PALERMO. A small book, with a simple language, self-produced, born in the family, with a great evocative power: that of personal experiences that become history. “The Rijeka exile – Story of a life” written jointly by Marilù Furnari and Martina Spalluto (mother and daughter) intertwines three generations and brings to memory the experience of Maddalena “Lenci” De Santis, mother and grandmother of the authors, one of the 350,000 Italians who became refugees overnight after the cession of the lands of Istria to Yugoslavia, on the basis of the Treaty of Paris of 10 February 1947.
The authors: Marilù Furnari with her daughter Martina Spalluto
Today that date is a national civil solemnity (established by law on March 30, 2004) that painful story, marked by the horrors of the sinkholes, re-emerges from the 125 pages of this book (it is online and costs 9.90 euros) as a family lexicon on the Julian-Dalmatian exodus. “My mother has always talked little about her life in Rijeka – remembers Marilù Furnari, doctor, health director at the Children’s Hospital of Palermo – she told us some anecdotes but never returned willingly to that period, I think she unconsciously wanted to forget all that. that a 13-year-old girl had lived, too painful to abandon her games, her home, her beloved grandmother. Today my mother is happy with this book, she feels the need for many to read it, for this story to be handed down, it was also a way to find other friends of hers from Fiume where she never wanted to return ».
To reopen that drawer of memories was the stubbornness of the niece Martina, 16 years old who has always had a passion for putting down stories in black and white, albeit savored by their grandmother. The start of this “stream of consciousness” was the lockdown and at the same time, last March, the death of his sister Betty. “Lenci” (her real name is Maddalena, but her father had given her this nickname because her child’s face reminded him of dolls in pannolenci ed).
Grandmother Maddalena with her three grandchildren Raoul, Lenci, Betty
From those afternoons spent face to face with my grandmotherMartina has collected and lined up, one frame after another, the life of her grandmother. His childhood in Fiume with his mother Lucia, the brothers Raoul and Betty, the death of his father Antonio, the study of music, the beloved grandmother Maddalena, the fascists, the Titoites, the comrades who were victims of sinkholes, the escape in ’48 with the family and the arrival in Sicily, in Termini Imerese, in the former La Masa barracks transformed into a refugee camp, the boarding school of Maria di Monreale and the love with Pippo, the boy who fell in love with her looking at her from the balcony of the house.
Lenci De Santis with her husband Pippo Furnari in the cloister of Monreale
“Compared to today’s migrants – observes Marilù Furnari – their situation was even more difficult, because they were refugees in their homeland. In Sicily they were well received, but, especially at the beginning, there were objective difficulties, they did not understand the language, they were treated like foreigners, they had another mentality, they came from a very different territory, my mother was “la Continentale” “.
The first chapter of the book is dedicated to framing the historical period in which the family parable of the Rijeka exile unfolds. «It is a book designed for young people because this story is never studied well in school. Only since 2004 has it begun to be talked about and there is still a lot to tell. Unfortunately Shoah and Foibe have always been identified as “right” or “left” massacres. However, dying or fleeing were the only alternatives for millions of people, and this without distinction of perpetrators or political color, yet, for example, even today the question around the sinkholes is the subject of continuous debate between the political forces of the right and left. . And we don’t understand why ».