European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

When a GAP or SAP unit had to move in the lowlands,

for example if the Rosselli detachment, based in Cavandola, close to Canossa, had to go to Quattro Castella,

or carry out an action on the Emilia road, it was a woman partisan who would lead the way for the group.

We were called dispatch riders, but we would lead the way to see what was ahead and then go back to report.

This was really important.

Questioned by fascists; Illegality

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.