European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

a in Montecavolo near Quattro Castella (in the province of Reggio Emilia).

My family had been a miller family

for over 400 years.

In 1929 there was a terrible crisis and my father lost a great deal of money,

mostly because he was a great friend of the parson.

He had 12 or 14 sharecroppers working for him, so he was really rich,

and they could not pay him any longer

with the stuff they used to bring to the mill.

“Keep calm, you'll see that one day god will ...”

So they kept taking credits, but the day came when my father lost a lot of money.

That was when we split up. Me and my brother Portos were both students,

so we went to Montecchio,

at Montecchio we owned a nice little house.

It had already started ...

I was friends with the family of Jones Bertolini

who was a really passionate partisan, he got the silver medal,

that was when I became a communist. His mother was an anti-fascist,

the father had to emigrate to France,

they were really poor. I'd seen him only once

when he came back to Montecchio to meet his parents.