European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Women’s support for the partisans

At Christmas 1944 we collected biscuits, sweets and cakes.

I stored some at my house, since I was the one in charge and I preferred to keep dangerous things at my place.

Participation in that case was really huge. From that moment Women support groups became a much larger organization,

compared to the three or four antifascist women we were before.

Women were sensational. I found myself with a pile of cases full of stuff.

Then Valenti, a guy from Arceto, came over with his cart. He was the father of the one they called “Valenti the bandit”.

He wanted to make amends for his son. He came to my house at dawn and we loaded everything.

Women had prepared things that would last. We attached many Christmas cards to them.

Each woman wanted to send out a short note to the partisans.

We wanted to show them that we were close,

so that they wouldn’t suffer so much from being away from their families.

We felt that women were silently behind us in our struggle for peace,

waiting for the war to be over, so it wasn’t hard.

We shared the tasks house by house.

It was decided we would pass the word house by house and in small groups.

We had to reach the Reggio Emilia prefecture, in corso Garibaldi,

all together at 2 pm, but each had to move alone.

This meant you had to be really committed.

It wasn’t an everyday thing for a mother living 10 km away to take her bicycle and go in front of the prefecture.