Women of the Italian Resistance in World War II Were True Heroes

Would any of us today in North America have the fortitude to resist a fascist government or dictatorship? To withstand prolonged periods of cruel torture? To lose our lives? To see our children killed before our eyes because of our own actions, though noble?

Thousands of Italian women during World War II said yes. Of them, 4,500 were arrested, 3,000 were deported to Germany, and more than 600 were murdered. Those numbers are likely much lower than actual. 

Director Liliana Cavani’s 48-minute documentary Women of the Resistance (La Donna Nella Resistenza) is included in the Blu-ray disc of The Night Porter (1974), which she also directed. The documentary was produced for Italian television in 1965 and contains many interviews with women who survived torture and imprisonment because of their resistance activities during World War II.

The film opens with photographs of women who were executed by the fascists and Nazi’s. Passages from their last letters to their parents, husbands, and children are voiced over the photographs of young women. “I have fallen so that those who come after me can live free,” writes one woman. “I love life and at the same time accept a necessary death,” writes another. “Do not consider me differently from a soldier who goes to the battlefield,” from yet another.

Resistance women who survived the war were interviewed on film for the documentary. Some said they became involved because they couldn’t abide a dictatorship with policies that went against their moral convictions. Others felt they could not renounce their friends who had become enemies of the state. Still more wished to avenge fathers, husbands, and sons who had been abused, imprisoned, or killed. 

Some resistance women aided the partisans operating high in the mountains. Others transported sensitive communications, and many fought with firearms and bombs alongside men. 

Not all those interviewed are identified by name in the English subtitles, and not all the women who were interviewed were captured and imprisoned, but most were. Here are the names of the women identified by name in the documentary. They are presented in the order they appeared, with the exception of one righteous woman, who was not imprisoned, but who helped save ten prisoners, including a young Jewish girl. Their names should never be forgotten.

Germana Boldrini – Seventeen years old during the Battle of Bologna, Germana gave the signal for a critical partisan attack. She wielded an automatic weapon and threw hand grenades against the enemy in Porta Lame until she was captured. Her courage was born after seeing her father tormented for years by the fascists who ultimately bombed their home and shot him in its rubble.

Norma Barbolini – At the age of 24, Norma was stationed in the mountains with a partisan group led by her brother. Norma became their leader after her brother was seriously wounded in a fierce battle at Cerre Sologno near Modena. There was a 400,000-lira bounty on their heads. They were taken to prison, interrogated, and tortured.

Adriana Locatelli – As the leader of a group of partisans, Adriana opened her home to a group of allied soldiers. When interviewed, she said she didn’t want to talk about what happened during her captivity, but she managed to say that the Germans interrogated and tortured her, knocking her teeth out and pulling out all of her hair.

Gilda La Rocca – Connected with Radio CORA, a partisan radio station, Gilda was captured in Florence and taken to Villa Triste (house of sorrows). The men of the group were interrogated and tortured—and she was not spared. She would not talk about her experience, except to say that she tried to kill herself multiple times and thought of death as a form of liberation.

Tosca Buccarelli – Tosca was part of a group in Florence that planned to set off a bomb at a café, and the mission failed. The other members of the group escaped, but Tosca was captured and taken to Villa Triste where she was interrogated and tortured. 

Maria Giraudo – As part of a retaliatory strike against the partisans, Maria’s three sons were killed. Her oldest son was seriously wounded, and she heard him cry for her, when the fascists came back to finish the job.

Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti – In Florence, Anna Maria was connected to an organization that helped Jews. She was captured and so was her mother. Kindly Sister Gaetana of Santa Verdiana prison brought Anna to her mother in the middle of the night. After being tortured for a week, Anna Maria was taken to the woods in Cercina and shot. Her mother survived.

Maria Montuoro – Captured in Milan, Maria was sent to the Ravensbrück death camp. The Nazi’s were a miniscule minority commanding 60,000 prisoners, so they selected thieves and prostitutes from the prison population to help them in controlling the inmates. Maria, and the other prisoners, suffered cruelty and abuse from these criminals.

Marcella Monaco – The wife of a physician at Regina Coeli, a prison for political prisoners, Marcella worked with the Roman resistance. When the Allies landed at Anzio in January 1944, the group was emboldened to rescue nine prisoners. Marcella filled out nine prison release forms and after some tense moments and incredible bravery, the mission succeeded. Later, when a group of Jewish prisoners was being deported to Germany, Macella noticed a six-year-old girl among them. She convinced the father to give the child to her and she brought her to her own house. Months later, the girl’s mother, who had escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto, found out her daughter through the Red Cross and braved great danger to reclaim the little girl.

Many women in the prisons and camps died of starvation and exhaustion. One, whose name was not given in the subtitles, said that the hunger and suffering she and the other prisoners experienced would affect them for the rest of their life. Sometimes she wondered if it was all worth it. Another said she thought she’d come home to a world that had learned its lesson, but it really just wanted to forget. Some women wondered if it had all been a dream, but the physical evidence on their bodies was evidence that it had not.

Leo Valiani, a partisan leader, wrote after the War, “We always sent the women in our stead with the pretext that as women, they were risking less. In reality, it was because we thought they were more capable and braver than we were.”

Valiani and many others recognize the courageous contributions and sacrifices of Italian women during World War II. One of the women interviewed in the documentary said that on a memorial for the Italian women who were sent to Ravensbrück was written, “Men I loved you, remain vigilant.”

I believe the memorial was dedicated in Florence, and the words are certainly written in the Italian language. If it still exists, I would like to see it and lay flowers there. 

In these current times of uncertainty and violence of superpowers invading smaller nations, and vicious factions terrorizing countries in Africa and the Middle East, we must remain vigilant. In Ukraine and other nations, many strong people, male and female, are fighting back. 

Someday, the United States could be under attack. Would I have the courage to stand up for what I believe in as the Italian resistance women did? I hope so.