From the interview with Maria Nava

Sassuolo, Monday 02/12/2002, 16,00

[...] then afterwards there was the 25th July and so everyone was happy because the Duce had been ousted and us little girls, because I was a girl at the time, we also took part because the regime was a bit too much for us to take too. Then, little by little, the months went past with one thing and another, and then it was 8th September, which was a great blow to us to see all those little soldiers who we admired, they way little girls do, and all our young friend had been called up, and so – you might think this is a bit of a stupid detail, but we were pleased when those lads used to look at us. So on 8th September they herded them all together in a square near here, like a bunch of rags, poor things, and they asked us for cigarettes and bread, they were asking us for things and we were just there to see what was happening, but we couldn’t go up to them because obviously there were the Germans there and they would have beaten them up or deported them. Then, after a few days of this business, us lot, I mean those from my neighbourhood, we’d got organised among ourselves, and down by the river, there were these soldiers who had managed to get away – most of them got taken to Germany – and they asked us for some civvy clothes, so we got organised so that we would wash clothes all day in these pails, and then we’d dry them and give them to those lads and show them how to go up into the mountains. Up in the mountains…, because people didn’t even talk about the Resistance, even after 8th September but we taught them the way, there were those that wanted to go to Tuscany for example, and we showed them what path to take, we showed them the way home. Then in November, some mens, including my husband, a certain Camillo Braglia who had, just think, seven children and he was one of the first anti-fascists along with Barbolini, with four or five others, with Ugo Stanzone, they met up in a house there in Borgo Venezia and they decided to go up to the mountains, and they left, I think, on the sixth, but another group stayed down to gather weapons and that sort of thing. And from then on, without even knowing what the word Resistance meant, what all these things meant, we got closer to these friends of ours, obviously we supported the same ideals, the same principles, because by that point we’d all had it up to here with fascism, and because the war was on, there wasn’t anything to eat, they were all too bossy, there were bombings, and we were just little girls but there was no world around us, there was no future, there was no nothing. [...]