A foiba (from Italian language: ; plural: foibe or foibas)— jama () in South Slavic languages scientific and colloquial vocabulary (borrowed since early research in the Western Balkan Dinaric Alps)—is a type of deep natural sinkhole, doline, or sink, and is a collapsed portion of bedrock above a void. Sinks may be a sheer vertical opening into a cave or a shallow depression of many hectares. They are common in the Karst Plateau region shared by Italy and Slovenia, as well as in the karst of the Dinaric Alps in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Croatia. The foibe massacres, a war crime that took place during and after World War II, take their name from the foibe.
Etymology
The
Italian language word
foiba derives from
Friulan language foibe, which in turn derives from
Latin fŏvea 'pit,
chasm'.
[Ottavio Lurati, Toponymie et géologie, in Quaderni di semantica, year XXIX, number 2, December 2008, 443.] The oldest document on which it is reported is an official report in 1770, written by the Italian naturalist
Alberto Fortis,
who wrote a series of books on the
karst.
Description
They are chasms excavated by
water erosion, have the shape of an inverted
funnel, and can be up to deep. Such formations number in the hundreds in
Istria. In
karst areas, a
sinkhole, sink, or doline is a closed depression draining underground. It can be cylindrical, conical, bowl-shaped or dish-shaped. The diameter ranges from a few to many hundreds of metres. The name "doline" comes from
dolina, the Slovenian word for this very common feature. The term "foiba" may also refer to a deep wide chasm of a river at the place where it goes underground.
Foibe massacres
During and right after the end of World War II,
OZNA and Yugoslav Partisans killed a number between 11,000
and 20,000
of the local ethnic Italian population (
Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians), as well against
anti-communism in general (even
Croats and
Slovenes), usually associated with
Fascism,
Nazism and collaboration with
Axis powers,
as well as against real, potential or presumed opponents of
Titoism by throwing their still living bodies into the foibe. This event is known as
foibe massacres. The type of attack was
state terrorism,
[ Il tempo e la storia: Le Foibe, Rai tv, Raoul Pupo] Reprisal,
and
ethnic cleansing against
Italians.
[ «....Già nello scatenarsi della prima ondata di cieca violenza in quelle terre, nell'autunno del 1943, si intrecciarono giustizialismo sommario e tumultuoso, parossismo nazionalista, rivalse sociali e un disegno di sradicamento della presenza italiana da quella che era, e cessò di essere, la Venezia Giulia. Vi fu dunque un moto di odio e di furia sanguinaria, e un disegno annessionistico slavo, che prevalse innanzitutto nel Trattato di pace del 1947, e che assunse i sinistri contorni di una "pulizia etnica". Quel che si può dire di certo è che si consumò - nel modo più evidente con la disumana ferocia delle foibe - una delle barbarie del secolo scorso.» from the official website of The Presidency of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, official speech for the celebration of "Giorno del Ricordo" Quirinal, Rome, 10 February 2007.] The foibe massacres were followed by the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus.
The Yugoslav partisans intended to kill whoever could oppose or compromise the future annexation of Italian territories: as a preventive purge of real, potential or presumed opponents of Titoism[ (Italian, Slovenian and Croatian anti-communism, collaborators and nationalism), the Yugoslav partisans exterminated the native anti-fascist autonomists — including the leadership of Italian anti-fascist partisan organizations and the leaders of Fiume's Autonomist Party, like Mario Blasich and Nevio Skull, who supported local independence from both Italy and Yugoslavia — for example in the city of Fiume, where at least 650 were killed after the entry of the Yugoslav units, without any due trial.][Società di Studi Fiumani-Roma, Hrvatski Institut za Povijest-Zagreb Le vittime di nazionalità italiana a Fiume e dintorni (1939-1947) , Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali - Direzione Generale per gli Archivi, Roma 2002. , p. 597.]
In literature
Foiba is also the name of the well-known sinkhole that opens near Pazin Castle, in Pazin, and of the river that flows into it. The place plays a central role in Jules Verne's novel Mathias Sandorf.
See also
External links
