European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Then they said they were going to put me face to face with the man who had taken my ID card.

They brought this man inside, he was in plain clothes but all dressed up, wearing a tie.

I knew that partisans were tortured, and since he hadn’t been tortured…

So he began to tell what I had done, saying that my brother was a partisan and I had gone there to pick up a gun.

At that point I just lost the light of reason.

That was my luck, since I reacted in a very aggressive way:

“You’re a scoundrel, I went to pick up a gun?

When I got there you asked me for my ID card, you took note of my name,

and as you saw I lived in Reggio, you said you knew my brother…”

I had to say this, since my brother had already gone to the mountains, it could have saved me.

“You told me I had to bring a gun to him, but how could I say no to you?

You had a gun, I only had a basket of eggs in my hand”. I was very mean.

So he said I was right, and took back what he had stated.

They asked me to sign the minutes. I couldn’t tell what they wrote on it.

My cousin and I signed.

Then they told us we could go home, but they wanted to speak to us again the following morning.

So I said: “Listen, I’m afraid to stay at home.

Every night I go to San Bartolomeo to my cousin’s, she’s the local fascist secretary. Can I go there?”

My cousin said the same: “I usually go with her, or to my mother’s, would you let us go there?”

They told us we could.