balkanic” label accurately

expressed the pro-Italian opinion that such groups proved antithetical (and thereby

threatening) to the traditions of civiltà and italianità that the Italian nationalists invoked

as the city’s heritage.

The AMG received repeated requests that these DPs be transferred from Zone A and

their place in refugee camps taken by Italian profughi.

60

As the AMG period drew to a

close and the Italians prepared to assume control over Trieste, officials in Rome fretted

over the numbers and potential loyalties of refugees from Yugoslavia. In 1954, for

example, a letter from the Ministry of the Interior claimed to have evidence that some

“emissaries of Tito” (i. e. spies) figured among the Yugoslav refugees in Trieste, citing

56

V o l k [fn. 4], 190; Elena M a r c h i g i a n i , Una lunga emergenza abitativa, in: Trieste Anni Cinquanta:

La città della ricostruzione urbanistica, edilizia sociale e industria a Trieste 1945-1957, ed. Paola D i
B i a g i , Elena M a r c h i g i a n i , Alessandra M a r i n , Tavagnacco 2004, 42-71, here 69.

57

F e r r a r i [fn. 34], 455-456.

58

For various uses of the term bonifica nazionale (or etnica), see V o l k [fn. 4], 195, 205, 252.

59

V o l k [fn. 4], 196-199.

60

Ibid., 197-198.

16

the fact that a picture of Tito had been found hanging in the room of a refugee in the San

Sabba camp. The Ministry stressed the need to transfer such refugees to Austria or

Germany before Trieste returned to Italy.

61

Initially, however, these “foreign” refugee flows had not proven overwhelming, at

least in numerical terms. In 1947 the AMG could still report, “The flow of Non Italian

Refugees through the Displaced Persons Centre, Trieste, is small but critical to the city of

Trieste. In the past month 19 non Italians left the camp for the city because of their

prolonged stay in this camp which has only transit facilities.”

62

As numbers of

“spontaneous” refugees increased, however, the AMG struggled to restrict their flow into

Zone A.

AMG personnel, for example, frequently complained that the Yugoslav authorities

permitted refugees to cross into Zone B (from where they made their way to Trieste) or

even provided them with travel documents (a Yugoslav lasciapassare) in order to

“dump” refugees in the city. In a February 2, 1950 memo addressed to the Chief at the

U.S. Department of the Interior J.A. Kellett, Displaced Persons Officer for the AMG-

FTT, asserted, “it is obvious that the Yugoslav authorities are permitting or even assisting

documented persons to enter this Zone without the necessary permit.”

63

The following

year the Italian government noted the AMG’s efforts to restrict the entry of refugees from

Yugoslavia (including those who had opted for Italian citizenship) into Trieste by

requiring an English or American visa.

64

At the same time, for the AMG and the international agencies, Trieste – like Italy

itself – figured as a key point on the route for foreign refugees being resettled abroad

(mostly outside of Europe). The “artificiality” of the Triestine economy, bolstered as it

was by AMG and Marshall Plan dollars but remaining in limbo until the final disposition

of the territory, and the fact that into the 1950s the refugee population in Trieste

continued to grow, rather than diminish, meant that authorities (Italian and international)

never envisioned resettling non-Italians there. As a 1951 letter from representatives of the

61

MAP, AP [fn. 42], 1950-57 Trieste, b. 693. “Profughi stranieri nel T.L.T.” (16 September 1954).

62

IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1038. Letter (13 November 1947) from E.G. Shinkle to Officer in Charge, IRO,

Rome.

63

U.S. National Archives [fn. 42], AMG-FTT, Box 869.

64

In response, the Yugoslav authorities began to direct optants away from Trieste and towards Gorizia. On

this, refer to the letter (4 December 1951) from M. Paulucci to the Legazione d’Italia in Belgrade and the
Ministero degli Affari Esteri Rome. MAP, AP [fn. 42], 1950-57 Trieste, b. 513.

