Foiba di Basovizza, Trieste, Italy

If you take the road for the small town of San Lorenzo out of the city up on the Kras Plateau, on the right you will see the doline of Basovizza. This is a spruce lignite quarry from last Century which became a national monument after World War II to the thousands of Italian soldiers and civilians killed by Communist Slav troops under Marshal Tito. These troops were thrown into Kras holes similar to this one. The depth was originally 300 meters but during the 1950s it was reduced to about 135 after the accumulation of war materials and, mostly, corpses. After the conflict, numerous attempts were made to recover the remains of the bodies across the whole of the plateau, often with success, but at Basovizza, unfortunately, there were too many and so it was decided to make the doline their tomb. A bronze epigraph on the monument says, "Honor and Christian piety be to those who fell. Their sacrifice is a constant reminder to the living of the ways of justice and love that lead to true peace". Over the years, Presidents of Italy and other politicians have knelt in front of this epigraph, the symbol of the Communist ferocity.