Exhumed histories: Trieste and the politics of (exclusive) victimhood

Performing wartime memories: ceremony as contest at the Risiera di San Sabba death camp, Trieste

“…The Risiera's recruitment to the latter cause has proved predictably divisive. But its role in marking the Giorno della memoria has also raised hackles as both Italian nationalists and those with leftist and Yugoslav sympathies have reacted against perceived attempts by the other to harness the ceremony to symbolic and political ends (Ballinger 2004;Il Piccolo, 7 August 2003: 16). Here, however, attention focuses on the Risiera's function as the site for Trieste's longstanding, but no less controversial, civic commemoration of Italy's Anniversario della liberazione on 25 April.…”

“…Some Italian nationalists remain even more emphatic in labelling Titoist partisans war criminals because of their attacks on Italian communities in Istria and Trieste (Ballinger 2003(Ballinger , 2004Sluga 2001). Italian ire has focused on two waves of killings in 1943 and 1945, during which thousands of bodies were allegedly dumped down foibe, or sink holes, in the region's karstic uplands (Ballinger 2000;Oliva 2002;Pupo and Spazzali 2003).…”

“…This would, of course, have served its own right-wing agenda, particularly in downplaying specific commemoration of anti-Fascist resistance. Moreover, 25 April is an especially controversial anniversary in Trieste (Ballinger 2004;Il Piccolo, 17 April 2003: 13). This partly reflects the particular antipathy of the Italian nationalist right to any positive remembrance of regional Resistance forces.…”

“…10, No. 3, May 2009 specific conflicts which still exert a decisiveand divisive-influence upon local recollections of World War Two (Ballinger 2000(Ballinger , 2003(Ballinger , 2004.…”

Competing for Victim Status: Northern Muslims and the Ironies of Sri Lanka’s Post-war Transition

“…Both the Shoahthe Jewish experience of the holocaust -and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia accompanied by acts of ethnic cleansing resonate with the claims and counterclaims put forward by the Italian and Slovenian groups. Groups that embrace a particular form of victimhood are also often blind to other forms of victimhood or commensurate experiences of suffering that do not recognise their own as primary (Biner 2006;Ballinger 2004).…”