17

Voluntary Agencies in Trieste put it,

65

"The refugee situation in Trieste is entirely new

and unexpected and differs from all other fields of the IRO operation in Europe owing to

the continued influx of new arrivals which has swelled the AMG Camp Population from

less than 1000 to over 4900 within the last 18 months." In addition, Trieste possessed a

large number of so-called “hard core” cases of refugees deemed difficult to resettle, since

many aged and sick displaced persons managed to travel to Trieste by train; such

individuals numbered among those the AMG accused Yugoslavia of “dumping” into

Zone A. Tuberculosis proved a particular concern among this population. The authors of

this letter concluded, "Finally, the absence of any prospect of local settlement in the city

of Trieste within the foreseeable future, brings into relief the emphatic urgency and

uniqueness of the situation which seem to justify special measures.”

66

As part of these “special measures,” the AMG worked closely with the international

bodies, particularly IRO, to assist the non-Italian displaced either to repatriate or resettle

abroad. In 1949, for example, IRO leased the Casa dell’Emigrante – an emigrant “hotel”

dating back to the Austrian period – from the AMG to use as a processing and transit

center. The Casa could provide short-term dormitory accommodations for up to 1080

persons.

67

Refugees entering one of the four AMG-run camps (at Opicina, S. Sabba,

Gesuiti, and S. Sabba annex) would first be held at Opicina/Opčine (a town on the karst

65

IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1041, “Request for I.R.O. Classification of Trieste Hard Core” (11 August 1951).

66

IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1041, “Request for I.R.O. Classification of Trieste Hard Core” (11 August 1951).

67

For the lease agreement of May 1949 between the AMG and IRO to lease the Casa dell’Emigrante,

consult IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1039 Italie. Initially, however, IRO had rejected the Casa dell’Emigrante as
unsuitable for its needs. A 1948 report by Fay Greene from the IRO Rome office to M[a]yer Cohen at IRO
headquarters in Geneva concluded,

Possible camp sites were visited in the free territory of Trieste. No suitable installations
were offered. The Casa Emigranti [sic], which had been built before the war by a
shipping company to accommodate emigrants, was considered too small (approximate
capacity 1,200). The main building had been bombed and the estimated cost of repairs
was 72,000,000 lire. IRO would be expected to meet the expense of repairs. Military
Authorities stated that basic repairs on the camp would be completed by 1 January 1949.
It was the opinion of most of the IRO group that basic repairs could not be completed by
1 January.
The Rice Warehouse was the other site offered. Captain Noaks, Director of the Port of
Trieste reported on 2 December that this building cannot be used for IRO purposes
because of political difficulties.
The approximate capacity of this camp would have been 2,000. Considerable expenditure
by IRO would have been necessary to convert the warehouse into living quarters.

IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1039.

18

above Trieste), where IRO interviewers would assess their potential eligibility for IRO

aid.

68

A 1951 report of a field trip to Trieste by Florence Boester of the Voluntary Societies

division noted the AMG’s appreciation of the help it received from IRO, given the severe

overcrowding in refugee camps and the AMG’s inadequate resources to cope with the

problems. Wrote Boester of AMG Colonel Bartlett, “He has no welfare staff whatsoever,

and welcomes assistance of all kinds . . . He and his staff cooperate in every way possible

with IRO and the agencies, through logistical support and provision of local staff for the

agencies to the maximum within his budgetary limitations. He would welcome any

publicity which might serve to bring much-needed help.”

69

Although overwhelmed by refugees arriving from Yugoslavia, with a large

percentage of “hard core” cases among them, the AMG actually encouraged the

international agencies to develop and expand Trieste as a transit point for refugees who

had already been accepted for IRO assistance (in contrast to the “spontaneous” flows

arriving from Yugoslavia and Zone B). This diverged from a pro-Italian view that Trieste

should ideally accommodate only Italian refugees, who would then be rapidly settled and

integrated there. In the effort to revitalize the port’s economy, the AMG and local

businessmen hoped that the refugee traffic from IRO might actually serve as a source of

income.

