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Concept
Foiba
Summary
A foiba (from Italian: ˈfɔiba; plural: foibe 'fɔibe or foibas) — jama (ˈja̟mə) in South Slavic languages scientific and colloquial vocabulary (borrowed since early research in the Western Balkan Dinaric Alpine karst) — is a type of deep natural sinkhole, doline, or sink, and is a collapsed portion of bedrock above a void. Sinks may be a sheer vertical opening into a cave or a shallow depression of many hectares. They are common in the Karst (Carso) region shared by Italy and Slovenia, as well as in a karst of Dinaric Alps in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and, Croatia. The foibe massacres, a war crime that took place during and after World War II, take their name from the foibe.
The Italian name "foiba" derives from Friulan "foibe", which in turn derives from the Latin fŏvea (meaning "pit" or "chasm"). The oldest document on which it is reported is an official report in 1770, written by the Italian naturalist Alberto Fortis, who wrote a series of books on the Dalmatian karst.
They are chasms excavated by water erosion, have the shape of an inverted funnel, and can be up to deep. Such formations number in the hundreds in Istria. In karst areas, a sinkhole, sink, or doline is a closed depression draining underground. It can be cylindrical, conical, bowl-shaped or dish-shaped. The diameter ranges from a few to many hundreds of metres. The name "doline" comes from dolina, the Slovenian word for this very common feature. The term "foiba" may also refer to a deep wide chasm of a river at the place where it goes underground.
Foibe massacres
During and right after the end of World War II, OZNA and Yugoslav Partisans killed a number between 11,000 and 20,000 of the local ethnic Italian population (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians), as well against anti-communists in general (even Croats and Slovenes), usually associated with Fascism, Nazism and collaboration with Axis, as well as against real, potential or presumed opponents of Tito communism by throwing their still living bodies into the foibe.
Official source
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