Simone Cristicchi - Jan Bernas: Warehouse18

Simone Cristicchi - Jan Bernas
Ed. Mondadori, Segrate (MI) 2014
pagg.158

After the armistice, announced on September 8, 1943 by Marshal Badoglio, the nightmare begins for the Italians who are an obstacle to the realization of Tito's dream, a single great Yugoslavia, also including areas with an Italian majority such as Dalmatia, Istria, Rijeka and Trieste.

The Treaty of Paris of 10 February 1947 assigns Istria, most of Venezia Giulia, the provinces of Rijeka and Zadar to Yugoslavia. The 1954 Memorandum of Understanding assigns one part of Trieste to Italy, and another part to Yugoslavia. "A line moves the boundaries and moves people's lives." Three hundred and fifty thousand people decide to leave these areas.

A real exodus, even if some left convinced to return soon, so much so that they took the house key with them. "Men and women forced to leave their land, not out of hunger or the desire to improve their conditions, but because they could not live without being Italian."

And together with the people, the memories left, even the material ones. Wardrobes, chairs, toys also seemed to have no peace, since, having reached the old port of Trieste, they passed from one warehouse to another, to be piled up, finally, in the 18 warehouse. This is the place of memory that gives the title to this book where the author contains the stories of some of the protagonists of the exodus using, as narrative voice, a character of pure fiction, Persichetti, the archivist sent by the Ministry, to inventory everything the material it contains: "Two thousand cubic meters of objects that tell the story of the eradication of a society, suddenly interrupted, and the daily life wiped out." Each object has its own story to tell. "Persichetti archives everything." But the ghosts are there, ready to attack him.

There is Domenico, who was picked up at home by the agents of OZNA, the Department for People's Safety, for pure formality. A minute later he found himself on a truck, together with people he had never seen before, but all with the same dark expression. They were sent down shortly after. With a wire they tied their wrists two by two, to find themselves, after a few kilometers, on the edge of the foiba. A bullet in the head of his misfortune companion precipitated Domenico for hundreds of meters. Dominic marched in the mud. He was twenty-seven years old.

"Sixty years after that assassination there are still those who think that the sinkholes are only karst cavities." And then there is Norma, taken from home by the communist partisans of Tito who, in seventeen, abused her for one night and then throw her in a foiba. He was twenty-three, Norma.

Geppino Micheletti was a doctor on duty, when in Pula, on the beach of Vergarolla, at 14.10 on 18 August 1946 a roar unleashed hell. "Piled on the beach were twenty-eight defused mines ... but those sleeping monsters, at some point, woke up." A hundred were the dead. Among them also his two children, six and nine years old. However, he decided to stay in his place to provide relief to the injured. Then he too went away, because he would not have wanted to find himself to cure the murderers of his children. A stele reminds him of the old town of Pula.

"Persichetti archives everything" or, at least, he tries, because those who at the beginning were only objects, have become subjects, with a soul. The suitcase of an exile, in fact, was not like that of an emigrant, who hoped to return to the country that remained there waiting for him, together with relatives. "Je moved them to exile, the villages and relatives! 'Na vorta were Italian, n'artra Slavs,' na vorta were red, 'na vorta black. And down with spits and insults of all kinds. "

Then there are "The leftovers", those who did not leave, or because they did not want to or because they did not have permission to leave. People who have rediscovered themselves as strangers at home, as if they had moved without ever moving. "Persichetti archives everything, even disgust." But no practice, he can not file it: a letter, addressed to the prefecture of Trieste, where Federica Biasiol, daughter of Istrian exiles, looks for objects belonging to the father Ferdinando.

After sixty years, the archivist Persichetti officially communicates their discovery, concluding with the prayer to accept the most sincere apologies on behalf of the Ministry of the Interior. Apologies also ideally addressed to the approximately three hundred and fifty thousand exiles whose huge tragedy, since 2005, is remembered every year, on February 10, with the institution of the Day of Remembrance and also thanks to works like this, which Simone Cristicchi has staged at the theater receiving recognition during the 47th edition of the Acqui Storia Award.

Gianlorenzo Capano