70

Indeed, the AMG actively solicited IRO – whose initial delegations to Trieste

had expressed concern about the inadequate facilities there – to use the city as an

embarkation point for DPs from Austria and Southern Germany immigrating to the

United States.

71

Previously, UNRRA had used Trieste as the transit port for the Austrian mission.

72

UNRRA’s choice of Trieste reflected the port’s broader role as a key transit point for the

Allies, who used the port to supply Austria and Czechoslovakia.

73

UNRRA-Central, the

68

IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1053 Bureau di Trieste, “I.R.O. Space in A.M.G. Refugee Camps” (19 September

1951).

69

IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1044 “Report on Field Trip to Trieste” (August 16-19 1951).

70

IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1039 Italie, “Inspection of Trieste” (7 May 1949).

71

IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1039 Italie, “Emigrant Transit of Italy” (n.d).

72

UNRRA [fn. 16], S-527-1138; “History of the Port Traffic Office – Trieste: Austrian Mission” (26 June

1947). For the roster of UNRRA ships coming into Trieste for the Austrian Mission up to 25 June 1947, go
to UNRRA [fn. 16], S-527-1138 UNRRA.

73

Giulio M e l l i n a t o , Il governo delle risorse, in: Ricostruzione. Trieste tra ricostruzione e ritorno

all’Italia (1945-1954), ed. Ariella V e r r o c c h i o , Tavagnacco 2004, 38-49, here 43.

19

UNRRA office in Trieste, had the task “to centralize and coordinate the receipt of

shipments for all four receiving countries; namely, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,

and Yugoslavia, and to generally supervise and control the entire operation.” The office’s

ability to do this, however, was continually hampered by widespread theft and pilfering

from the port warehouses and railway transports.

74

Despite UNRRA’s choice of Trieste as a central transit port, IRO staff initially proved

reluctant to use Trieste as a base of operations. Urged by the AMG to utilize Trieste and

focused on how to wrap up operations in Italy, however, IRO eventually accorded the

city greater importance as a transit point for foreign refugees. In 1949, the AMG and IRO

announced an agreement “in consequence of which the port of Trieste has been chosen as

port of embarkation for refugees who, coming from the IRO collecting centers in

Northern Italy, Germany and Austria, are to be shipped by IRO to countries overseas.”

75

IRO expected groups of up to 1500 refugees at a time to arrive in Trieste and be housed

in the Casa dell’Emigrante, where the insurance company Lloyd Triestino would also

provide assistance. IRO never planned to stay long in Trieste, though, and expressed its

hope to close down the Casa dell’Emigrante by June 1, 1950, planning to maintain just a

small staff in the city until all refugees were resettled.

76

When IRO ceased operation in 1951, a sizable population of foreign refugees

remained in Trieste, left to be administered by the AMG, the voluntary agencies, and

IRO’s successor UNHCR and the International Committee on European Migration

(ICEM). UNHCR worked to find host countries for emigrating refugees whereas ICEM

financed and organized the transport of these displaced persons.

77

The US Escapees

Program, initiated in 1952, also worked to help those fleeing communist regimes.

Various charities in other European states also offered specific forms of aid to the foreign

refugees in Trieste. In 1954, for example, the Dutch Protestant radio station VPRO raised

money to help “hard core” cases in Trieste, including a scheme to offer asylum to four

74

UNRRA [fn. 16], S-527-1177, “Investigation of pilferage in Trieste 20-29 August” (7 September 1946).

On Yugoslav complaints that the civil police were complicit with these thefts and that arrested persons
were released on the grounds that such actions did not constitute theft but rather “sabotage against
Yugoslavia,” consult UNRRA [fn. 16], S-0527-1208 PAG-4/3.0.23.0:51, UNRRA Subject Files 1944-
1949, “Extract from B.B.C. Monitoring digest” (21 July 1946).

75

IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1039 Italie, “Trieste embarkation port for IRO refugees” (13 June 1949).

76

IRO [fn. 20], AJ 43, 1039 Italie (8 May 1950).

77

B o u s c a r e n [fn. 7], 17-18.

20

refugees sick with TB.

