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A News Program

Between 1940 and 1945,

women faced one of the darkest times.

Sons and husbands at the front and at home, rations and bombs.

Their resignation was transformed on September 8, 1943.

Women, by participating actively in the fight for freedom,

became aware of their role in a new Italian society.

WOMEN OF THE RESISTANCE

Europe is occupied by the Germans.

The many women who participate in the fight for freedom

write their loved ones a few hours before dying.

“The duty of lessening my mother's pain will fall to you.

Tell her that I fell so that those who come after may live free,

as I so wished to do.”

“I died to attest to the fact that one can passionately love life

while accepting a necessary death.”

“Dear Son, I can’t write you everything that I feel.

But once you’re grown up and can identify with my situation,

then you will understand.”

“Don’t think of me as being any different from any soldier on the battlefield.

I feel God's will and with joy I want it to be done.”

“I think it will happen tonight.

I would so have liked to see the new times.”

“My dear husband, let my last breath be of thanks to fate,

which allowed me to love you and live with you for seven years.

I so would have liked to see you one last time.

But as I am allowed no favors,

I’m too proud for a useless request.”

Thomas Mann wrote, “All this would have been in vain.

Their dream and death would have been useless, wasted.

No, it can’t be.

There has never been an idea for which men have fought

and suffered with a pure heart, and for which they've given their life,

which has been destroyed.”

The Resistance was a European phenomenon.

The word, coined by the French,

described the opposition fought by Europe against Nazism.

It was both a fight and a passive resistance,

a popular movement and a patriotic revolt.

In Italy, the Resistance was a new risorgimento,

a movement that united and bound, for the first time in the nation’s history,

men with different political and social backgrounds.

It united the masses of the populace with the antifascist parties.

36,000 partisans lost their lives in the Resistance.

10,000 civilians were killed in retaliatory acts.

33,000 soldiers died in concentration camps.

8,000 were deported for political reasons.

32,000 died fighting as partisans abroad.

Women participated in large numbers.

70,000 women joined the defense groups.

35,000 women fought alongside the partisans.

Sixteen of them received gold medals.

Why? What motivated them?

While up until then fascism had not shown its true colors,

with the introduction of the racial laws,

and these wars that seemed so unjust and cruel —

and we’ve mentioned the one against France —

women felt that they could not go along

with a dictatorship, with a government

that forced them to embrace attitudes

that went against their deep moral context.

I had some Jewish friends,

so I couldn't understand this official stance

and I couldn't understand why I should renounce my friends,

who until then had been very dear to me.

Later on, I think the worst blow

was dealt to me by my brothers upon their return from Russia,

when they told me both

what had happened during their retreat and what the Germans had done,

and what my brothers had seen, both in Poland and in Russia.

The last blow, certainly, apart from July 25,

came on September 12 and 13,

when the first German tanks came into Mondovì.

It was completely absurd and unjust

for the Germans to take away our men that way.

And most of all, seeing, near the train my father was in —

the sealed train that was carrying the displaced persons to Germany —

a group of Germans and fascists shooting at us women,

who were there looking for our loved ones,

our fathers, brothers, et cetera.

I experienced a huge sense of rebellion,

and perhaps for the first time in my life,

I felt something that I don't think I've ever felt since.

I felt hatred.

They would put in the envelope with our paychecks a little stub of paper

on which it said that we had to pay five lira —

I remember it perfectly —

for the membership card of the Fascist Party.

I wrote on it, “I refuse.”

After two or three days I was called into the manager’s office

and they said, “You’re going to be tried by the special court.”

“Why?” “Because you refused to become a member of the Fascist Party.”

“I refuse because my brother just died, in the war.

He was 20 years old.

I didn’t ask for the war. You did, and that’s all there is to it.”

I took part in the Resistance

because I come from a family of factory workers.

We lived in a state of abject poverty,

and I went to work in the factory very early.

Consequently, we rebelled —

and I think this applies to the other women as well —

against the abuse of power on the part of our bosses.

We wanted to live in a better world, with more freedom.

We also wanted more recognition for other aspects of our humanity.

And we hoped for better pay.

Mostly because I saw the workers and the peasants in my town,

all the boys in town taking part,

so I said to myself, if they’re doing it,

it must mean that it’s important.

They were fighting, voluntarily, for something important.

Important for what would come after.

