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Oral history recording with Nicesio Fantini.Recorded as part the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Part 1 of 7 (AV 11403 - 11409).

00:30 Nicesio Fantini came to Wales in 1951. He was born in Torreano di Cividale, Friuli, on 28 March 1928. He grew up on a small farm in Italy, and remembers working as soon as he learned to walk - in his family, even for the children, there was always something to do. He started school at the age of six. He was a bright child. He went to school until he was eleven, but his parents couldn’t afford to educate him after that.

03:17 Then the war broke out. He remembers the invasion by German soldiers, when anybody could come to his house and demand what they wanted. He remembers that the Germans went round his village and took horses and other things without paying for them.

07:50 On 13 December 1943 the Cossacks arrived, but Nicesio doesn’t remember where from. Then the partisans came, and he vividly remembers that the partisans started to use machine-guns against the Germans. Some people were wounded in the street and three girls went to help the wounded on the ground. The partisans found out that the Italian girls were helping the wounded German soldiers, and went looking for them intending to kill them. They killed two of the girls and left one, because she was very beautiful and she was pregnant.

11:08 The partisans lived in the mountains. Nicesio remembers being attacked from all sides by tanks and bombs, and clearing up afterwards. Many villages nearby were burnt.