Free Trieste

Once again, this year [2015] the Prosecco Austrian-Hungarian military cemetery, the burial of more than 5,000 Austrian-Hungarian soldiers, hosted the evocative ceremony in remembrance of those fallen in WWI.

In a world ruled by nationalistic States and religious fanaticisms, both subject economic powers responsible for ruining our planet, this ceremony is a light against evil darkness.

Every year, the Movimento Civiltà Mitteleuropea (Mitteleuropean Civilization Movement) organizes this ceremony: it does so since 40 years.

Remembering Austria-Hungary, its 13 united folks, each with its own religion and culture, is the moral compass for any “new” Europe of People different from the decaying, forceful, economic European Union. A rebirth in the name of brotherhood and companionship, uniting people for them to go back to the common roots, rejecting the evil that is pursuing unlimited economic development at the price of enslaving humanity.

In WWI 1,200,000 Imperial and Royal soldiers lost their lives. And about one out of three of them fell on the southern front, defending Austria – Hungary from the former ally, the Kingdom of Italy.

Every year, Trieste remembers those fallen, loyal to their memory: they fell protecting Europe from aggressive colonizers, their capitalist economy, and the aberrant social nationalisms those enemies supported.

For centuries, the Austrian Empire, later Austria-Hungary, was the firm bulwark of European stability. As it fell, so did Europe: deep into the abyss of ethnic and religious hatred. An abyss that claims victims to this very day.

Trieste owes everything to Austria, it is the the symbol of its multiethnic Empire, which found it a small fishermen port and turned it into a world-scale port.

Trieste’s son fought in WWI to defend the dream of a the peaceful coexistence of people. The people of Trieste served loyally in Austria and Hungary’s Imperial and Royal armies. Many have never come back, and rest in Galizia, on the Carpathians, on the Isonzo.

Every year, we remember them in our own military cemeteries: here rest their brothers, those who came from allover the Empire to defend us from the Italian aggression. Austrians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Rumanians, Slovenes, Ukrainians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Ruthenians and Bosnians. An Empire with its folks that defender Trieste, the main port of Austria-Hungary.

Let me quote Paolo G. Parovel’s moving speech:

“Our fallen of many nationalities and Faiths, composed in this dolina of the Karst of Autumn, which blooms once again for them, caressed by the wind in Spring time, as well as with those recognized or unidentified from here to the Piave, from the flats of Galicia to the woods of the Carpathians, in the Balkans or by the sea and on far away shores, the breaking point of that string of civilization ripped in the world of the past, that we must finally knot once again in the word of today and of tomorrow.

In the name of an ancient Fatherland that has disappeared from political geography, but to us remains the fatherland of the spirit, in its ideals and values, the fatherland of our soul, the temple of a great history and moral legacy that is out own, and we have the duty to defend joining forces, viribus unitis, for a world that shall be better for real, for a victory of the values, no longer of the arms, a victory of life, no longer of death, a victory of the spirit and of reason, no longer of ideologies.

For all of this, today, here, we remember as part of our service to truth and with grateful souls and heart, the dignity and sufferance of all of our fathers who have fallen and of our families, those of theirs and our families, the families of those who ended up having to fight on the other side, and those of all, uncountable human beings involved in the resistance to the evil of the past and of the present.”

Paolo G. Parovel is the tireless leader the Movimento Civiltà Mitteleuropea. He is the one who organizes the ceremony for our fallen. This should make us understand also how important our ongoing struggle for the rights of the Free Territory of Trieste really is.

Because without the sacrifica of the Imperial and Royal soldiers who fell defending Trieste, thanks to their sacrifice, in 1947, after WWII, Trieste became independent. They are our heroes, insurmountable bulwarks, and with their sacrifice they are still defending us. Since 100 years.

Translated from blog “Environment and Legality” by Roberto Giurastante