European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I began to attend school with clogs on my feet, a cloth sack, two notebooks -

one ruled and one squared – and a spelling-book

which had been passed on by all my brothers before I got it.

At school there was a large banner that had been badly painted, that said:

“The Duce is always right”.

Everything was made so that people believed in these things:

that the Duce was not to be opposed and that he was always right in what he said.

In the morning we were given cod-liver oil: half a spoon to the girls, a full spoon to the boys.

This wasn’t a problem at all, since the oil was nasty and rancid,

but it was already a sign of the discrimination existing towards women.

We didn’t take much math, but we spent a lot of time doing gymnastics, as we had to forge our physique.

Since we didn’t have a gym, every day we spent two hours in the school courtyard doing physical education,

even in the winter when it turned cold.

We were all excited for the gymnastics display we were working on.

It would take place in the main square, in front of our parents and all the others.

However, Mussolini wanted children to wear a uniform from our earliest childhood:

the “Figli della Lupa”, the “Balilla”, the “Piccole Italiane”, the “Avant-gardists”.

Mothers were enrolled in the “Massaie rurali” (rural housewives),

and were given pamphlets for them to learn how to breed chickens and work the garden: the “war garden”.

The whole family was