European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I would be Anita for my friends, but I was only known as Laila with the partisans.

At times with people I didn’t know or whom I met for the first time.

It was my battle name.

The names we were given increased our chances of survival.

If one was arrested and talked under torture, he handed out the name he knew, not being your real name.

Many saved themselves this way.

I had chosen the battle name Laila because I read a lot

and had found out about this princess in a book on the Aztecs.

Her husband was an Aztec prince, the commander of a unit fighting the Spanish invaders.

As he was killed in battle she took his place.

Laila was the first name of a woman fighter, so I thought it would be right for me to choose that name.

She was a combatant, and I chose a name that would reflect what I was doing.

Becoming a partisan: rights, obligations

After a while of walking, a partisan patrol came towards us.

They were from the Rosselli detachment. Rosselli was one of the local partisans. Then we reached the detachment.

There, the commander started talking to us. He wanted to know why we went to the mountains.

We explained to him what had happened. And the situation changed again. A different reality hit us.

We didn’t only have to learn to fight, as the commander told us:

“From this moment you’re not men or women anymore, you’re partisans.

You’ll do what the others do, share things with us and sleep in the same rooms,