Because maybe then something would change for them,

and therefore also for me.

Then on September 8, when the army fell apart,

I chose this path because I realized

that these young men in the mountains needed the help of us women.

They couldn't manage on their own.

The men who were in the mountains could not come down into the cities

because they would have been arrested.

So I decided to become a courier.

I started going back and forth to Boves, on my bicycle,

carrying arms, ammunition, documents, news, drugs, food,

depending on what I could get my hands on.

The women who worked at that time were neither fanatics

nor women with a knife in their hands or mouths, as has been said.

They were regular housewives,

women who had been suffering for a long time.

Especially at that time.

Their husbands, their sons and brothers were in danger.

Some were fighting in the war, some were already dead.

And the women felt called

to save what they could of their homes.

Even for an educated person...

I felt that it was logical to take the position

that at some point one must act.

Acting means proving with facts the validity of one’s ideas.

So naturally, we each did what we could

within the limits of our strength.

So I, too, became a conspirator.

In the Resistance, women became protagonists of a historical moment

right alongside the men.

They accepted the war as individuals who participated in it

responsibly and in person.

They accepted war with its rules of violence,

and the war would not show them any mercy.

4,563 women were arrested, sentenced, and tortured.

623 women were either shot or killed in battle.

About 3,000 women were deported to Germany.

In the mountains, they participated in every kind of partisan activity.

In the mountains, women discovered a new strength in themselves.

The circumstances proved to them that if necessary they could take control.

They could lead in battle, or lead a campaign.

More than 500 women were given positions of civilian and military leadership.

We met two of them. These are their stories.

On the evening of November 7, 1944, in Bologna,

was the battle of Porta Lame against the Germans,

which was crucial for the partisans.

A 17-year-old girl, Germana Boldrini,

gave the signal which began the battle.

At that time I separated from my comrades

and got to Porta Lame six or seven minutes before them.

The attack started there, in the square.

And when I got to Porta Lame...

with my automatic weapon and my hand grenades,

I started to fire.

My comrades followed my lead and there was a great battle.

There were losses on our side and on the Germans' side.

Where did you get this great courage?

Maybe because in my family there was always that atmosphere,

given that my poor father spent 12 years in exile on the border,

and when he came home he was tormented almost daily by the fascists.

He suffered all kinds of indignities.

And since I was the oldest child,

I guess I built up in my blood a certain spirit of bravery.

I would have defended my father to the death,

because he had endured such a cruel and horrible youth

that I could hardly stand to hear about it.

And after his awful death —

What happened to your father?

My father was shot.

First they bombed our house and then they shot him in the ruins.

So what did you do?

I wanted to defend him. I wanted to avenge his death.

That’s all that I did.

Because I didn’t see him.

I saw him two days before his death.

I never saw him again, not even at his funeral. Nothing.

They didn’t give him a decent funeral.

It was done with carts and animals.

They didn’t even allow him to have a carriage or anything.

In 1944, Norma Barbolini was 24.

She had been in the mountains for a while, with a brigade of partisans led by her brother.

One of the fiercest battles against the Germans was at Cerré Sologno,

near Modena, during which Norma became the leader of the brigade.

Because my brother was wounded, and quite severely,

and we were engaged in a fierce battle,

where fascists and Germans were fighting at close quarters —

So at one point we were almost surrounded,

after they breached my brother’s position,

so we had to try, with all our might,

to resist throughout the battle.

And since I couldn’t see anyone there

in a position to make real decisions —

it was very chaotic —

I decided to make the decisions that I deemed necessary,

certain that the partisans would support me

and do everything in their power to help.

Consequently, we were able to win the battle with great success.

- What was your rank? - I was a captain.

There was a bounty of 400,000 lira on my and my brother’s head.

In prison, they were subjected to excruciating interrogations.

Just like the men, they were aware of code books, codes,

the names of the leaders, the numbers of combatants.

The enemy stopped at nothing to get them to talk.

Right after September 8,

Adriana Locatelli opened her home to a group of soldiers.

She was their leader for over a year in partisan operations

until the Germans captured her

and tried to get her to talk by every means possible

over the course of murderous interrogations.

The interrogations were held in a room

with a bed covered in metal spikes.

If the woman said no, as I always did,

they threw her onto that bed and beat her with clubs.

Then they would take her out

and put her in a room

that even if she were to scream no one would hear,

because it was padded.

