European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

the city hall, the Zucchi barracks, the Cialdini barracks.

They also plundered the city.

I remember that my wife lived in Coviolo.

Some Germans arrived in her courtyard

with hens, rabbits, and were laughing when they arrested the soldiers who had surrendered.

You have to remember that the Germans arrested and

sent to Germany more than 600,000 soldiers on the 8th of September.

Presentation: family, church, work

My name is Fernando Cavazzini, partisan Toni.

I was born in Reggio Emilia, in the hamlet of Villa Cella, on the 23rd of September 1923.

My father was a cobbler, just like his father.

My mother was a housewife and at times a day-labourer.

I had an older brother, who was born in 1915.

He was also a cobbler.

My sister Margherita worked as a day-labourer or in the rice-fields.

Another sister was a dress-maker.

My father was an antifascist,

although he wasn’t really organized in the antifascist movement.

Nobody in my family was a fascist,

but they weren’t organized, apart from me. I was in “Azione Cattolica” (Catholic Action).