78

In that same year, French authorities also authorized use of the

“Hotel Regina” in Cannes to host 92 “hard core” cases (elderly and tuberculosis

sufferers) from Trieste.

79

Well into the 1960s, Trieste continued to be a hub for foreign DPs, including many

refugees whom the immigration countries did not find useful or desirable. A report on the

state of refugees published in 1960 by Kaye Webb and Ronald Searle documented the

continued problem of hard core cases in Trieste. The authors noted of the city, “Trieste is

now one of the cities of ‘first asylum’ for many refugees, for Hungarians who go first to

Yugoslavia and then over the border to Italy, and for Yugoslavs themselves.”

80

That year,

roughly 400 Yugoslavs fled to Italy each month. A screening commission made up of

representatives of the UNHCR and the Italian government determined which of these

refugees proved eligible for political asylum. These refugees received assistance at one of

ten camps in Italy.

81

A year later, in 1961, Yugoslavs (for the most part Slovenes and

Croats) constituted the largest number of persons aided by the US Escapees Program;

many Yugoslavs fleeing their country made their way to Trieste. San Sabba, a former

concentration camp during the Nazi occupation and after the war a “transit” camp for

both foreign and national refugees, numbered among the centers Webb and Searles

visited for their 1960 study. Echoing earlier visitors to temporary refugee housing in

Trieste, they reported on the decrepit condition of the structures and lack of privacy.

The reality of continued refugee flows from Eastern Europe made it impossible for

authorities in Trieste to keep DPs out of the city, though the goal remained that of having

refugees transit through the city en route to their final destinations elsewhere. At the same

time, the challenges of creating housing and employment opportunities for Italian

refugees remained acute into the 1960s as a result of the mass exodus from Zone B

between 1953 and 1955, following the Memorandum of Understanding that “settled” the

Italian-Yugoslav border question. As did the foreign DPs, the Italian refugees often

suffered overcrowding, prompting inquiries and complaints into episodes of

“promiscuity.” In July 1958, for example, priest Mario Cividin sent the Bishop of Trieste

78

MAP, AP [fn. 42], 1950-57 Trieste, b. 693 (24 April 1954).

79

MAP, AP [fn. 42], 1950-57 Trieste, b. 693 (15 February 1954).

80

Kaye W e b b and Ronald S e a r l e , Refugees 1960: A report in words and drawings, London 1960, 26.

81

B o u s c a r e n [fn. 7], 55.

21

Antonio Santin a letter describing moral degradation in the camp at Opicina.

82

Although

it proves difficult in many instances to separate the truth from malicious rumors that

spread rapidly through and about the camps, the pervasiveness of such rumors and

jealousies also reflects a pernicious reality about camp life.

83

Given this situation, the

Opera per l’Assistenza ai Profughi Giuliani e Dalmati (along with other groups)

continued efforts to find employment for these displaced Italians and to house them.

The process of building permanent refugee housing in the province of Trieste that

began during the AMG period accelerated after 1954, as a result both of the intensified

population flows from former Zone B and the definitive return of Italian power.

84

Italy’s

“return” meant, among other things, that Italian legislation regarding refugees now

applied to Trieste, including the possibility for all Italian refugees in the city to become

residents. Though an OAPGD census of Trieste for February 1958 counted a staggering

50,836 esuli in Trieste,

85

not all esuli passed through or remained in the city; indeed, the

practical need to transfer some of the national refugees to other parts of Italy became

clear.

86

“Istrian villages” (villaggi istriani) arose in various parts of the Italian peninsula

thanks to the collaboration of UNNRA-Casas and OAPGD. The OAPGD also placed

refugees in small farmsteads in Friuli, the Veneto, and Lazio or on abandoned or

confiscated properties.

87

Many of the apartment blocs and refugee quarters that eventually came into existence

around Trieste did so on land expropriated – often from ethnically Slovene owners - for

this purpose. Volk estimates that 1,027,507 m

2

were dedicated to these refugee

quarters.

