European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

1940 beginning of the war; 1943 Mussolini arrested

They took us to Busana as there was a radio there, and I remember that

we listened to Mussolini’s speech from Palazzo Venezia.

Afterwards I saw it on TV over and over, that big head at the window, on that balcony in Palazzo Venezia…

and everybody clapping below.

I thought that the war had started. You didn’t contemplate things too much at that age.

That was June 1940, I was thirteen and a half, so what can you be concerned about?

Having had that sort of education.

These guys broke into the local headquarters of the fascist party and threw everything out of the windows,

including the portrait of Mussolini, which had been respected so much until then.

Seeing these things in the dirt of the street,

well that was the first turning point.

Introduction, family, school

My name is Giacomo Notari.

I was born and still live in the mountains, in the town of Busana, in a tiny hamlet called Marmoreto.

I have always lived here, because the mountains are part of my soul.

I was born in a small hamlet of about 300 inhabitants.

Most of the people were small farmers who survived on subsistence farming.

It was the same for my family: we had some land, a few cows, chestnut groves and some woods.

Except for a few days during the war I never suffered hunger.