European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

to get in contact with the antifascists, but it was impossible.

It was already the summer of ’43 when I went to Sassuolo to visit a friend.

I knew him as an antifascist, hoping he could help me to become part of the movement.

He told me he couldn’t, since he was indeed an antifascist but he wasn’t organized.

There was another comrade in my department

who I was friend with, his name was Armando Grassi from Gattaglio.

I told him I wanted to be involved and I finally convinced him.

He put me in touch with a guy called Corradini,

whose name I actually found out only after the war, and that he was from Cavazzoli.

From then on I became active in the underground movement.

At the beginning I didn’t do much.

I really started after the fall of Mussolini, on the 8th of September.

After that we really began to look for weapons.

I lived 500 meters away from the rail tracks.

Nearly our whole Azione Cattolica group started to go there

to slow the trains down before they arrived in Reggio.

The soldiers on the train got off before the train left again.

We took them to the rectory. We dressed some in plain clothes, others as priests.

I dressed as an acolyte, since I was 19 but looked younger.

I remember bringing a guy called Catellani all the way home to Sesso.