Trieste WWII. Examine Bystanders, Why, How, Who. Dasa Drndic.

Trieste, the Novel: Author, Dasa Drndic.
Examine the wartime institutional and individual Bystander.

Red Cross, Red Crescent, Geneva, Switzerland. How often a  bystander in Trieste, WWII?

Now that Trieste is firmly part of Italy, its variegated past of conqueror after conqueror dims for many.  It is the larger places that retain Big-Screen appeal. Trieste still offers, however, an important vantage point on violence in the 20th and 21st Centuries.  Atrocities and abuses of power recur globally.  What acts and responses mitigated the horror; what exacerbated it. What are the commonalities of humans subjected to and required to react, in order to live. Read Trieste, by Dasa Drndic, published in Croatian in 2007, now in English. See review at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/books/review/trieste-by-dasa-drndic.html?_r=0/. Her focus is on the Bystander. There are always bystanders.  Who were they, as individuals, in Trieste.  Who refused to by-stand. What result?

 Behind every name of someone killed is a story.  Behind every name is an association with an institution, other people.  Find the Church as Bystander; The Red Cross as Bystander;

Individuals and groups look away, or are forced to.

• Trieste. This Adriatic port city is now Italian, since WWII. Its legendary history echoes from Jason and the Argonauts, to Trojans, to domination by Empires of Rome and the Byzantine, Longobard and Frank "Barbarians", to the Habsburgs (Austria -- to escape control by Venice) and Napoleon, to the Byzantine Empire, and back to the Austro-Hungarians -- and now, Italy. It has been a perennial crossroads for trade and ideas and cultures. It is a microcosm of forces in WWII.

A.  Trieste's Institutional Bystanders

1.  The Red Cross as Bystander

Events in Trieste include the Red Cross organizing ladies' night-time soup-cup lines, to pass some nourishment to the hundreds locked in the cattle cars stopped briefly in Trieste on their way to the German extermination or labor caps. 

When the Brenner Pass over the Alps to Germany was blocked with snow, and use of a tunnel was required,  so the transport trains went by way of the St. Gotthard tunnel to ultimately arrive at Treblinka extermination camp in Poland, and others including Auschwitz, Mauthausen, and the transit camp ghetto at Theresienstadt.  The Red Cross made no objection, and even arranged for local ladies to join in passing soup at night, secretly, to the human cargo in the train cattle cars as they passed through Trieste. See Trieste at 124-131.

In summer and fall, the alps are far less menacing than in winter.  This view is at the Great Saint Bernard pass.

Swiss Red Cross, WWII. Bystander?  Facilitator?

Examine the Swiss Red Cross. Did the organization facilitate passage of transports of Jews through Switzerland to extermination and labor camps in Germany and elsewhere.

The Gotthard pass and tunnel through the Alps now is upgraded and soon to be 35 miles long, trains hurtling at 150 mph, see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/journeysbyrail/9880313/Switzerlands-Gotthard-Base-train-tunnel-is-redefining-Europe.html/  The completion date is anticipated to be 2016.  Update:  It is complete, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/16/gotthard-base-tunnel-worl_1_n_765508.html

2.  The League of Nations as Bystander. 

The League of Nations was founded in 1919, after WWI.  The term "United Nations" was coined by President Roosevelt in 1942 when 26 nations pledged to oppose the Axis (Germany, and its allies including Italy) It replaced the largely ineffectual League of Nations. The United Nations itself, as we know it, was formed in 1945.  See https://www.un.org/en/aboutun/history/

The League of Nations was hamstrung by politics, mutual distrust among nations, lak of will, lack of military or other power, see http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW2/causes.htm/. Talk, talk, talk. Trieste reflects the fatalism of the people there, does anyone make a difference, does anyone care, no.

UN Assembly Hall, Geneva, Switzerland. How often ending up a bystander.

3.  The Institutional Church as Bystander.

What interests did the Church, the Roman Catholic branch, have in fostering genocide in order to benefit its own ranks. Information is still being revealed, see http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Vatican-to-reveal-secrets-of-Popes-collaboration-with-Hitler.html.

In Trieste,  Read of the priest, baptizing the child whose mother was Jewish, the father in the SS, what was reported, and what happened.  What patterns, under the rubric "saving their souls."  Lebensborn. Then consider the priests, and higher, standing by and merely conducting "conversions" as Orthodox Christians were executed, to save their souls, Croatia and elsewhere. 

