European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

They came around a week after they had arrested them, still in August.

I was questioned for a whole day.

He was the cousin of the second-in-command

of the central headquarters of the partisans operating in the mountains.

I was questioned very harshly. They were accusing me.

I was denying, claiming that I had gone there only to get some eggs,

that a man had asked me for my ID card and I didn’t even know who he was.

This went on for two or three hours.

Then they said they were going to put me face to face with the man who had taken my ID card.

They brought this man inside, he was in plain clothes but all dressed up, wearing a tie.

I knew that partisans were tortured, and since he hadn’t been tortured…

So he began to tell what I had done, saying that my brother was a partisan and I had gone there to pick up a gun.

At that point I just lost the light of reason.

That was my luck, since I reacted in a very aggressive way:

“You’re a scoundrel, I went to pick up a gun?

When I got there you asked me for my ID card, you took note of my name,

and as you saw I lived in Reggio, you said you knew my brother…”

I had to say this, since my brother had already gone to the mountains, it could have saved me.

“You told me I had to bring a gun to him, but how could I say no to you?