European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

That’s why I say that antifascism matured after the war more than during the war itself.

Why Giacomo entered the comunist party

Now we might laugh about this, but when you talked about Russia then,

about a country that carried out a revolution,

where there was a king who was killed, where they were selling the land along with the farmers…

It was an inspirational message for the youth.

Then we all know how the story went,

but the communist principles, just like the Christian principles, are two sets of values that just can’t fail.

Mankind must head in this direction in order to survive, otherwise we will end up in the dust.

Having said this, there’s a message I’ve always told the priests too:

communist and Catholic family…

If you had really applied Christianity we would have had no reason to join the Communist Party, you would have been the ones making justice.

They can’t understand how anyone coming from a Catholic family

that goes to Mass, that has baptized its children, whose father sings in church,

whose family that has rebuilt the church of Santa Maria after the Germans had set it on fire,

can join the Communist Party. There was this message of liberation.

Otherwise who would have done it, nobody paid us for this…

I worked for the Communist Party for 13 years and 6 months without social insurance contributions and without health insurance.

And that’s fortunately because I was already rich, I had food on my table at home.

Other comrades who were living the same life I was living had their wives working as maids, or on the rice-field, with children at home.