European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Deportation of the father and friends

At that point I see a fascist, a German van driving up the hill.

Since all peasants were at the strike… the van proceeds further up…

they went to Aleotti’s house instead and set it on fire (the Aleotti family was at the strike).

Somebody had betrayed us immediately, since in Montecavolo there were many fascists.

They betrayed so that the strike went well in Montecavolo and not in the other towns around Reggio

because, if this had happened in the whole Province, fascists and Germans would have had a lot to do!

They focused on Montecavolo, while in Rivalta the strike didn’t work out

because somebody was telling people “not to go in order not to get killed”.

It could have been so, but these battles had to be done,

they were part of what we were fighting for.

We had to fight in order to get rid of all this.

At my home they arrested Antinea, Liliana and Narciso, the only ones they found.

Narciso was ten, he would turn eleven in September and we were in March at the time.

Later on they brought him back home, keeping Antinea and Liliana under arrest.

My mother had stayed at home with the younger ones,

as Beatrice who was 5 (she was born in 1939),

and they had bagged some things to save them if they came to burn the house.

They arrested everybody.

They hadn’t found my father, they only caught him 7 or 8 days later, and sent him to a concentration camp in Germany.