They would take those things

that chimney sweeps use to clean the chimneys

and they would strip her naked and then beat her all over her body

with those sorts of weapons that the chimney sweeps use.

But wait, her arms and legs were tied up.

All my teeth were knocked out.

They poked my legs with red-hot needles.

And this went on for eight days, you know.

But I never talked or admitted anything, so I could save my comrades.

I had to wash myself in the nude in front of all those soldiers.

They wouldn't let me drink, but they would put water in front of me.

They wouldn’t let me eat, but they would put food in front of me.

Oh, and they ripped my hair out, if you want to add that as well.

They ripped my hair out

and slammed me against the wall for I don’t know how long.

Under very bright lights.

That's why the light bothers me a little. It reminds me of those lights.

Radio CORA was a partisan radio connected to the Allies.

The group was captured in Florence and taken to Villa Triste.

Members of the group included Bocci, Pieraccini, Focacci,

and also a woman, Gilda La Rocca.

When they took us to Villa Triste, it was full of repubblichini,

of German and fascist police.

They took us to the second floor, to a waiting room,

where they made us stand with our hands up, faces to the wall.

Then they started taking people away, one by one,

and we heard awful screams and loud blows.

Some of the ones who were brought back to the waiting room,

like Mr. Focacci —

He had a broken arm and all his teeth had been knocked out

and he was just in awful shape.

The same goes for Professor Bocci,

who, so they could continue torturing him, in order to get him to talk —

They had beaten him so badly

that in order to give him a shot to stimulate his heart,

they were forced to inject it into his shoulder.

There was nowhere else to insert a needle.

- What about you? - Yes, they —

They didn’t spare me.

I won’t go into detail because —

It's so painful, even just to remember it,

that I can’t handle it.

At night, above me there was a room which I later saw.

It was a torture chamber. It looked like a doctor's office.

And the nighttime was just horrifying

because we could hear blows and screams.

The Germans screamed like madmen.

People cried out in pain.

At one point I ripped strips off of my slip to make earplugs for myself,

but it didn’t work.

I even got to the point of trying to kill myself.

First I jumped out of a window,

so from then on I was under constant watch.

But even before then, I had tried, with the strips of my slip,

to hang myself from the heating pipe, but it broke and my attempt failed.

It's not right for human beings,

especially if they are honest, intelligent, et cetera —

They can’t be left to the mercy of crazed, brutish criminals who beat them,

who induce another human being

to think of death as the greatest good,

as a liberation.

The Florentine partisans decided

to stage an antifascist mission at the Paszkowski café.

The mission was assigned to two gappisti, a man and a woman.

We went in and sat down at a table.

We attached the bomb under a table, and we turned it on.

But when it came time to get up —

I don’t know if we knocked the table or what —

the bomb fell.

So I scooped it up and put it in my purse.

But the people at the next table had seen it,

and noticed something suspicious.

So they said they wanted to see what was in my purse.

In the purse was the bomb. The man was able to escape.

Tosca Bucarelli was taken to Villa Triste, where the interrogations began.

For the interrogations they took us into a room, where they all came.

They all came in, and each one had a question to ask.

And depending on the answer, if it wasn’t the one they wanted,

they would beat us.

At first — the first night, in fact —

I was beaten by a captain of the German SS.

But all subsequent interrogations were conducted by fascists.

Were you afraid?

I felt a sense of rebellion, more than of fear.

Because in those moments I think fear just goes away.

I don’t know, there’s something that gives us

a certain special kind of courage.

So I think it’s more rebellion than fear. But there’s fear too.

Because a person, as I said before, who is without fear is foolish.

I was very afraid.

On January 21, when the Allies landed at Anzio,

the Roman Resistance decided it was the right time

to free a few political prisoners at Regina Coeli.

The success of the mission depended on Marcella Monaco,

the wife of the prison's doctor.

The plan was very complex.

I had succeeded in securing, from inside the prison,

a completed form for the release of a prisoner.

I filled out nine of them.

Pertini, Saragat, Carlo Bracco,

an extremely brave partisan from Trastevere who was later captured

and brutally tortured in via Tasso, where he died.

And the old father of the two Andreoni brothers,

who had been tortured extensively, even though he was quite elderly.

And others whose names escape me now.

The forms were delivered to the chief warden of the prison.

