European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

In the outskirts of the village there were a few women

but in the centre there was nobody. Everyone had left!

I went into the tavern of Torri and asked if there were partisans here.

He said: "No, there are no partisan round here, nobody."

"But I saw a few women ... " "They went to buy food".

So we decided to stay for a while, waiting for someone to come, but no-one appeared.

It was like a desert even though it was a village.

So we sat down under a poplar and said

"Let's talk. We don't have any money, it's raining, we don't know where the partisans are,

they don't tell us anything here, what shall we do? Shall we go home?

But we can't go home any more ..."

He tried to calm me, he was older than me (he was born in 1924, I in 1926).

But eventually I took my ID-card out of my wallet, I looked at him and told him:

"Look, all our will to find the rebels is this".

And I tore the ID in pieces. He asked me why I had done so

and I told him: "What do you think we're going to do back home, show that we still have our ID?

They already know that we went for a walk to see how it is".

And then I leaned against the poplar and cried, I was like a two-year-old child.

The whole day was like that.

We didn't even have the money to go and buy something, but there was nothing to buy, anyway.