European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

and told me that the commander wanted to know who those three men with their hands up were.

I told them that they were the ones who were shooting from the roof.

The major didn’t speak Italian, so the driver had to translate for him.

He got out of the car too, pointed the Thompson gun

and fired a spray of bullets.

I had to take a piece of liver off my jacket afterwards, because he had shot them at point-blank range.

I asked him why he killed them, since they had surrendered and were our prisoners.

But the driver called me over and showed me there were three holes in their jeep.

We were free, but there were too many things we had to sort out and too many had died.

It wasn’t a happy day. Fiorello died right next to me. We had been friends since we were kids.

The curtain of the Theatre Valli

The theatre curtain.

That was really a great moment for us. We’ve always been proud of it.

We had a comrade employed as a technician at the Timo offices. He was also our informer.

When the Germans arrived in Reggio Emilia they took hold of a part of the building

and set their offices there.

Italians took care of normal Italian work.

They also had to decode messages in cipher coming from Germany.

After they were spending the whole day working side by side,

our informer developed a sort of friendship with the Germans.