The memorial was initiated by Italy’s far right political parties to commemorate Italians deemed to be fascist officials and collaborators who were killed by Yugoslavian communist partisans in World War II. These killings are known as “the foibe” in Italy, named for the karstic pits into which victims were thrown. The Basovizza pit is not actually a foiba; it is an unused mineshaft, but it stands as a symbol of what is interpreted by some as the "ethnic cleansing" of Italians by Slavic people (often referred to as "Slavs").
Although exhumations of this pit only produced a small number of corpses of mixed identities (that is, not all Italians), calculations of how deep the pit could be and estimations of how many corpses could it could contain are presented as proof that it is the site of mass burial of Italian citizens. It is presented as a sacred burial ground and is the site of official commemorations and a popular destination for tour groups and school field trips.
The memorial creates much controversy on many levels and for many reasons, such as its association with Italian nationalist claims to Istria and other areas of what are now Slovenia and Croatia and racist portrayals of Yugoslavian communist partisans that play into longstanding Italian negative stereotypes of Slavic people.
Lega Nazionale