European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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,

that they needed to go to war, in order to create an empire and conquer new land to work,

I remember Strozzi saying: “War has never brought anything good for the poor”.

and listen to Mussolini’s speech about the beginning of the war in Africa.

My mother and I went in front of the landlord’s living room.

We couldn’t go inside the house in order not to dirty it.

My mother had been told to call the farmers to listen to the Duce.

I was very happy. I was going to do something different and listen to a new thing.

When I heard the radio I was dazed since I couldn’t understand where that deep voice was coming from.

I didn’t understand what the voice was saying

and the meaning behind those words, unlike my mother.

I realized it had to be something terrible when I saw my mother crying on our way back home.