He replied, however, that a recent law established

that political prisoners could not be freed directly from the prison,

but were to be taken to police headquarters, where they would then be released.

This put a wrench in the plan.

At 5:00 p.m. no solution had been found.

At 5:30 the curfew would begin.

What’s more, the phone lines that connected Regina Coeli to the outside were out of order.

Only the internal phone lines were working.

At this point it seemed that our plan had failed.

Half an hour to figure out a new plan was just too little time.

mine, those of the other two men who were working with me,

of the inmates who were about to be discovered.

I was absolutely desperate.

I had the idea of running to the PAI barracks in Trastevere,

because my brother, who at that time was doing his military service,

had been assigned to the PAI.

I knew the lieutenant who was in charge of the barracks.

When we got there, I told the lieutenant that I had to speak to my brother,

and that it was incredibly urgent and very serious.

Apparently he realized that these were extraordinary circumstances,

and he ran to get my brother, and left us alone in his office.

This is what I had anticipated.

So one of the two other men,

who, thank goodness, had a strong southern accent,

made a phone call

on the direct line connecting Regina Coeli and the barracks.

He pretended to be the official in charge at police headquarters,

and he ordered the release of the inmates.

At the other end of the line, a very surprised warden said,

“All nine of them?”

And he said, “Yes, all nine, and right away, before the curfew.”

And the other man said, “All right, it will be done.”

So we ran back to Regina Coeli,

where the warden was clearly moving ahead as fast as possible.

And two minutes before the curfew,

from the main doors of Regina Coeli,

out came Pertini, Saragat and the others.

And the best part, I think,

was that Pertini and Saragat spent the night in our apartment

while all of Regina Coeli was lit up, with all the phones ringing,

because at 9:30 Radio London had announced

that a female Roman patriot had freed these men.

So while the SS looked for them desperately all over Rome,

Pertini and Saragat, 50 yards away, were enjoying their freedom.

In truth, though, the contribution of the Italian women was not limited to direct action.

In 1944 women took part in the great strikes of the North.

What’s more, they organized them.

They took the place of the men in asking for bread, clothes, coal —

improved conditions that might alleviate the harshness of the war.

And they died in those demonstrations.

The first woman fell in Forlì, during a strike.

She was the mother of five children.

In the home they fulfilled their traditional duties.

They worked, cut, sewed,

made warm clothing, made up packages with food,

which other women would take to the partisans in the mountains.

There’s no doubt that we could have done nothing without the mountain women.

Also because when we first arrived in the mountains,

when the fascists started doing propaganda

against the groups of partisans —

“Bands” they called us,

but not in a good sense, more like bandits.

And we would knock on the doors of families, and these women —

We would have discussions, and after a while

these women were always willing to share their bread

and sometimes their beds.

Not just sometimes — when we had wounded fighters they would help us.

So for us the mountain women were an indispensable support.

In the city they would act as blockades during the searches, defending their men.

And they saved thousands of them.

In the country they would warn the partisans of coming danger.

They made no distinctions between their own children and those of others.

And they risked the lives of their children to save those of others.

When they would see the Germans gathering, and realize it was a search,

they would split up in various directions

to warn the entire area that a search might be coming.

So all the men were warned,

and they would repair to towns much further away.

Some would hide, but it was not prudent to hide.

And because of these women, who weren’t acting on any kind of orders —

They would realize that a search was coming and they would warn,

“You go this way, you go that way,” so that a very wide area was covered

and the men were saved.

Another case, much more pitiful, was that of a mother.

They were looking for her eldest son.

He was supposed to report for his military service but he had joined the partisans.

So they took her 13-year-old son instead.

He was also very short for his age.

This mother was clinging to her son.

The boy was screaming and the Germans were dragging him away.

On the truck there were already quite a few civilians.

The women of the town were so desperate and incensed by this

that they grabbed mother and child, ripping them from the clutches of the Germans,

and took them away by force and managed to save them.

And then, the mothers who saw their own children die right before their eyes,

when they themselves weren’t dragged into the partisan fighting.

Maria Giraudo saw her three sons killed

in a retaliatory strike against the partisans.

They started shooting outside the house.

My eldest son came out with his hands in the air

and they shot him on the threshold.

Then my second son, who was only wounded and is still alive,

was standing in the doorway,

and the bullet hit his shoulder and grazed his jaw.

