European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I really became aware of the differences.

At home, there was no way you could sleep next to a man!

Women were vital to the partisans. They could go where men could not. Men had failed to report for military service.

Everywhere they went, even if they were young, they were taken, searched and sent out to concentration camps at the least.

As women, we did not have to be in the army or with the fascists. We could move in a way they weren’t allowed to.

We took care of things like printed materials, propaganda, weapons.

When a GAP or SAP unit had to move in the lowlands,

for example if the Rosselli detachment, based in Cavandola, close to Canossa, had to go to Quattro Castella,

or carry out an action on the Emilia road, it was a woman partisan who would lead the way for the group.

We were called dispatch riders, but we would lead the way to see what was ahead and then go back to report.

This was really important.

Questioned by fascists; Illegality

They came around a week after they had arrested them, still in August.

I was questioned for a whole day.

He was the cousin of the second-in-command

of the central headquarters of the partisans operating in the mountains.

I was questioned very harshly. They were accusing me.

I was denying, claiming that I had gone there only to get some eggs,

that a man had asked me for my ID card and I didn’t even know who he was.