European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

The last memory I have of my brother was after the mop-up of 1944.

With this song that went “The moon, the stars talked about love”.

It was hot then, they used to sing it on the radio.

“Oh what a pretty flower, oh what a pretty flower”.

That was the last time we were singing together, because he died

soon after in Ligonchio, near the house where I met my wife.

What did we do?

Cleaned the guns, some helped fixing the meals, another one went to get water.

Then at night we also talked, about the few things we knew.

We had political commissioners we listened to, but after the war I realized that they didn’t know much as well.

I have to say that their knowledge, their political culture was quite limited.

I couldn’t live my life anywhere else, I would really have a hard time.

That’s how I felt during the war too.

We even slept in beech-trees, I could say it was a beautiful experience.

Looking at today’s consumerism, I also understood that men need only a few things to live.

Today you have stores full of stuff, you don’t know where to put things at home;

at the time if you had a bottle of water, some bread and cheese,

you were just as strong as today, maybe even more since you didn’t need to go see the doctor after you ate too much.

I learned so much from the resistance, and from the war too.

Real antifascism developed even after the war.