European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

One of us was sleeping in the corner, another one was ill, and they would send us all outside to do some exercise.

We wore wooden shoes that could easily be lost while walking down the three steps that led to each shack.

Then they would have us walk in circles for hours, sometimes under the rain.

Episodes of this kind were not too frequent, but definitely happened.

I was arrested, or, I should rather say, we were loaded on their trains on the 16th of September,

and made it home only two years later, on the 14th of September.

We were near the Ruhr area, where most armament factories were located,

including the tank factories that the Americans used to attack with special bombs, in order to breach them.

We were bombarded every night, so I didn’t even think of running away,

because it would have meant running under these same bombs.

That’s what we went through.

Four years of confinement in Matera

We were taken to a farming penal colony, called “Colonia Confinati di Pisticci”, near Matera.

It was a farming colony, so once we got there we began to work.

If you want I can quickly tell you this story. The issue with this colony was

that it was opened when they had to close down the island of Ponza.

You see, in Ponza there were people like Terracini, Volponi, Cuccimarro

and other guys of this kind, who were lawyers.

As a consequence, everyone who was there, even the smallest farmer,

would be schooled by the time he left the colony: they all studied!