European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)
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I would be Anita for my friends, but I was only known as Laila with the partisans.
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At times with people I didn’t know or whom I met for the first time.
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It was my battle name.
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The names we were given increased our chances of survival.
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If one was arrested and talked under torture, he handed out the name he knew, not being your real name.
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Many saved themselves this way.
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I had chosen the battle name Laila because I read a lot
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and had found out about this princess in a book on the Aztecs.
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Her husband was an Aztec prince, the commander of a unit fighting the Spanish invaders.
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As he was killed in battle she took his place.
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Laila was the first name of a woman fighter, so I thought it would be right for me to choose that name.
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She was a combatant, and I chose a name that would reflect what I was doing.
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Becoming a partisan: rights, obligations
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After a while of walking, a partisan patrol came towards us.
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They were from the Rosselli detachment. Rosselli was one of the local partisans. Then we reached the detachment.
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There, the commander started talking to us. He wanted to know why we went to the mountains.
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We explained to him what had happened. And the situation changed again. A different reality hit us.
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We didn’t only have to learn to fight, as the commander told us:
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“From this moment you’re not men or women anymore, you’re partisans.
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You’ll do what the others do, share things with us and sleep in the same rooms,
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