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they were locked up in the sealed wagons leaving for the concentration camps - she went to Livorno to welcome him.

Actually Gianfranco was a little more than "slightly hurt." He had a crushed heel, which was in danger of gangrene. He was lucky, he said. Immobilized on a stretcher, in the port of Tunis, he was again strafed at low altitude by a plane without being hit. He had left with the last hospital ship bound for Italy, thus avoiding remaining in Africa as a prisoner.

I often went to see him at the Ospedale al Mare, on the Lido. He always smiled. I was also trying to smile but it wasn't always easy. Entering the room every now and then I was assaulted by nausea, due to the smell due to the infection.

Every two days they scraped his bone and treated his wound. Afterward, he was frighteningly pale and could not touch food. "You eat" he said to me. "Maybe you'll get hungry later," I encouraged him. And he: "Not today. Eat, before they take it away." I threw myself on food - I was chronically hungry - and only with considerable effort was I able to leave something to take for Jackie and the twins.

After the risk of having to amputate the foot and a piece of leg, the wound began to heal with miraculous speed and the leg could be put in plaster, leaving an opening around the heel. Gianfranco began to drag himself around the room with the help of crutches and, as soon as he was able to jump with only one, he got into the habit of throwing himself over the hospital gates. Then he would climb over the gate and go to a friend's house to regain a semblance of civil life. It was on those occasions that after September 8 he had his first contacts with underground organizations.

These nocturnal escapes did not go unnoticed and as soon as it was possible he was discharged from the hospital. I accompany my father to San Michele on one of the days when...