88

The coastline just west of the city near Duino Aurisina (Nabrežina),

historically a zone of Slovene fishermen and agriculturalists, became the site of particular

resettlement for Istrian fishermen, thereby Italianizing the sea and the crucial corridor

linking the city to “solidly” Italian territory to the west. This also neutralized Slovene

82

Alan M a l e , Sovraffolamento e promiscuità, in: C.R.P. Per una storia dei campi profughi Istriani,

Fiumani e Dalmati in Italia (1945-1970), ed. Piero D e l b e l l o , Trieste 2004, 129-131, here 129.

83

M a l e [fn. 82], 129.

84

V o l k [fn. 4], 252-253.

85

Ibid., 255-260.

86

Ibid., 274.

87

Massimiliano L a c o t a , Recuperare la dignità attraverso la memoria, in: C.R.P. Per una storia dei campi

profughi Istriani, Fiumani e Dalmati in Italia (1945-1970), ed. Piero D e l b e l l o , Trieste 2004, 13-16, here
13-15.

88

V o l k [fn. 4], 319.

22

claims to a deep-rooted maritime tradition, a reality that contradicted long-standing

nationalist associations of Italians and italianità with the coastline.

89

The constitution of separate, largely self-sufficient refugee quarters also helped

reinforce and even privilege an Istrian-Dalmatian refugee identity that created

resentments on the part of other Triestines, who had also suffered material losses and

unemployment as a result of the war but did not receive special compensations for

them.

90

Here we can see at work some of the mechanisms identified by Malkki for the

refugee camp, which tends to nurture a distinctive sense of the nation in exile. At some

general level, Trieste itself became home to what I have called “history in exile”.

91

At a

more specific level, the spatial dynamics of the refugee quarters within and adjacent to

the city helped perpetuate a distinct sense of refugee identity initially nourished in the

actual (Italian) refugee camps in the city.

In using the language of the “bonifica” to conceptualize and justify the creation of

compact refugee resettlements, the proponents of reclaiming mixed or historically

Slovene areas for the Italian nation and its symbolic carriers (the esuli) used the Italian

term for land reclamation. The term carried other meanings and connotations, however,

including the historical associations with the well-known land reclamations or bonifiche

of fascism, most famously the draining of the Pontine marshes. With the distance of more

than half a century, we can see the ways in which the postwar “bonifica nazionale” of

Trieste relied – as had the bonifiche of fascism - on the coercive power of the state to

bring about physical and social engineering. In both cases, as well, more metaphorical

understandings of moral uplift and positive hygiene (draining sites of contagion or

infection) accompanied projects of literal reclamation. For the proponents of an Italian

province of Trieste, Slovenes were “matter out of place” (to use Mary Douglas’ famous

phrase),

92

potentially polluting and threatening the territory. Dislocating the

autochthonous Slovene populations and replacing them with Italian refugees became the

“purifying” solution to this danger.

89

Pamela B a l l i n g e r , Lines in the Water, Peoples on the Map: Maritime Museums and the

Representation of Cultural Boundaries in the Upper Adriatic, Narodna umjetnost 43 (2006) 15-39; Maura
H a m e t z , Making Trieste Italian, 1918-1954, Woodbridge 2005, 162.

90

V o l k [fn. 4], 323; S p a z z a l i [fn. 35].

91

B a l l i n g e r [fn. 3].

92

Mary D o u g l a s , Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, London

1966, 35.

23

From an anthropological point of view, such a solution reveals an unintended irony,

given that refugees themselves often appear as liminal figures and “matter out of place.”

The liminality of the Istrian refugees was neutralized through their nationalization, a

project of first spatial and conceptual differentiation from foreign refugees and then

integration into the national territory.

Conclusion: Reconstructing Trieste, Reconstructing the Nation

In his rich and path-breaking study of the bonifica nazionale, Volk concludes that

local, regional, and national interests colluded in a conscious effort to Italianize Trieste

and its environs, thereby rendering an area famed for its intermixture (and its

cosmopolitanism under the Habsburgs) an ethnically and nationally “Italian” border post.

