European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

As we got on the roof there were three men of the Black Brigade with a 37 mm Breda machine gun.

I told them not to move and raise their hands.

They obeyed as they saw the machine gun pointed at them.

They told us not to kill them. They’d show us where the others were. “Alright”, we said, “where are they?”

They told us there was a platoon of around thirty of them hiding in the subterranean vaults of “La Luna”, a spot near Porta Castello.

As we got back down, however, there was a surprise.

A jeep with a big white star printed on the hood was parked by the church. I asked what was going on.

The driver got out of the jeep

and told me that the commander wanted to know who those three men with their hands up were.

I told them that they were the ones who were shooting from the roof.

The major didn’t speak Italian, so the driver had to translate for him.

He got out of the car too, pointed the Thompson gun

and fired a spray of bullets.

I had to take a piece of liver off my jacket afterwards, because he had shot them at point-blank range.

I asked him why he killed them, since they had surrendered and were our prisoners.

But the driver called me over and showed me there were three holes in their jeep.

We were free, but there were too many things we had to sort out and too many had died.

It wasn’t a happy day. Fiorello died right next to me. We had been friends since we were kids.

The curtain of the Theatre Valli

The theatre curtain.