St. Stephen's Cathedral, Zagreb, Croatia

• Alojcize Stepinac, priest, then Bishop as of 1938, later Cardinal Stepinac, and even later beatified.  One view holds that he satisfied himself with converting Serbian Orthodox Christians to Roman Catholicism before their executions, and the record indeed is not strongly supportive of his actions in the face of the Ustashe, genocides, mass murder. Others say, beatify!  beatify! and the record will show that was done.

In Trieste, fact patterns are laid out, and the varying reactions also laid out. We get to know many of the people standing by, or opposing, with the consequences to each. As with any larger cultural institution faced with moral issues, and threats to institutional teaching power, there are vacillations, practicalities, all sorts of reasons for not acting in concert against Fascism, Nazism. See pp 30-36 in Trieste especially.  Read, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 1930-1965, by Michael Phayer, Dickinson University, at http:www.ww2.dsu.nodak.edu/23461117-the-Catholic-Church-and-the-Holocaust/ Will the real Stepinac please stand up.

4.  Daily life. Who carried on as usual, as far as feasible, going to the movies, to the clubs. 

Trieste still draws those who want to enjoy life -- where else find kayakers downtown.  Visit Trieste and admire the kayaks in the revamped harbor area, old warehouses now fine offices to all appearances.

The other Trieste.  How can this have hosted the Holocaust?

Trieste waterfront, Italy

For a view of kayakers in Trieste, see http://triesteroadways.blogspot.com/2006/11/triestes-canals-and-kayakers-downtown.html

Other fine buildings, from the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, line the waterfront.  Unpack history. Upend the hidden drawer bottoms, as Drndic does. Find ordinariness, origins, the daily amid the ongoing unthinkable catastrophe, so many just did not think. Is that us, facing other kinds of violence in our cultures.  And live the violence in the words of those caught in it, their testimony.

5.  Abuse of facilities used. The great hiding.  Why are these so downplayed now.

 Risiera de San Sabba is the rice mill complex turned prison, torture center, holding pen, outside Trieste. See http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/sansabba.html

Our own tourist-y guidebooks on Trieste mentioned nothing of this Nazi past, especially at an area rice mill complex at San Sabba outside Trieste.  Its extensive buildings, housed death, torture, transit, imprisonment, with political and ramdom prisoners held and many forced on train transports to the more major death and concentration camps farther north. See photo gallery at http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/photos/sabba1/sabba1.htm. 

• We customarily pay our respects by visiting the camps in countries we visit, but knew nothing of the San Sabba compound. Dan and I have been to Mauthausen, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Jasenovac, Buchenwald, andI had earlier been to Dachau. But we mostly saw old Rome in Trieste, and had known only of generalized killings and bodies hurled down ravines in wartime.  On full view were all the merry kayaks and no trace of mass death in Trieste. See http://www.deathcamps.org/sabba/

6.  Echoing Theme of Bystanders.

One premise of Trieste, the novel, is this: 

In violence, people sort themselves, where they are not otherwise forced,  into roles of proponents, actors, promoters; opponents, resistance; and indeed bystanders.  Bystanders get ignored, but are as much a part of the rolling boulder of atrocity and its comprehensiveness, its speed, as are the hitters and the hit. Yet, can we expect them, us, to join the resistance the active antagonists, and perhaps then die, or our families die? 

• The number of bystanders looking away in brutal wartime, or somehow able to escape notice as they try to survive, may be more than the numbers of participants - soldiers, partisan opposition, military brass and the like.  
• Yet bystanders do not so easily escape. They, many, carry unpredictable scars and follow an altered trajectory, some haunted, others hoping for closure.
• Is self-sacrifice to counter an immediate violent event more moral, or is endurance so that the family can survive.
• This is a documentary form book, a memorial, and how else to convey the enormity of that era where history is not taught in schools so as to preserve it.

7.  The Croatian connection. This novel was written in Croatian, see http://croatiaroadways.blogspot.com/.

Croatia. With Slovenia, the Istrian Peninsula, and the former Yugoslavia.  This book about bystanding, Trieste, is appropriately originally in Croatian because Croatia is no more interested in preserving its past than are other overrun countries.

• Even in Croatia, the slaughter not only of Jews but Orthodox Christians, and Roma, and the mentally challenged, and the weak, is shoved under the rug. Fascists, Nazis, what? See Jasenovac, the camp in Croatia where its "artifacts" allegedly have been sent to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. 
• Go to Washington DC to see the relics of Jasenovac, however, and find nothing.
• And at Jasenovac itself, there is left only a park and some raised grave acreage, an old train with bullet holes (from when?),and a now-shabby shell of a non-museum, a walkway and a dry memorial where water once gave life.  Even Croatians want to be bystanders, as does the rest of the world forgetting what happened. See http://croatiaroadways.blogspot.com/2006/06/jasenovac-wwii-concentration-camps.html

Jasenovac, Prison Camp, Extermination Camp WWII, Croatia.  Relics sent to Washington, and from there, disappeared?

