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Rommel. A taxi packed with people where he was allowed to slip between the fender and the hood.

He got off of the hood and immediately ran to the secret address. Ring, knock, no response. He later learned from his friend Ernesto Frua that the SS had just broken into the apartment and arrested everyone, including Ferruccio Parri, head of the entire partisan movement. "It's over," Ernesto had said. If he wanted to try anyway he had to fend for himself. If he wanted to go to Switzerland, he could offer him the support of a trusted smuggler.

And so one night, with the help of the smuggler, Gianfranco crawled under the border fence. On the train to Lugano there was a check and as he was undocumented he was arrested and locked up in prison. In order not to reveal the purpose of his mission, he declared that the Red Cross had instructed him to coordinate the assistance of prisoners of war in the North in Rome. He asked to be able to speak to the director of the prison but, as he continued to remain isolated in his cell, after ten days he began a hunger strike. After a week he was brought to the presence of the director who, very kind, he explained that only then had he received an answer from Bern: it was impossible to get him to continue, he had to return to Italy.

And so, another night, he was taken back to the border by the Swiss gendarmes who, while he remained hidden behind a bush, waited for the German patrol to leave to warn him of the right moment to pass under the net.

Ernesto made himself an omelette of 16 eggs, then returned to Venice for a few hours, immediately disappeared again. Until the Liberation Movement decided to expel the fascists from the city. There was a lot of confusion in those days. So much so that we kids, who went out with the intention of celebrating "freedom," were unable to cross the Ponte del Rimedio because right in the trajectory of...