European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

We moved to Gazzata di San Martino in Rio.

We were lucky to find a landlord willing to give us a piece of land to farm.

I guess they already knew we were antifascists.

They asked me if I wanted to help them out

in a few tasks to support the Communist party.

They needed somebody who wouldn’t be noticed much.

It was just what I was looking for. I wanted to do something, to help, but I didn’t know how.

They gave me a chance to do something for my family

and to support the antifascist ideals I was starting to believe in.

I started to collect the “soccorso rosso” (red aid).

The little amount of money antifascists could rely on to support those families

whose parents or brothers had to flee after being persecuted by the regime.

It was just natural to me.

After all I had suffered, joining the Communist party meant

doing something for the vision I had developed.

I would also be doing something for my brother and to grant people a chance to live better.

I became a communist day by day, taking in the atmosphere around me.

At fifteen, I can’t say I was aware of what was going on.

Given my life, however, joining the Communist party was the natural answer.

There was no other solution, no doubts of any sort.