European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)
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Some of the interpreters, even those who were Italian,
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kept telling us there was a chance that Mussolini and Hitler
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decided that there had to be no Italian prisoners in this country.
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We’re talking about the famous IMIs (Internati Militari Italiani),
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Italian interned soldiers who were supposed to wear this acronym on the uniform.
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Four or five of us, including two Sardinian sergeants of the Italian financial police (the “Guardia di Finanza”),
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managed to convince all the others not to sign. We were 550 in my camp.
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They would tell us: “We’ll send you back home to Italy
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and there the Monte Rosa division is waiting for you”.
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We could only imagine what the Monte Rosa was,
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but this is what we would tell them:
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“Let’s not sign anything. On the Russian front we’re too weak, we’re outnumbered, and that’s exactly where we’ll end up!”.
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So nobody signed.
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The “Lagerfuhrer”, the boss of all bosses,
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was so furious one day that we were sanctioned to
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– I will tell you this in German –
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“Diese Leute morgen früh kein Brot”: no bread for three days.
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The cold and the work
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When we arrived there, the French asked us:
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“Since you come from the outside, what do people say? How long will the war last?”.
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