In Volk’s estimation, this policy had profoundly negative consequences not only for the

region’s autochthonous Slovenes but also for the Italian refugees from Istria and

Dalmatia themselves, who would have – in his terms – experienced a “less traumatic and

conditioned integration into new realities”

93

had they been dispersed throughout Italy. I

differ with some of the finer points of Volk’s analysis here, given that he focuses on the

political and economic situation in Trieste while downplaying the social and cultural, i. e.

the fact that many Istrians felt more at home in Trieste than they would have in Sicily or

Sardinia or Rome, many refugees already had relatives in Trieste, and many refugees

maintained relationships with relatives and neighbors who stayed behind in Yugoslavia.

Volk sees the refugees as pawns (which they often were) but they were not entirely

without agency, as individuals also made choices that had to do with a whole range of

calculations, including but not limited to economics and politics. Volk might also draw

out more of the deeper symbolic meanings attached to the very notion of the bonifica, as I

have suggested.

Doing so underlines the ways in which the liminality of the Italian refugees was

neutralized and nationalized, in part, through their differentiation from “foreign” DPs. In

practice, of course, this did not always prove so clear-cut, as internal debates within IRO

about how to distinguish the Italians from the Slavs among the “Venezian Giulian”

refugees demonstrate. IRO staff on the ground recognized the complexities of identity in

93

V o l k [fn. 4], 330.

24

Venezia Giulia, thereby mirroring the self-understandings of some of the refugees, whose

identities were not monocultural (or monolingual). The necessity of fitting one’s identity

into a clear-cut definition in order to receive aid, however, meant that many refugees of

mixed identity learned to articulate claims in an ethno-national idiom.

94

The motivations of international bodies like IRO in sorting out “national” refugees

from those deemed to be outside their home country proved different from those of the

Italian state and pro-Italian groups. For IRO, this classificatory separation proved

necessary in practical terms for it to fulfill its mandate (helping those outside of their

home country). Agencies like IRO inherited identity categories from states, however, and

their work ultimately reinforced ethnic and national distinctions. In Trieste, those

refugees classified as clearly non-Italian and those who appeared ethnically indeterminate

(i.e. liminal) received IRO help to leave the territory. Likewise, the AMG’s attitudes

towards refugees (Italian and other) reflected specific concerns about order and

governance in Zone A and broader strategic interests in the Cold War. Though motivated

by different interests than those of the Italian government and pro-Italian groups in

Trieste, the AMG’s policies also ultimately reinforced the national and foreign refugee

distinction and the divergent goals of their respective relief regimes (resettlement and

integration versus transit and resettlement abroad).

As I have only begun to address in this article, such differentiation processes occurred

throughout the Italian peninsula as Italians from Venezia Giulia and other lost

possessions in Africa and the Aegean received aid and assistance to integrate into Italian

life whereas other DPs “transited” through Italy. (Admittedly, a significant number of

these Italians also emigrated abroad due to the economic devastation of Italy during the

war.) In an ongoing larger research project, I am exploring the national/foreign refugee

distinction for Italy more generally. Elsewhere, I demonstrate that the seemingly

straightforward distinction drawn between national and foreign refugees was anything but

in practice – i.e. it required considerable ideological and actual labor to sort out the

national from the foreign for inhabitants of Italy’s former territories. For residents of

Italy’s various ex possessions, retaining (or reacquiring) citizenship in the post-fascist

94

For the nuances of the IRO debates and examples of refugees from Venezia Giulia who requested IRO

aid, go to B a l l i n g e r [fn. 26].

25

First Republic thus required a demonstration of Italian-ness which, in turn, highlighted

the very question of what constituted this Italian identity. Not everyone – i. e. ethnic

Slavs from Venezia Giulia or “blacks” from Ethiopia or Muslims from Libya or Greek

Orthodox residents of the Dodecanese Islands – was entitled to citizenship in the new

Italian state, even if they had been fascist Italy’s citizens or subjects and used Italian as

their “language of customary use.” In examining the legal and social criteria used for

determining which individuals in the former territories (not just those regulated by the

1947 Peace Treaty) had the right to migrate “back” to Italy, explicit importance was

given to language and domicile. Implicit assumptions about ethnicity, blood, and race

nonetheless proved just as crucial to the definition of Italian citizens after World War

II.