The other one was there, near the table,

and that’s where they shot him.

That one died that evening.

The middle one survived, and the other one was killed on the doorstep.

When the fascists came in, where were you?

I was upstairs, in my bedroom.

- What did you hear? - I heard some movement.

So I came out of the bedroom,

and I saw a soldier at the bottom of the stairs,

who aimed his machine gun at me and told me to hide.

So I hid inside my room.

Then a few moments later I heard screams.

I heard the shots first,

then I heard my eldest son, who was yelling, “Mom, Mom!”

Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti, a Florentine,

was connected to an organization that rescued Jews.

She was captured, and after being brutally beaten,

she was subjected to relentless interrogations,

day and night, for a week.

In the end the Germans shot her in the woods in Cercina.

At the same time, but separately, her mother had also been imprisoned.

I saw her in the dark, let's say, because a nun —

Sister Gaetana, of Santa Verdiana prison —

perhaps because she foresaw what was going to happen,

and risking her own life, brought her to me in the middle of the night,

to my cell.

I was alone in the cell, which was very unusual.

But that night I was alone, so she took advantage of that

and brought me Anna Maria, who was in isolation on the top floor.

I had never been allowed to see her.

So we embraced.

A few days later, the nuns came to tell me

that they had come to take Anna Maria,

and me too.

So I was to gather my things quickly

and be prepared to go.

Very soon thereafter they came back

to tell me that unfortunately they were only taking Anna Maria.

They did their best not to frighten me even more.

But they allowed me —

since Anna Maria had to pass through that corridor to get to the outside —

those nice men allowed me

to leave the door of my cell open a crack.

So from there I saw my daughter,

accompanied by a nun...

going to her meet her doom.

She held her head a little to one side,

as she always did...

when she was a little preoccupied, especially.

But with the air of a woman who was serene, and prepared.

And after that I never saw her again.

A few days after the raid on the Roman ghetto,

toward the end of October 1944,

they started deporting Jews out of Regina Coeli.

In one of these groups was a six-year-old girl.

The truck carrying this little girl was about to leave

and I had very little time.

So I approached the father and said...

“I'm the wife of the prison doctor.

I have children. Would you like to leave your daughter in my care?

She’s in danger.”

This man looked at me, and he understood what was happening.

And while the truck was moving away he threw the little girl to me,

over the tailgate of the truck.

The little girl started screaming.

The women who had gathered round realized that the SS were suspicious

and they shoved me into the doorway of a nearby building that I found unlocked

until the trucks had left.

Then I took this little girl to my house.

She screamed and cried. Clearly, she didn’t want to be with me.

She couldn’t speak a word of Italian.

And I couldn't get through to her that we loved her.

She was too little.

Not even my children with their toys were able to calm her down.

She cried and screamed all night long.

Maybe that night I understood what an awful time,

what a shameful time we were living in.

The mother of the girl, a Polish Jew,

had managed to escape from the Warsaw Ghetto and get to Switzerland.

She tracked her daughter down with the help of the Red Cross.

Though it was extremely dangerous, she traveled to Rome

to the home of the Monaco family.

She had left her daughter in the prison of Paris, at death’s door,

because she had enterocolitis, she told me.

She was very thin and emaciated.

When the little girl came into the room holding my hand, all spruced up —

we had made her a new dress and put ribbons in her hair —

she didn’t recognize her mother,

but her mother didn’t even try to approach her.

She went up to my husband, who was in the room,

and without saying anything, she dropped to her knees in front of him.

And this is one of the most beautiful memories I have of that awful time.

Maria Montuoro was captured in Milan and taken to the Ravensbrück death camp.

First they took me to San Vittore.

The first night at San Vittore,

I heard the screams of the interrogation of my brother-in-law.

I realized it was him because I could hear what they were saying.

He was tortured horribly.

The next morning it was my turn to be questioned.

When I saw my brother-in-law I didn’t recognize him at first.

I couldn't understand why they had brought a poor old beggar before me.

I didn't even think he was a political prisoner. I couldn't figure it out.

Then his eyes and his silence revealed to me that it was him.

So I was horrified.

What did they do to you?

That time they simply told me

that if I didn’t talk they would do the same to me.

But I'd rather not talk about myself.

She refused to say more of San Vittore.

In Ravensbrück, Maria Montuoro found a world in which everything was backwards.

