European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

The Germans were heading for the Po River,

but there were a few groups of partisans in the lowlands, the SAPs, trying to disarm them.

However, the Germans didn’t give up until the very end.

We were told to keep calm.

Nobody knew what the situation was.

I was at home when I heard a horse coming at full speed.

The reins were loose, because he had probably taken the horse from a cart.

I ran outside and it was a German soldier. He was really young.

Hitler had enlisted even those who were 15 or 16 years old.

As he saw me, he started to shout that the Americans were coming.

He wanted me to take cover, because he didn’t know I was a partisan.

At that moment we were only a young boy and a young girl who wanted the war to come to an end.

He was about to try to make it home, while I was waiting for my country to be free again.

At that moment I didn’t feel like I could hate neither the Germans nor that young soldier.

Maybe he could have harmed me before, but at that point all I wanted was the war to be over and things to change.

That’s what I did on the 24th. On the 25th all the joy I had inside burst open.

War for me had started in 1935, with the campaign in Africa. I was ten then, and on April 25th 1945 I was twenty.

The first thing I did was to throw our windows open.

For the previous five years we had covered them with blue paper in order not to let any light into our houses.

After that we found a flag and we all lined up to go to Reggio for a triumphant parade.