 From Croatia, too, comes the convoluted revisionism of the legacy of Bishop Stepinac, soon made Cardinal Stepinac, above.


Conclusion:

As anywhere where violence percolates against some, those not immediately targeted, or not in the targeted category, choose not to see.  Some see, but turn away, even deny, trivialize, and go to the movies beside the victors, even loving them. The Occupation. A few oppose, even to death.  What is in their DNA, that would, we secretly think, may not be in ours, focused on our own survival, not on ethics, principles, humanity beyond ourselves.

Trieste is a new setting for this kind of discussion.

Bystanders all around. Take out the book, return it with a comment that it was well worth reading, and hear another local librarian over there saying, I am so sick of these holocaust books. Some do turn away at the lists of the dead, their stories, testimonials to matters long interred, it is hoped. No. Start at the beginning and begin to read, and without skimming, this memorial, a documentary, a novel of people, institutions. And the idea of Bystanders. Who has the mirror?

The Bystander. Behind the name of every bystander there also is a story.

The many who fell into looking away, their lives still changed trajectory because of exposure, or willful ignoring their surroundings over time. Examine those who stood by. 

Are Bystanders enablers; or did they correctly assess that they had no choice if they were to survive. What price survival. 

• Read the litany of names, details, stories of named persons, especially after having visited so many of the camps and places, and offer tribute to them.  
• See book review of this documentary style work by Alan Cheuse from National Public Radio, at http://www.npr.org/2014/01/16/255855258/never-again-trieste-is-a-harrowing-mix-of-memory-and-memorial/  Reverence. Read the names aloud, for a while, to yourself.

Trieste in WWI; An Area as Stake

Trieste as the dangling reward. A bargaining chip.  From our old undated Life Magazine, read this excerpt at to Trieste in WWI, regarding Italians, Austrians battling on the peaks: Guns in the Alps.  We have tried searching for the article online, no results, see Life.com/search, Guns in the Alps.

"Though it had been an ally of Germany and Austria, Italy declared itself neutral at the start of the war.  Neither side cared too much at first.  But when the fighting bogged down in France the Italians, seeing a chance to drive a hard bargain, offered to go to war on the side of the highest bidder.  Their price included the city of Trieste and a thick underlip of the Alps, called the Trentino, that overhung the North Italina plain.  Both of them belonged to Austria.  When the Austrians hesitated to hand them over, the Italians turned to the Allies who had nothing ot lose in the deal and were ready to promise the Italians anything.  On May 23, 1915, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary."

For the historical context, read Trieste, A Novel by Dasa Drndic, published in Croatian in 2007, and now in English, see update at 2014 review on NPR at http://www.npr.org/2014/02/06/272638018/book-review-trieste-by-dasa-drndic


Time offers a multitude of topics on Trieste as well, but none as moving as the Drndic book. See http://search.time.com/results.html;jsessionid=74824B3B90E53ACACB6A9B17377C24EB?Ntt=Trieste&x=10&y=13.  With the beauty of Trieste, it takes digging to see its devastating past.

•  Ernest Hemingway, who drove an Italian ambulance during the rout of Caporetto, described this area as "the picturesque front." This frontier in the southern Alps covered some 400 miles of majestic scenery, but murderous terrain: with avalanches, soldiers hacking out trenches in the glacial ice or solid rock. 

The Rout of Caporetto is still seen as pivotal to the Germans, a victory for them at the time, see http://www.military-history.org/articles/battle-maps/5-reasons-why-was-the-battle-of-caporetto-1917-was-so-decisive.htm

The Italians focused on this area north of Trieste, on the Isonzo River near a village called Caporetto. But the Austrians prevailed, pushing the Italians back all the way to the Plave River, nearer Venice, some 75 miles west of the Isonzo.   Go the museum at the castle at Salzburg and see the exhibits of the uniforms, the photos, the tragedy of civilian refugees joining the military columns just to make headway elsewhere.  Standstill. Then, when the Germans abandoned them, the Austrians finally themselves mutinied, deserted, and fled.


Some battlegrounds are so impossible to engage, that the tragedy engulfs all sides.  So with the Dolomite Alps, the Italian Alps where such fierce fighting ensued, and with Trieste as the prize. Ultimate dispositions of territory may well have nothing to do with merit, only muscle. 

