Alessandra Kersevan
Born (1950-12-18) 18 December 1950
Monfalcone, Gorizia, Italy
Alma materUniversity of Trieste
Scientific career
FieldsContemporary history
InstitutionsUdine, Italy

Alessandra Kersevan (born 18 December 1950) is a historian, author and editor living and working in Udine.[1] She researches Italian modern history, including the Italian resistance movement and Italian war crimes. She is the editor of a group called Resistenza storica at Kappa Vu edizioni, an Italian publisher. Her research have caused a huge hate campaign against her from the political right environment, both institutional and extra-parliamentary.

Research

Her research (confirmed by the documents found in British archives by the British historian Effie Pedaliu and by the Italian historians Costantino Di Sante[2] and Davide Conti[3]) pointed out that the memory of the existence of the Italian concentration camps and Italian war crimes in general has been repressed due to the Cold War.[4] In the collective memory of the Italian public and media this has led to historical revisionism, in particular concerning post-war foibe massacres.[5] Yugoslavia, Greece and Ethiopia requested extradition of 1,200 Italian war criminals who however never saw anything like the Nuremberg trial, because the British government with the beginning of cold war saw in Pietro Badoglio a guarantee of an anti-communist post-war Italy.[4][6]

In the 1950s, two Italian film-makers were jailed[7] for depicting the Italian invasion of Greece. Kersevan attributes this to historic revisionism.[8] She compares historic revisionism in Italy to the situation in France where she notes historic mythology is deconstructed. She gives the French people's understanding of the Vichy period as an example.

In 2003, Italian media reported that Silvio Berlusconi had said, "Benito Mussolini only used to send people on vacation".[9] This gave weight and illustrated the thesis made by Kersevan.

The 2012 diplomatic protest by the Ministry of foreign affairs of the Republic of Slovenia

In February 2012, Italian state TV talk show host Bruno Vespa televised a photograph from July 1942 depicting Italian troops killing civilian hostages in the Slovenian village of Dane[10] and claimed that it showed the opposite. Killings like these, ordered by Italian general Mario Roatta, were widespread during the Fascist occupation of Slovenia.[11] Kersevan, who was a guest on the show, objected, but Vespa did not apologise, and Maurizio Gasparri, a former Italian Minister of Communications - and once militant of the far right party Movimento Sociale Italiano - compared Kersevan to the KGB.[12] A protest by the Ministry of foreign affairs of the Republic of Slovenia followed.[13][14]

Published works

  • 1995 Porzûs. Dialoghi sopra un processo da rifare, Kappavu, Udine, 215 pp, ISBN 9788889808 about Porzûs massacre
  • 2003 Un campo di concentramento fascista. Gonars 1942-1943, Comune di Gonars/Kappavu, Udine, 389 pp, ISBN 9788889808[15] about Gonars concentration camp
  • 2008 Lager italiani : Pulizia etnica e campi di concentramento Fascisti per civili Jugoslavi 1941-1943, Nutrimenti edizioni, Rome, 288 pp, ISBN 8888389946[1]

Editorial and co-editor contributions

  • 2008 Foibe - Revisionismo di stato e amnesie della repubblica[16]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Paolo Rumiz, Moni Ovadia (2008-04-13). "Lager d'Italia - Il coraggio che non abbiamo" (PDF). La Repubblica. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-07-13. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
  2. ↑ Di Sante, Costantino (2005) Italiani senza onore: I crimini in Jugoslavia e i processi negati (1941-1951), Ombre Corte, Milano. (Archived by WebCite®)
  3. ↑ Conti, Davide (2011). "Criminali di guerra Italiani". Odradek Edizioni. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
  4. 1 2 Effie G. H. Pedaliu (2004) Britain and the 'Hand-over' of Italian War Criminals to Yugoslavia, 1945-48. Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 39, No. 4, Special Issue: Collective Memory, pp. 503-529 (JStor.org preview)
  5. ↑ "Article". Senza Soste. 2010-02-10. Retrieved 2012-03-09.
  6. ↑ Rory, Carroll (2003) Italy's bloody secret. (Archived by WebCite®), The Guardian, London, UK, June 25
  7. ↑ Rory, Carroll. Italy's bloody secret. The Guardian. (Archived by WebCite®), The Guardian, London, UK, June 25, 2003
  8. ↑ Alessandra Kersevan (2008) Foibe - Revisionismo di stato e amnesie della repubblica. Kappavu, Udine.
  9. ↑ Survivors of war camp lament Italy's amnesia, 2003, International Herald Tribune
  10. ↑ "Italian state TV has been manipulating with the photo of Slovene hostages (Slovene: RAI manipuliral s fotografijo slovenskih talcev". RTV Slovenia. 2012-02-14. Retrieved 2012-03-09.
  11. ↑ James H. Burgwyn: "General Roatta's war against the partisans in Yugoslavia: 1942", Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Volume 9, Number 3, September 2004, pp. 314-329(16), link by IngentaConnect
  12. ↑ Smargiassi, Michele (23 March 2012). "Non dire falsa testimonianza" [You shall not give false testimony]. La Repubblica (in Italian). Rome. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  13. ↑ "Ministry of foreign affairs of the Republic of Slovenia protests against the falsification of historical facts". RTV Slovenia. 2012-02-15. Retrieved 2012-03-09.
  14. ↑ Talk show "Il giorno del ricordo - Porta a Porta", emitted by the Italian state-owned TV station RAI, official website
  15. ↑ Alberto Bobbio (2004-02-08). "Pulizia etnica all\'italiana". Famiglia Cristiana. Archived from the original on June 12, 2011. Retrieved 2012-03-12. (Archived by WebCite®)
  16. ↑ "Foibe - Revisionismo di stato e amnesie della repubblica". Kappa Vu. Archived from the original on 2012-04-19. Retrieved 2012-03-09.
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