European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

We were passing around “Il padrone delle ferriere” (Le maître des forges)

or “Le stelle ci stanno a guardare” (The stars look down), which I’ve read many times.

The one which got me thinking the most though was “Il padrone delle ferriere”.

As farmers we worked hard, but at least we stayed under the sun, in the open, under a tree.

Reading the book I imagined those people working several meters underground with no protection.

The author explains that everything in town had turned black, the colour of coal.

Even the kids’ faces were black since the coal dust was everywhere.

This book really shook me.

I realized what the differences between the rich and the poor were.

I remembered these men saying

“It’s always the sons of the poor who go to war, not those of the rich”.

Beginning of the War on Africa

The preparation for the war in Africa was gaining momentum.

Everything had to be geared to war.

Mussolini used to say that not one crumb of bread was to be wasted,

as it could serve a soldier in Africa.

I was hearing different stories from my brothers and their friends. I looked at my brothers a lot since my father had died.

I remember what Strozzi said.

He was very young, a neighbour of ours who later became the vice-president of the Riunite dairy.

Referring to what Mussolini had said about farmers,