At the camp, the Nazi men and women,

called Aufseherinnen, were nominally in charge.

But since they were greatly outnumbered by the prisoners,

whose numbers swelled to reach 60,000,

they had created a hierarchy within the camp.

The people in charge were prostitutes...

and thieves.

The thieves were identified by a green triangle.

The prostitutes had a black triangle.

In the camps, life was particularly difficult for the Italian women.

To the brutality of the Nazi organization

was added the diffidence of the women from other countries,

who, especially at first, thought that all Italians were responsible for the fascist war.

But the Italian women too

felt the strangeness of encountering worlds hitheno unknown to them.

For the first time they were living in an extremely diverse community

where people had a different way of thinking, different rules,

and different behaviors.

One day, after 12 hours of work,

I ran to the front of the line

of people waiting for soup.

And I got a loud slap from a French woman...

who then walked me back to the end of the line.

I didn’t understand the slap and I started crying with rage.

When, 10 minutes later, the same French woman brought me a cup of soup —

she herself brought it to me — she asked, “Do you know why I slapped you?”

And I said, “No. You slapped me because I'm Italian.”

So she gave me one of the first great lessons I learned in the camp.

She said, “No, I slapped you because in the camp

you can do whatever you want against the Germans,

but you can’t do anything to harm your comrades.

If you’re on fatigue duty, you have to do it, otherwise it will fall on one of your comrades,

who is in just as bad shape as you are and has your same needs.

If you want to sabotage the factory, go ahead.

In fact, do all the damage you can, against the Nazis. This is your duty.

But never harm your friends or comrades.”

I learned my lesson and from that moment on I was accepted, at least.

I saw some cases of truly extraordinary heroism.

There were these biblical scholars —

They were German women, scholars of the Bible,

who had formed a religious sect,

long before Nazism,

which during the time of Nazism behaved very positively.

For instance, they were against the war and refused to collaborate with them.

So they ended up in the death camps.

There were four of them

who even refused to be counted in the roll call, calling it an abuse of power.

I saw them carried on a palanquin...

and they set some dogs upon them.

The women let the dogs bite them and didn’t move.

Then the guards took them by the shoulders and threw them down,

and they fell, headfirst, like empty sacks.

One wonders, for those who survived the camps,

did these 20 years really pass?

Or do they remember them as if they had happened yesterday?

How does it feel to be hungry?

Psychologically, it's mortifying.

Those who are hungry for a long time end up feeling guilty, for some reason.

It's awful to be hungry, hungry, unbearably hungry.

We were hungry for a year.

In the end it makes you nauseous.

The rations become smaller and smaller.

Every day you get a little less.

During the last month we ate half a liter of soup a day,

made with dried beans.

At some point you lose your strength.

The stomach cramps go away, but you feel —

You slowly lose all your strength and the courage to react.

So you start calculating the calories.

You don’t move your hand so as not to waste those calories.

You don’t talk, to save those calories.

For instance, we women dreamed

of coming home and becoming cooks. Of cooking.

Which is not what we ended up doing, of course.

Were you afraid you would die?

Yes, terribly afraid.

But I never thought of death as something that could happen.

I always had a will to live, and I think it's what saved me.

The desire to live.

What effect does suffering have? Your own and that of others?

It has an effect...

that can leave a mark for the rest of your life.

Because if at some point you reach your own limit,

you disappoint yourself.

- What do you mean? - What I mean is...

when you discover that human ferocity has no limits,

you also discover that unfortunately your courage does have a limit.

As does your ability to withstand suffering.

And since you hope desperately to go home again,

you have to fortify yourself against your own feelings.

So you have to give up feeling sorry for yourself.

You have to be able to laugh at your own suffering.

Potentially this is good, but when it's extended to the suffering of others,

this courage becomes cynicism.

Strength becomes insensitivity.

When you realize this...

you get a feeling of capitulation, of defeat.

To the point that when you do get back

you ask yourself if it was worth it,

to resist at this cost.

At the cost of your own personality.

If it might not have been better...

to suffer with all our sensitivity

the harm that was done to us and around us.

Many, many, many women died like this, of starvation.

They died without a name, without a personality.

Sometimes without a physical ailment. They were just found, like that.

You’d wake up in the morning and you’d be lying next to a corpse.

Another day, at work, you’d see a fellow inmate fall.