Trieste's History of Occupations and Rulers

Cooking shows tout layers of flavors. Splendid cities boast overlays of influence.

That is Trieste: the old Tergeste under the Romans. Then ruled by Goths, Byzantines, Longobards, Franks, a free "Commune" 1060-1202 (some kind of free city without one ruler?), then Venetians, and Habsburgs of Austria 1382-1918. See commemorative coins and a fun website at www.roth37.it/COINS/Trieste/index.

It broke free of Venice in the 1200's, and subsequently allied with Vienna. See .everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1416871.

Numismatists have put their stamp on history. Go to this site's home page (follow the instruction to "Go Home!) and link to all sorts of other histories, stories, many countries - this site is by a many sided numismatist. For numismatism, see library.thinkquest.org/CR0212420/num3: "Become a Numismatist."

Cosmopolitan mix. For a more formal history of Trieste, see triesteit.ags.myareaguide.com/?cityguide=history. We are used to the cosmopolitan mixes in London, Paris, Rome, and in our own country; Trieste has the advantage of a beautiful site and manageable size - partially due to its surrounding bowl of mountain ridges.

The Roman Empire - and San Giusto

Finding your way around a new city - here, just aim up. San Giusto and Roman ruins are at the top of a high hill area, with enough signs. See //www.ts.camcom.it/sangiusto. It if comes up Italian, search for San Giusto Trieste and click on the "translate this page" in your browser first.

There was an original Roman structure, a Capitoline Temple; and on that was built an early Christian basilica in the 6th Century. This was later destroyed, and two churches were built, Lady of the Assumption and San Giusto, and then these were connected. See ruins of the earlier Roman and Christian basilica. showing where they were; and then two churches replaced the basilica, to San Giusto and another to Mary. Using the same search words, scroll down to Trieste.com, translate that page and go. You will see how easy it is to get the gist of history, even when the translation is mechanical and sketchy. Sometimes regular English gets dull. This takes thinking, and is worth the thought.
The canal-waterways, urban chic, see //www.buzzle.com/articles/i-love-touring-italy-trieste. and rim of mountains - but Trieste is also Roman ruins and churches. See //www.edinboro.edu/cwis/marketing/LASTrieste.

The Arts - Novelist Claudio Magris; Cafe-writing

People from Trieste are not Triesters, or Triestans. This article about Claudio Magris, "novelist, essayist, cultural philosopher, professor of German literature," calls him "Triestine." See www.kirjasto.sci.fi/magris. I understand that he is in the running for a Nobel Peace Prize.

We see too little of European writers in our news. Look up Claudio Magris. He is also a translator who prefers working in cafes to a home office: "Magris is determined to continue loving the intricacies of the city, visiting its cafés and writing at their tables. ‘I can’t write at home, I get distracted. At the café I’m alone, there is no company. I’m anonymous but surrounded by other people, and that keeps me in contact with reality.’"

That is a tiny, fair-use quote from an article by Giulio Zucchini (now, that's Italian) at www.cafebabel.com/en/article.asp?T=T&Id=9469.

Mosaics

Trieste is a city of manageable size, less hectic than London or Paris, and full of riches in art forms that I never appreciated much before - like mosaics. Here is the mosaic at San Giusto - we got there just as everything was closing, but this fills us in. Do go to mosaicartsource.wordpress.com/2006/11/14/mosaic-cathedral-of-san-giusto-trieste-italy/.

The prize for best mosaics goes to the Norman cathedral at Monreale, Sicily, for us. The mosaics cover all the walls, telling stories. Noah is especially good. It almost makes you feel seasick, with the waves. See Sicily Road Ways.This site is a source for many matters mosaic - how to, places where, a compendium.

Look up the "Joy of Shards" from that site - now we know what to do with our bust-ups. More direct access - www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/index.

Trieste's Canals - and Kayakers Downtown; History Overview

Trieste is a kind of Venice, with the canals from the bay area, but it is not webbed throughout with them. See the aerial view at www.ts.camcom.it/english/porto.

Trieste was part of our Croatia trip - at the northern end of the Istrian Peninsula. We came from the south, Rikeke to Pula -- see Croatia Road Ways. A day and a half, one overnight. Not enough time.

A varied history. The area went between Italy, Slovenia and Croatia in disputes for centuries. After WWII, the Potsdam treaties made Trieste self-governing, but it later went to Italy, see www.ts.camcom.it/english/porto, to the continuing dissatisfaction of many Croatians. Scroll down about 9 paragraphs. For Potsdam, see Germany Road Ways.