95

er

evidence and elaboration but I offer this article as an initial piece of a larger argument.

I would venture as a working hypothesis, then, that the process of sorting out and

thereby also constituting Italian national and foreign refugees thus represented a critical

nationalization process for all of Italy, not just for Trieste. Just as being a refugee in post-

war Europe tended to reinforce ethno-national sentiments among the displaced, for

individuals from the former possessions (who may previously have nurtured bicultural or

hybrid identities) the experience of displacement often helped consolidate an Italian

identity.

96

The refugees also served as key symbols of fascist Italy’s defeat and territorial

losses, making visible the necessity to remake Italians and Italy both conceptually and

physically (in terms of infrastructure like housing and the securing of new territorial

borders). In contrast to Trieste, the consciousness or intentionality of such a strategy at a

national level was not explicit. The effects, I would argue, nonetheless proved the same:

to reinforce an Italian ethno-national identity.

97

This thesis obviously requires furth

95

For a detailed analysis, go to B a l l i n g e r [fn. 24].

96

Mark W y m a n , DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951, Ithaca 1998, 101, 134-135.

97

Italian citizenship laws since Unification have privileged the principle of ius sanguinis, with ideas about

ancestry intersecting with notions of linguistic affiliation. At the same time, Italian-ness in practice
remained in question, as evidenced by efforts from the Risorgimento onwards to “make” Italians. Writing
of the German case, Ulrich Preuss comments, “The principle of ius sanguinis . . . does not necessarily entail
an ethnic definition of membership. But it can be used as an instrument of ethnification of membership, and
that is what happened in the first German nation-state when full membership and recognition as a
constituent part of the nation was assigned only to ethnic Germans.” Ulrich K. P r e u s s , Citizenship and
the German Nation, Citizenship Studies 7, no. 1 (2003), 37-55, here 47. In the Italian case, we may also see
how a nexus of ideas about ancestry employed in sorting out refugees into distinct categories of citizens (i.

26

27

In this sense, the Triestine case thus appears not as an anomaly or as set off from

developments in post-war Italy as a result of the border dispute and AMG rule but as an

exaggeration of processes of “normalization as nationalization” going on elsewhere in the

peninsula. Certainly, the visibility and the duration of the refugee problem (both that of

national and foreign DPs) in Trieste lasted much longer than in most other parts of the

peninsula. In addition, the OAPGD worked throughout the peninsula but concentrated its

efforts on creating housing and finding employment for the Istrian and Dalmatian

refugees in the province of Trieste. Furthermore, the specific regional history of Italian-

Slav (Slovene and Croat) ethnic relations and the significance of the bonifica nazionale in

that context cannot be downplayed.

With all these qualifications, however, there remains the intriguing possibility that the

refugee story in post-war Trieste refracts broader processes of reconstruction (understood

in its multiple aspects) in Italy. Reinserting the refugee question into a larger picture of

Italian reconstruction redirects analytical attention to an intermediate level between that

of the local/regional (which tends to focus on refugee questions in the context of

historical tensions in the eastern border region) and the international (viewing various

refugee flows through the prism of Cold War politics).

Acknowledgments

I appreciate Sabine Rutar’s careful reading of this article. The research for this article was
made possible by a 1999 Summer Grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the NEH Post-Classical Humanistic/Modern Italian Studies Fellowship at the
American Academy in Rome, and multiple awards from the Fletcher Fund at Bowdoin
College. I am grateful to the staffs at the UNRRA archive (New York), Archives
Nationales (Paris), the archive at the Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Rome), and the
Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Rome). As always, I thank the many Istrians who have
shared their experiences with me.

e. conationals) and foreigners served as a vehicle of ethnification (however incomplete). See B a l l i n g e r ,
[fn. 24], for the continued importance over time of ius sanguinis to Italian citizenship laws.