European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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.

I got home and Mafaldo Chiessi, who was also an antifascist