European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Maybe it was better this way.

One day, our officers in charge, such as General Mondini, from Parma, who was the Commanding General of my division,

pulled the troops together and deliberately lied to us.

I think they knew from the very start that what they were telling us was a lie,

but they told us that they had reached an agreement with the Germans: they would take us to Trieste,

where we would all be able to go our own way.

I was quite skeptical, but we all got on the train. There were forty-two of us on each railcar.

When we reached the border the Germans locked the railcars, allegedly because of the Partisans.

I told the others that it didn’t look good at all.

I ended up in Neubrandenburg, 200 km to the north of Berlin.

I was grateful that three or four years ago I was able to visit the camp I was imprisoned in sixty years before.

We stayed there for a while, under constant air raids.

The Germans who were in charge of the camp stayed in the first two shacks,

then there were two shacks of female prisoners – Russian women who worked on the railroad tracks with smaller shovels –

then the French, and finally us. I don’t know how many thousands prisoners were in the camp.

I should not forget to say that, at that point, I was still accompanied by two non-commissioned officers

who had kept my documents since the day we had embarked to leave Albania.

One of them was from Cosenza, the other from Catanzaro, and I think they were supposed to go back to Italy on special leave.

When everything changed I was slightly worried: the two were beginning to need something to drink,

and I was aware of how the Germans were not particularly fond of communists.