European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

If we discussed with men, women would not speak out.

Having a women-only group allowed us to develop those issues and build up our claims.

After the war there was dramatic poverty. The children were on the street.

The first thing I recommended was to set up a nursery school. We had one, but it was too small for all the children.

In Bainsizza street, with all the working-class housing, a multitude of kids spent the whole day on the streets waiting for their mother to come back from work.

They ate only at breakfast and dinner, hardly at lunch. Their families didn’t have enough money for another meal.

We wanted to talk to them, grant them some security and possibly feed them.

The Communist Party offered us one of their offices, a small apartment in the working-class area,

so we started discussing on how to set it up.

The campaign for nurseries was the first major issue

together with the right to vote for women and equal payment ecc.

As I recovered, they ordered me to go to the brigade command.

I was told that they would be grouping together all women in a special unit called “information office”.

This unit was to take care of communications within the brigade,

with the other units and the outside, and also undertake surveillance, seek information, etc.

I went to Vetto and waited for the other women partisans to arrive.

The commissioner asked me: “Laila, would you be willing to take charge of the group?

You’ll be the one in charge for all the dispatch riders who are part of this unit”.