European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

and listen to Mussolini’s speech about the beginning of the war in Africa.

My mother and I went in front of the landlord’s living room.

We couldn’t go inside the house in order not to dirty it.

My mother had been told to call the farmers to listen to the Duce.

I was very happy. I was going to do something different and listen to a new thing.

When I heard the radio I was dazed since I couldn’t understand where that deep voice was coming from.

I didn’t understand what the voice was saying

and the meaning behind those words, unlike my mother.

I realized it had to be something terrible when I saw my mother crying on our way back home.

She was thinking about her six boys, who all were almost old enough to be enlisted for war.

From that moment I wasn’t happy having listened to the radio.

Sharecropping family; Womens conditions

I have always remembered the fact that when the landlord arrived in the courtyard,

my mother told us younger children to go inside.

I was really curious to see the landlord woman, all dressed up and carrying a small sunshade.

She was the countess Carbonieri of Parma.

Later I understood why we had to go inside.

My mother didn’t want the landlord to see us kids who could not work yet.

She didn’t want her to count how many cups of milk she would take out every morning to feed us.