European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Later I realized it was quite distant, but at the moment I thought it was there, a few steps away,

this nasty sound in the silence of the night.

I felt fear that night, at least for a short time.

Massacre at Bettola, June 1944

Then there was this episode in La Bettola.

It was a shocking event for our province.

They had killed many people before, even elderly people, but always adults.

This time however they made fun of those who were dead, and also killed some children.

Everybody started to become conscious that it was “time to get rid of them”.

A really large group of people took up arms against them.

1940 beginning of the war; 1943 Mussolini arrested

They took us to Busana as there was a radio there, and I remember that

we listened to Mussolini’s speech from Palazzo Venezia.

Afterwards I saw it on TV over and over, that big head at the window, on that balcony in Palazzo Venezia…

and everybody clapping below.

I thought that the war had started. You didn’t contemplate things too much at that age.

That was June 1940, I was thirteen and a half, so what can you be concerned about?

Having had that sort of education.

These guys broke into the local headquarters of the fascist party and threw everything out of the windows,

including the portrait of Mussolini, which had been respected so much until then.