I've always said that those two would have to die before me: Mussolini and Hitler.

Carlo Porta

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Short Biography

Carlo Porta was born in Gavasseto di Reggio Emilia on May 18, 1919, into a large family of farm workers who followed the socialist ideas of Camillo Prampolini. At the age of sixteen he was already an active member of the Socialist Party, taking part in the International Red Relief by collecting small amounts of money or goods for the Republican fighters in Spain. After being employed as a factory worker at Officine Meccaniche Reggiane, an engineering plant that manufactured armaments during Mussolini’s regime, in 1938 he is called up for military service. While in the Army, authorities find out about his antifascist militancy: he is arrested and imprisoned in Civitavecchia, Regina Coeli (Rome), Reggio Emilia and Castelfranco Emilia. Perfunctorily judged by the Special Tribunal for National Security, he is sentenced to three years’ confinement in the farming penal colony of Pisticci (Matera), in the region of Basilicata. While in confinement, he meets chief figures of the Italian Communist Party, whose teachings would contribute to mould his political beliefs. At the end of the three years of confinement he returns to Reggio Emilia, but a few months later he is called to the Army again and sent to Albania with the Italian occupation forces. He is in Albania on the 8th of September of 1943, the day of the Armistice: captured by the Germans, he is sent to internment camps in Germany in stock wagons. He reaches his first destination after sixteen days and is interned as a IMI (Italian Interned Soldier) in the marshalling camp of Neubrandenburg. His identification number was 108 481. He is freed only two years later, while in the Wickede camp, near Dortmund.