European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

“There are no shelters in Como, it’s a free city and we don’t get bombed”. What could we say?

We wouldn’t have said anything else, but at that point he told us to go with him

and bought us the ticket for the ferry that would have taken us all the way to the other side of the lake from Como, to Pizzo di Trona.

He was truly an angel.

Then he took us in front of a nice gate and rang the bell.

He told the nun who came out that they should offer us a place to sleep, since we were there to visit out brothers who were in the army.

They were really nice, they gave us a place to sleep and got us on the ferry at eight.

We only made it to our destination at noon, as the ferry was quite slow and stopped in all those small villages.

When we got there the soldiers were coming back from a mop-up.

What do you call them, fascists? Or should I say “repubblichini” (supporters of the Republic of Salò), as we called them then?

Anyway, they were all there apart from my brother.

I was desperate, I immediately thought he had been killed in the mountains.

But it wasn’t true, he simply didn’t take part in the mop-ups.

He worked as a shoemaker or as a warehouseman, any type of job,

whatever he could find so as not to go out on missions with the other soldiers.

I finally found him and he was doing fine. Then I told him that they had to come back home, otherwise the partisans would kill them.

Either they would be killed here or back home, because afterwards they would be considered responsible of terrible deeds.

They were really scared, I guess they were brainwashed in order for them to be cruel, to imprison or kill people.

Whatever they had to do, they were frightened.

He told me that they couldn’t run away, that there was no way for them to do so.