European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

and started handing me some books.

I was 15or 16 years old when they started talking to us openly about the Communist Party,

which was the opposite of fascism,

and about having to get involved in the clandestine struggle, organizing people against this dictatorship,

since it really was a dictatorship then.

By the time I left San Bartolomeo I was already part of the clandestine Communist Party.

I had a cousin who had been incarcerated, his name was Nello Strozzi.

And then also my boyfriend’s brother.

Me and my boyfriend had started dating when I was eighteen,

he was of the Viani family, his name was Alfeo.

Introduction, childhood during fascism

My name is Lidia Valeriani.

I was born on the 23rd of January 1923

in Montecavolo di Quattro Castella,

in a small hamlet called Scampate.

Awful fascist times.

My father was a victim of political persecution.

I had two brothers older than I,

and six more followed, making us a family of nine brothers.