Il «goriziano» (Goriška), the border area between Slovenia and Italy, has been (and still is) a
place of contested memories, where different groups construct their identities on different, very
often opposing interpretations of the region’s past events. What for one side is a source for memory
building, sinks for the other into oblivion, what one side celebrates, the other forgets. The
territory was ravaged by acts of violence in both the First and Second World Wars, as well as in
postwar years. Younger generations are reminded of the past chiefly through memorials, crypts
and military burial grounds, silent witnesses to the atrocities that the twentieth century inflicted
on the region. The monuments, (hi)stories and preserved narratives that construct the national
heritage act on the 20th century as ruptures of history, requiring all the collective groups to collaborate
and accept different constructions of memory, interpretations of the past and our own
complex story.
