European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I couldn’t tolerate being considered as a nobody.

I couldn’t stand the fact that a man would marry me only to have a maid and someone who would give birth to his children.

That he would then be the one in charge.

It was often a matter of discussion, even with my father,

although he was a very democratic and open-minded person who understood certain issues. My boyfriend didn’t.

I told him: “Giving birth to a child for a man is just a matter of seconds.

I share my life with him for nine months. He lives in me,

I’m the one who feeds him, who looks after him and gives him a chance to live.

And you tell me that I have no decisional power, that I can’t say how he should grow up?”

His reply was simply that it’s up to the man to take decisions at home. So I told him he could go home and be the man of the house there,

while I’d go back to the mountains, because that was the choice I had made.

It wasn’t an easy decision, after so many years of engagement.

Staying with him was what I had envisioned for my future. Now I put an end to it.

I also had to take into account that I might have no other chance to get married.

After such a long engagement one was considered a widow.

It would be difficult to find a young man willing to marry me.

But I didn’t feel like starting a family with a man who had such principles.

Battle name Laila

As a partisan I chose the battle name Laila.

I would be Anita for my friends, but I was only known as Laila with the partisans.