The speech given by the president of Anpi Padova during the celebrations on April 25th in Trieste did not only stiffen the president of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, Massimiliano Fedriga. «The reprehensible declarations of the ANPI President of Padua, Floriana Rizzetto, who admits the Tito persecution by justifying ethnic cleansing, cast a shadow of terrifying denialism on April 25th». Alberto Villanova, regional councilor of the League, made a direct attack. He did not like the speech given from the stage on April 25th during the celebrations in Trieste, in the San Sabba rice mill, which was a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. «Arguing that the lands of Istria and Dalmatia before the First World War had never been Italian is in itself a serious admission of a historical gap. Cities such as Fiume, Zadar, Pula, Rovinj, Porec and Ragusa still proudly bear the signs of their centuries-old belonging to the Republic of Venice”, commented the Northern League member.
«To then investigate the actual number of deaths at the hands of Tito’s partisans is, to say the least, bleak: even if just one innocent Italian died, it would already be a tragedy in itself. According to the President of ANPI Padova, did the political belief authorize the Tito people to throw Italian women, elderly people and priests who had had nothing to do with the fascist regime into the sinkholes? I agree with the President of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Massimiliano Fedriga, who unreservedly condemned Rizzetto’s statements”, declares Villanova. «April 25 should be a moment of historical reflection, tolerance and reconciliation. The President of the ANPI of Padua ruined everything: she must apologise, it is not acceptable to play such an authoritative role as the Presidency of the ANPI and support these anti-historical denialist theses.”
Accusations which, however, Floriana Rizzetto herself sends back to the sender. «There is nothing anti-historical in my declarations, those who make instrumental use of history are the center right and not from today», she tells us on the phone. «It’s a specious controversy because I’ve never talked about sinkholes, let alone denied them. But to say that there was an ethnic cleansing operation goes against history, that is a simplification. Nationalism is confused with something else”, explains Rizzetto. «The accusations come from those who did not listen to what I said, and what I would repeat. There is nothing offensive, let alone if I denied the tragedy of war and the consequences that it always brings with it. My intervention was aimed precisely at building a path of peace, the exact opposite. To do this, however, you need to know and respect history, otherwise you risk just making propaganda, which certainly doesn’t help build a future of peace or even a shared memory.”
