European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

With difficulty they had to leave thousands of tanks, horses, other things, an incredible haul.

Few or none of the Germans made it across the Po river.

The Resistance for me was just like going to university.

I learned to feel confident throughout my whole life, and never felt uncomfortable again.

That’s why I set up the cooperative although everybody was against the idea. Consorzio, Federcoop laughed at me:

“What are you setting up the cooperative for? You wouldn’t be able to lead a cooperative even if the times were different”.

I replied: “You don’t understand. I took part in the Resistance and I learned a lot from it.

We did things you wouldn’t even imagine”.

It was hard to forgive…

We were all between 15 and 28 years old.

A boy called Francia wasn’t even fifteen.

Another one from Guastalla, who’s still alive, was seventeen,

the others were around 20-21 years old.

There was one of us who was 28, who was married and father of a one-year old child.

They arrested his wife, then they tortured her and raped her.

From this story one can understand what happened after the war.

Some felt they had to get vengeance for all the brutality of the fascists and the Germans.

I’ve never agreed with retaliation: once the war is over everything is over.

On the other hand, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of those partisans, or even civilians, who had to bear these episodes:

It’s hard to caress your torturer’s cheek when you meet him after the war.