In 2004, an exhibition dedicated to the memory of those who experienced the exodus from Istria following the political changes after the Second World War. The temporary exhibition aroused such interest in becoming a permanent national museum.
A series of panels illustrate the historical and political events of the area and help understand the boundaries of the border line and the consequences that it led to. The reproduction of a living space, a box, allows us to imagine the difficulties that the exiles had to face in the years following the exodus. At the bottom of a large hall is a stack of furniture and everyday objects that remind us of the hopes of so many people who sought to recreate their lives here, reusing the objects from their old houses.
The refugee camp was active from the 1950s and was only finally abandoned in the mid-1970s.
After the London Memorandum of 1954, Anglo-American troops left Trieste, and the extensive area of 8 hectares of the barracks in which they lived. The area then provided sheltered for the many refugees who, particularly between 1954 and 1955, abandoned Istria after the passage of Zone B to Yugoslavia.
Unheated wooden shacks with roofs in asbestos were divided into 4x4-meter boxes accommodated single families, difficult living conditions that lasted for twenty years until the construction of new homes. Now these spaces have been transformed into a museum and guiding the tourists are people who, for the most part, actually lived through the exodus, thus offering particularly touching testimonials.
1. Sored possessions abandoned by the exiles;
2. Objects dating from the Nazi and Titoist occupations of the city of Trieste;
3. Original signposts used for the gathering of exiles after their departure from their homeland;
4. The memorial to little Marinella Filippaz, who died of cold in February 1956;
5. Original 8 minute video made in 1946 documenting the departure of Italians from Pula.
