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Giovanni Liubicich with
his wife, Ida, and their daughter, Vladimira (Vlada) |
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Giovanni Liubicich Father's name:
Giovanni or Anton Liubicich (shown as Ljubicich or Lubicic) Giovanni Liubicich was born in Brdo (family nickname: "Cerce" or "Crce") on July 24, 1902, and was residing in Fiume when he was arrested in May 1945 on suspicion of being an informant to the Gestapo, a totally false claim. He was taken by OZNA / UDBA and executed on July 7, 1945. In the 2002 book, Le vittime di nazionalita' italiana a Fiume e dintorni (1939-1947), a cura di Amleto Ballarini e Miheal Sobolevski, a collaborative effort by Società di Fiumani Roma and Hrvatski Institut za povijest, his cause of death is listed as "Soppressione da parte Jugoslava". He was an ordinary Istrian and a gentle man - more specifically, he was Istro-Romanian and Roman Catholic by religion - who, like many other Istrians before him, contemporaries and ancestors alike, emigrated from the village of his birth to a nearby seaport city - Pola (now Pula), Trieste (was also Trst) or Fiume (now Rijeka) - all trying to improve their family's economic and social lot. In his case, Giovanni, his wife, Ida, and their young daughter lived and worked in Fiume (also known as Rika, now called Rijeka). Vlada, the daughter became a school teacher, the father had a breadshop near the Duomo. He was a Partisan sympathizer - as all anti-Fascists were - and owned a typewriter, so helped to distributed their "manifestini". Ironically, three months after the Italian chief of police of Fiume, Giovanni Palatucci (now being considered for sainthood) was taken by the Nazis and killed in Dachau in February 1945, Giovanni Liubicich, likewise an anti-Fascist, was also taken and killed, not by the Nazis but by Tito's forces. More specifically, he had the great misfortune of having a cousin by the same name who was an active pro-Fascist and who had escaped to nearby Šušak as the war was ending to avoid capture by incoming communists. A case of mistaken identity, It was the anti-Fascist, not the pro-Fascist Giovanni Liubicich who was ripped out of his home in May 1945 by a group of Tito's OZNA - or -UDBA henchmen who presumably mistook him for his cousin. In the full presence of his terrorized wife, his daughter and his elderly inlaws, the sanctioned murderers seized the opportunity to not just take the innocent man into custody but to simultaneously confiscate his personal belongings. In fact, one of the henchmen was his own townsmen from Brdo was known to his family as well as to many others and who must have known that he was not they man the authorities sought. That common criminal's name was/is known to our family and to others. It is well known today that this fellow townsman had gone back to the old village in Istria to procure a horse and cart for the express purpose of taking back with him the arrestee's household possessions, as he did also for other victims in similar circumstances. Of course, instead of prosecuting him for his crimes, the regime rewarded him with a promotion to a desk job in Rijeka. Right after his disappearance, my father combed the entire city for Giovanni who was his best friend and who had also been the best man at my parents' wedding three years earlier. Dad went into every local government office that he could think of to search for him. He was told by the authorities that if Giovanni were innocent of any wrong-doing, he would be released. Instead, he was never heard from again. Although his death is recorded as being shot by a firing squad on July 7, 1945, this information was not released to his family, nor was his body recovered by them. Rather, he is presumed to have been thrown into a nearby foiba (a karst pit), one of a collection of makeshift receptacles all over Istria and the karst region that were used for the quick disposal of criminals and innocent people alike during the savage period towards the end of World War II and its immediate aftermath against Fascists and Nazis forces and suspected collaborators. Giovanni's widow and daughter then followed the path taken by hundreds of thousands of other Istrians to escape the terrors of the incoming regime and the partisans who claimed to be a part of it. They sought refuge in an Italy that had lost the war and which transformed from a Fascist dictatorship to a Communist one, all of us expecting to be welcomed with open arms by the "madre patria". Instead, many Istrians languished for years in refugee camps throughout Italy, some of which camps had been quickly converted from what had been Fascist concentration camps into refugee camps. Countless other refugees underwent a second exodus to other countries in Europe and around the world under the auspices of the Refugee Act. The two Liubicich women, however, resettled in the suburbs of Genoa (Genova), Italy, where Vlada still resides. Sadly, Ida passed away on March 1, 2006 at the respectable age of 98. Some 20 or more years ago, that infamous man from Brdo with the horse and cart appeared at a family friend's funeral in New York City. He recognized my father and went to greet him. My dad's reply was: "Ah, ti me conosci adeso, ma non ti me conoscevi a Fiume?". The fellow grabbed his wife and rushed out of the funeral chapel. Within a few months, he sold his inlaws' home in New York and returned to Istria - not to his native Brdo, but to the town of Čepić - no doubt to live out the rest of his life in peace and harmony, never to have been prosecuted or punished for his postwar crimes. My mother recalls a few friends and relatives, likewise innocent victims, who were similarly taken or killed in 1945 or 1946. Most of these people had no political ties whatsoever. One of mother's own brothers, Enrico Iurman (changed under Mussolini's reign to Giormani, nowadays shown Jurman) is one such case. He was gunned down in a group by a hail of Partisan bullets aimed at the German soldiers holding them captive. In another, a neighbor pleaded with the Partisans for a woman's release - and she was already tied to a tree for several days, slated for a nearby fiobe along with other people who were taken at the same time. Her "crime" was that she was born in Friuli and ran a local grocery store. In a third case, a couple was taken simply because they spoke a few words in German and were seen attempting to speak Germans invaders. In another case, while the son was serving his obligagory turn in the Italian armed forces, his parents were carted off and killed by a group of Partisans. What was their crime? They were neither Italian-born nor Fascist or Nazi sympathizers, but had learned a few words of German under the former Austrian regime! And, as if that were not enough punishment for one family, a few years later, on the day that the same young man was married my mother's best friend (and distant cousin), the bride's 17-year old brother, on his way home from the wedding, fell victim to reckless bullets of Partisan civilians who were his own neighbors. That particular event that was later described as a case of mistaken identity, but the war was long over! Marisa Ciceran Sources:
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This page compliments of Marisa Ciceran Created: Friday,
July 27, 2001, Last Updated:
Sunday, August 31, 2008
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