European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Italian interned soldiers who were supposed to wear this acronym on the uniform.

Four or five of us, including two Sardinian sergeants of the Italian financial police (the “Guardia di Finanza”),

managed to convince all the others not to sign. We were 550 in my camp.

They would tell us: “We’ll send you back home to Italy

and there the Monte Rosa division is waiting for you”.

We could only imagine what the Monte Rosa was,

but this is what we would tell them:

“Let’s not sign anything. On the Russian front we’re too weak, we’re outnumbered, and that’s exactly where we’ll end up!”.

So nobody signed.

The “Lagerfuhrer”, the boss of all bosses,

was so furious one day that we were sanctioned to

– I will tell you this in German –

“Diese Leute morgen früh kein Brot”: no bread for three days.

The cold and the work

When we arrived there, the French asked us:

“Since you come from the outside, what do people say? How long will the war last?”.

We always thought we knew everything, and we told them it would only last one or two more months,

but they replied it would go on for another two years. They were right, the war went on for two more years.

There were women who had to work on the railroad with shovels and pickaxes.

Sometimes they were even pregnant, and trust me, that’s hard work.