European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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

organized.

The Duce had also decided that large families were to be awarded with a certificate.

Even more so for our family since there were six boys and two girls.

This certificate had to be displayed at home, so that everybody could see

that Mussolini had acknowledged these families

who had generated manpower for the nation to prepare for war.

When I was seven I suffered my first humiliation.

My mother didn’t have enough money to buy me the uniform of the “Piccole Italiane”.

So I couldn’t take part in the gymnastics event, as I had dreamed about.

I never found out if we really didn’t have any money