The article examines the Italian memory of the emigration wave near and after the end of World War II, when 250,000 people, almost exclusively Italians, left Istria, Rijeka, and Dalmatia. The emigration wave was named the “Istrian Exodus” or the “Julio-Dalmatian Exodus” in Italian journalism and historiography. The historical context of this event and the presumptions regarding the causes of the migration are briefly presented in the first chapter. The goal of the article, however, is neither to determine new historical facts, nor to offer new interpretations of complex and conflicting political histories, but to examine the memory of the Istrian Exodus as a collection of places in which historiography, public history, politics, and collective memory are interwoven and influence each other. The article’s approach is based on studies of memory and heritage as a dynamic process, and identity as a construct in an interethnic context. Its goal is to find the reasons why a collective memory still doesn’t exist in this border area. It examines three recently inaugurated places of memory related to the exodus in Trieste: a museum, a theatre play and a warehouse, that, basing its story on ethnic exclusivity, can hardly serve as the basis for creating a common history and overcoming historical traumas.
