European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Therefore it might have seemed that there was no leadership left.

But there was this network,

as fragile as it could have been which was secretly growing thanks to the words and the work of these young men.

If there were two people one day, there were three the following one,

since they were finding more and more people who were tired of fascism.

In 1939 my mother died.

She couldn't face the situation any longer when the landlord sent us a letter

telling us that she could not maintain an antifascist family.

I was fourteen and both my parents were dead.

Then we had to leave everything, all our friends and all we had.

We moved to Gazzata di San Martino in Rio.

We were lucky to find a landlord willing to give us a piece of land to farm.

I guess they already knew we were antifascists.

They asked me if I wanted to help them out

in a few tasks to support the Communist party.

They needed somebody who wouldn’t be noticed much.

It was just what I was looking for. I wanted to do something, to help, but I didn’t know how.

They gave me a chance to do something for my family

and to support the antifascist ideals I was starting to believe in.

I started to collect the “soccorso rosso” (red aid).