European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Hitler had enlisted even those who were 15 or 16 years old.

As he saw me, he started to shout that the Americans were coming.

He wanted me to take cover, because he didn’t know I was a partisan.

At that moment we were only a young boy and a young girl who wanted the war to come to an end.

He was about to try to make it home, while I was waiting for my country to be free again.

At that moment I didn’t feel like I could hate neither the Germans nor that young soldier.

Maybe he could have harmed me before, but at that point all I wanted was the war to be over and things to change.

That’s what I did on the 24th. On the 25th all the joy I had inside burst open.

War for me had started in 1935, with the campaign in Africa. I was ten then, and on April 25th 1945 I was twenty.

The first thing I did was to throw our windows open.

For the previous five years we had covered them with blue paper in order not to let any light into our houses.

After that we found a flag and we all lined up to go to Reggio for a triumphant parade.

Along the Via Emilia there were American soldiers on both sides.

It was surprising for me to see blacks, as well as Indians with a turban around their head.

The infantry had come behind the tanks.

Then they lined up along the Via Emilia, from Rubiera to Reggio.

When we got there, the partisans had already arrived from the mountains, too.

As we reached the hospice, the partisan parade was stopped, since it was still dangerous inside the city.

There were many sniper casualties in the following days.

We simply turned around and went back home, but you can’t count the parades we did afterwards.