European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I was grateful that three or four years ago I was able to visit the camp I was imprisoned in sixty years before.

We stayed there for a while, under constant air raids.

The Germans who were in charge of the camp stayed in the first two shacks,

then there were two shacks of female prisoners – Russian women who worked on the railroad tracks with smaller shovels –

then the French, and finally us. I don’t know how many thousands prisoners were in the camp.

I should not forget to say that, at that point, I was still accompanied by two non-commissioned officers

who had kept my documents since the day we had embarked to leave Albania.

One of them was from Cosenza, the other from Catanzaro, and I think they were supposed to go back to Italy on special leave.

When everything changed I was slightly worried: the two were beginning to need something to drink,

and I was aware of how the Germans were not particularly fond of communists.

One night, the Germans needed thirty people and came over to our shack.

The two officers had been entitled to bunk beds, so they were sleeping in a corner of the shack.

We slept on straw on the floor, and I managed to get into the group that was leaving.

I never knew anything about them afterwards, and maybe I shouldn’t have done this,

but I was afraid they would hand my documents to a guard. The guards were brutal there.

They used to come inside in the morning, screaming the word “Aufstehn”,

At first, we wondered what we were supposed to do – maybe get some coffee! –

then four or five of them came inside and started acting rough.

We immediately understood that we had to get up, even if we couldn’t understand the word.

They were really mean there, so I left and went to this other camp,