This was an area of alleged war crimes, as are many places after wars. For an overview on the topic here, see www.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_warcrimes.

For the history of the Trieste events of WWII, see cgi.stanford.edu/group/wais/cgi-bin/index.php?p=587. If you get lost in the long address, stop at "wais" and maneuver from there. How I long for direct links. It is hard to find references if you go only to the home page. Do visit any home page, though, so the counters will count you.

More blogs about Trieste Road Ways.

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Crossroads and minorities - Who is a majority?

The Austrian Habsburgs ruled Trieste from 1382-1918, until the city was ceded to Italy after WWII, see www.roth37.it/COINS/Trieste/index; and Slovenia borders Austria - sharing Alps - and Trieste, both.

Slovenes are in a difficult position in Trieste, however, despite the border and their own port adjacent to it. See www.ce-review.org/01/6/pozun6. There was much brutality surrounding the World Wars, and the current resort-oriented flowery reference to the beauty of the city are misleading, if you stop with that. See www.ictp.it/pages/info/aboutts. Proponents of the territorial allocations after WWII note that Trieste was kept from both Tito and Stalin. See www.marxists.org/archive/glass/1946/10/ww2. That apparently was a main consideration, not the orientations of the people.

For the wars and psychological/economic/political damage undercurrent, see the Potsdam and treaties discussion at www.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_15. See also Germany Road Ways (Potsdam post). Scroll down this site to the section, "The Dark Side - 1945," at www.lewrockwell.com/orig/raico-churchill5.

The old town hilltop - San Giusto Cathedral and Castle

 Trieste.  San Giusto Cathedral, Castle.

1.  Orientation.  Tradition says that Jason and his Argonauts landedat Trieste, in search of the Golden Fleece - reason in itself to visit. See Trieste History.

Trieste has had many masters.  became a Roman colony under Julius Caesar, as Tergeste.  Later, the Republic of Venice attacked again and again, leading the Trieste population to seek aid from Austria, a form of voluntary submission.  Venetians got it back in 1508, and back to a free port under the Habsburgs of Austria in the 17th Century.  Ruins show all these stages. It was also occupied by the French (Napoleonic Wars) for a time. Languages: Slovenian, German, Italian, French. World War I:  Italy annexed Trieste at close of the war, and Italian Black Shirts proceeded to assault the large and prosperous Slovene population. Slovenes attacked back, as anti-Fascists.  Fascism prevailed.  World War II. Ultimately Germany ruled de facto, partisans Italian and Slovene conflicted, bombs fell, Yugoslavs took control, people disappeared, and after the war, Trieste became in 1947 a Free Territory under the UN. In 1954, the area known as Zone A was given to Italy. See and decipher at Wikipedia on Trieste.

2.  Major site.  The old cathedral and castle, San Giusto, named for Saint Justus who was martyred by the Romans for being Christian, this in the 3d Century,  is splendid at late afternoon and dusk - watch the sunset. The earliest structures date from the 6thCentury. See http://www.ts.camcom.it/ENGLISH/sangiusto. Saint Justus was drowned, and his body weighted, but then it resurfaced, like that of Hallvard of Oslo, a recurrent theme-miracle when there might be none other to affix to someone to create a saint?  See http://norwayroadways.blogspot.com/2014/12/oslos-patron-saint-saint-hallvard.html

3. Traffic strategies. Many old cities have addressed traffic problems by one-way street arrangements.  Those make sense to those who are familiar with the area, but disastrous for newcomers.  For those rest of us, be prepared to go in circles in Trieste, and to follow your nose upwards for landmarks if you are looking for old fortress areas. Fortresses are visible from below, and are almost always up rather then down or sideways. If in doubt, go up.

4.  Small is better, but not the smallest.  Driving. Be sure your car is no bigger than a compact.

For us, a subcompact is too small but a compact is fine. I like standard shifts, for more control. On occasion, if I am stuck in a parking spot because the next person has boxed us in, or we want to get in a spot and it looks too small, I will ask a passer-by to help. He hops in, parks the car in the impossible spot, or gets me out if boxed in, we salute and we laugh and I tip and off we go. Of course, somebody be a criminal and take off in the car, so?

5. Lack of time.  This was a sudden veer from Croatia, simply because we were nearby, and we could not see all.

• We did not take time to do Miramare Castle, called the lovenest of Maximilian of Habsburg and Charlotte of Belgium at this site, http:// www.ts.camcom.it/ENGLISH/miramar. You do that one and report back to us. The picture there does show how lovely the setting for Trieste is.
• Some of the masters of Trieste had mistresses.