Our guys from the islands in the great war 1914 - 1918

 25. 2. - 21. 3. 2019.

 THE FRITZI PALACE

 MALI LOŠINJ

This photographic exhibition is the result of over 15 years research and it’s a first important step made visible to everybody, right while this year is the celebration of the centennial of the last year of the great war.

 I started this research for pure enthusiasm, for my always strong interest for history and to make everybody know an important period of history of our land and our people.

 On the 28th of June 1914 a serb nationalist killed the heir to the Austro - Hungarian throne and his wife in Sarajevo. Exactly a month later the whole of Europe was engulfed in the first world war which would end 4 years later at the price of almost 10 millions deaths, of a much greater number of wounded and mutilated and with an incredible degree of destruction and suffering, and which would re-draw European borders and make disappear kingdoms that had lasted for centuries.

 Our guys, like millions of young europeans, had to enlist and leave for war, to fight on the Serbian front and on the immense Russian one from 1914, then from 1915 also on the Italian one, facing all kind of dangers and sufferings. Many of them would not come back home remaining trapped forever in the never ending Galician plains or in the freezing cold Carpathian mountains, or in the hellish trenches of Isonzo or in the Trentino mountains; many more would suffer wounds, amputations and shocks that would scar their lives forever; others would endure years of imprisonment in the never ending Russia before being able (not all of them) to get back home after more troubles and epic journeys; others would have to remain prisoners (and die) in Italian camps.

 This photographic exhibition wants to remember and to celebrate our grandfathers, great-grandfathers, uncles and great-uncles, regardless of the uniform they had or chosed to wear, to make their personal experience and memories not to be forgotten, to transmit these memories to the young generations.

 And to make all of us remember that peace is not something that is granted, but something we have to conquer and to protect every day of our life.