European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

and the only one who brought home any money at the time was one of my brothers,

who had been working in the seminary for a long time then and was paid every two weeks.

My little sister also served in Parma. She was nine or ten years old, and went with a woman.

In the morning, she tended to little household affairs, in the afternoon she went with the contessa, who was a very old woman. She worked with the Red Cross.

Then she took her to the hospital. She was crazy about treating the wounded, treating people -- it was a real passion for her. It was because of this she joined the partisans.

And she was a nurse. She did whatever she could. She would give injections and take care of things. In short, she served the people.

She also tried to help the partisans and the people in our village: in the mountains nobody had anything at that time.

My mother, poor woman, was the only one who knew how to give injections, so she was always dashing about, called on by everyone, even at night.

One day my parents told me to go look for my sister. As I got there I ended up in a mop-up.

There was also a wounded man with a shattered leg, so my sister and others told me to go with them.

We went to Quara di Toano, in the mountains, and then moved towards Modena.

But the following day I decided to go back home, because I had to go tell my parents we were safe.

There had been a big battle in Carpineti, and they had to retreat to the castle at first, but then they had to escape.

So I went back home, but my sister didn’t return home until the war was over, a year later.

I would be going back and forth.

I went to the mountains a couple of times, since my parents were worried and wanted me to go see if my sister was safe.

She was only 18 then. When she was in Parma they knew she was with a family, but at that time they were definitely worried.

I would leave early in the morning and run towards the mountains,

stopping every now and then to ask people if they had seen a partisan unit with a woman. Actually there were two women in the unit then.

Somebody finally knew where they were, taking me to Gova, towards Mt. Penna, very far away.