European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I was born in Italy, in the region of Pesaro, at Sant’Angelo in Lizzola to be exact.

That is a beautiful little hill.

I once had the opportunity to see my birthplace again.

My parents came to France, thanks to an agreement concerning manual laborers

that had been signed between France and Italy after World War I.

These work contracts gave Italian antifascists the opportunity

to leave Italy legally and escape imprisonment.

I don’t know the exact date of my fathers’ emigration,

but it took place between 1921 and 1922, as I was born in 1923.

When I was six months old, my mother and I came to France to join my father.

Since then I have lived in Nanterre. For almost 83 years now.

My father was a Communist, an antifascist.

He joined the French Communist Party as soon as we got French citizenship.

He applied for naturalization in 1930. Otherwise it was very difficult to find work.

I went to school, “The Ecole Republique”, in Nanterre.

The school has now disappeared to make way for the University Paris X.

I went to that school until the age of 13 and got my Elementary School Certificate - Certificat d’Etudes.

To please my teacher, I took an entry test for high school, but it was not my goal.

At the time my brother had just been born,

my mother was not working because she had a heart disease.