European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Then one evening, from the ship, we saw that there were great celebrations in Durres,

people hugging all around, and we decided to get off.

It was the 8th of September, Badoglio had just declared the armistice.

There were also fifty German soldiers in Durres:

they took off their uniforms and celebrated with us,

and got dressed as Germans again only eight days later.

From that day, nobody was able to correspond with Rome.

Even those in charge of the different services or of the orderly room could not speak to anyone in Rome: nobody would answer.

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.