You’d try to raise her up, and she was dead.

When we came back from the death camp,

we were out of step with the times.

We remembered the suffering and the pain —

and this makes sense, of course — of a world that wanted to forget.

We were deluded about the future.

We thought we would find a world

that had learned a profound lesson from this great trial.

We ourselves began to doubt what had happened.

We would wonder whether it was true or false, or if it was all a dream.

Or if we had imagined it, even though our bodies bore the signs of the violence.

They bore the signs of the death camp.

But we felt like we were living in a world that was no longer ours.

They came out of the concentration camps and the partisan fighting

and from their clandestine lives as changed women.

Men are lavish in their praise of the Italian women.

Leo Valiani, one of the leaders of the partisans,

writes, “We always sent the women in our stead,

with the pretext that as women they were risking less.

In reality it was because we thought they were more capable and braver than we were.”

“Women,” wrote Alessandro Galante Garrone,

“have proven in the Resistance that they are equal to the men

in terms of strength of spirit, bravery and a considered sense of responsibility.”

At the end of 1945, the echoes of the partisan war were dying out.

Political competition was beginning.

“Women,” a politician writes,

“have identified or fulfilled, in the Resistance, their feminine tasks

and have formed groups or movements,

concerned with their role in the society of the future.

They have never locked themselves in a position,

but have instead understood and declared that their problems of emancipation

are intertwined with all the other problems of freedom, justice and human redemption.”

The way in which women took part in the Resistance

was intelligent and aware.

And even after the Resistance,

they continued to defend themselves and fight for those same goals.

And this still goes on.

Some of those women became political.

They accepted their place in the parties

and in parliament, in the women's organizations, in the unions,

in the universities and cultural associations.

That fight had begun unselfconsciously for some,

for others more deliberately in 1943.

Yet other women returned to their jobs

in the home, in the factories,

in the glass skyscrapers of the large modern organizations.

What did the partisan experience mean to you?

More than anything there is one very important thing,

which is the emergence of a personality that I certainly didn’t have before.

And of certain rights —

The awareness of certain rights

that today no one even questions anymore.

Did the partisan fight clash with femininity?

It did not clash with femininity. Absolutely not.

Femininity was not lost in the fight.

I don’t think so, absolutely not.

The fact of being women allowed us to have a certain intuition,

and in certain situations

we could be more useful than the men.

If I think of the experiences as seen from the outside

of some of my female friends, who were partisans like me,

I don’t think that because they were women

there were things they shouldn't do, and that only men could do.

Secondly,

and this is perhaps more unusual in the case of Italian women,

the feeling of participating in historic events, experienced from the inside.

This, in particular, seems remarkable to me.

And this heritage is what we should have passed down to the younger generations,

and perhaps we haven’t done it as intensely as we should have.

In women there was always, from the very beginning...

the distinct feeling that the battle that was being fought at that time

should not be limited to this, let’s call it, negative aspect

of expelling the enemy and the oppressor.

The women who took part in the Resistance, from the very beginning,

wanted a different world.

I finally became convinced that all men are equal

and are meant to live in the same spirit of freedom,

and not the absurd propaganda

that was being shoved down our throats in school.

Let’s not forget that I was born in 1925, I was arrested in 1943,

I suffered through all of fascism, and with it all its propaganda,

with some very wrong ideas on the meaning of freedom.

I finally understood that what I had done was not useless.

I learned the value of life and the value of peace. Absolutely.

I learned how precious life is,

to appreciate just being alive.

And the unquenchable thirst for peace.

I was bedridden and very ill on the day of the Liberation.

And my men came to ask me

which person they should punish.

Not out of revenge, but as a lesson.

I was absolutely against anyone being killed.

But we must remember them, so it doesn’t happen again.

On the stone of the memorial monument

for the Italian women deported to Ravensbrück,

I asked for a motto to be engraved: “Men, I loved you, remain vigilant.”

Ours is a desire for freedom and love

that makes us go back to these topics, because we realize that Nazism isn’t dead,

that racism still exists, and that there are still active cells.

There are still men who are not free, so we can’t forget what has been

because we would be making the same mistake we made back then.

By the same token we can’t hate all Germans indiscriminately.

That would be reverse racism, and this too is wrong.

We must simply remember and realize

that the phenomenon of the death camps,

the phenomenon of deportation are things that happened,

but they must never happen again.