Francesca Rolla (1915-2013)

Francesca Rolla was born in Carrara on July 15, 1915, as daughter of Emilio Rolla and Elisa Borghesi. Unfortunately we do not know much about her life prior to the war of liberation. We do know, however, that she came from a family with anti-fascist tradition. Among the memories still vivid in old age persists the image of her grandfather being beaten up by the fascists, and even as a child the idea of hating the fascists was clear to her: “When they went to beat my grandfather, to give him castor oil… every morning at 6 o’clock, I was there too. Then they kicked me in the shins… ‘but go over there’, ‘no I’m not going over there, you must not beat my grandfather. He didn’t do anything to you, you must not beat him up’”.

Carrara, a city with a strong anarchist tradition, particularly suffered from squad violence since 1919 and for this the continuity of meaning given by family anti-fascism to the Resistance was recurrent in many Carrara women. Growing up, antifascism took the form of rebellion against institutions. Independence and firmness in one’s convictions was expressed by Rolla with an opposition to the uniform: “I didn’t buy the uniform, I didn’t want it.  I didn’t wear that stuff and my professors knew that I didn’t support the idea. I just didn’t have it”. Faced with threats of suspension she replied: “Do whatever you want”. In the end she was not suspended, and years later she was still keen to emphasize: “I didn’t like the uniform. Never”.

In September 1943 she became active in the resistance. She was a courier girl in the “Ulivi” formation of the Garibaldi Brigade “Gino Menconi” which at that time was in the province of Apuania (today Massa-Carrara).  A partisan choice that developed through sharing ideas with other family members: “I had joined the partisans, because there was my brother, my brother-in-law and another brother of mine; there were several of us up there, eh […]. My brother’s bakery was available for the partisans; there was a hole in my brother’s oven and inside that hole was the mimeograph machine; there was ammunition, there was everything there… They also went to bomb my sister-in-law’s oven, they slapped my sister-in-law, poor thing, who had a miscarriage. She was seven months pregnant and lost the baby […]. If they saw them [the brother and another hidden partisan], they would have thrown the whole house away, they would have thrown that whole building away. Instead they threw two little bombs, small ones, broke the glass, scared people a little bit and that was it. We were not there, because at night, you see, they were coming down to search the houses. I used to stay in the main street, then they knocked my house down, because they said it was the house of the partisans and they knocked it down completely, razed it to the ground […]. So I went to my brother’s house, the one who had the bakery, but I was in the mountains, more up than in the valley”.

The territory of Carrara was located close to the Gothic Line [last Italian frontline], and due to its geographical conformation, its proximity to the Apennine chain, it represented a strategic point for the Nazi and Fascist forces. It was the ultimate, last defense to have access to the Po Valley and to northern Italy. It was therefore one of the “zones of operation” under the direct control of the Wehrmacht. From the fall of 1943, there was a succession of orders from the German command to evacuate the coast between Tuscany and Liguria. The goal was to have free space for action in case of a landing and a fight with the Anglo-Americans. This was all part of the strategy of clearing the territory, which was even more necessary at a time where the first partisan groups were beginning to form. Due to the evictions of the coastal cities, a situation occurred, in which it is estimated that around 200 thousand displaced people had found hospitality in Carrara. In early July 1944 the German command began to prepare for the retreat along the line on the Arno river and on July 7 the German commander Lieutenant Többens ordered the notice to be posted in the streets of the city mandating the total evacuation of the population for July 9, population destined to be displaced to Sala Baganza in the province of Parma. Only people in the service of the RSI [Social Italian republic, newborn fascist government], the Germans, and those working in the Todt Organization for the fortification of the Gothic Line were excluded from the measure. Immediately the local Liberation Committee and the Women’s Defense Groups [GDD] were mobilized, leaflets were printed and circulated, urging the population to disobey the ban. The phrase “do not leave the city” began to circulate, while the bishop sought evacuation as an option. On the day decided for evacuation everything stood still and nothing happened, making it obvious that it was difficult for the commands themselves to apply their directives. The people decided to remain in their homes, the population began to defend their roots and their territory, and it was the women, including Francesca Rolla, who was also active in the GDD, who promoted this popular mobilization. 

The uprising started on the morning of July 11 on Piazza delle Erbe, the site of the city ́s fruit and vegetable market with the slogans “We don’t want to evacuate” and “We won’t move from the city”. The women began to overturn baskets of fruit and vegetables and then marched through the city streets in a procession in the direction of the German command, while partisans concealed at a distance to be ready for action in case of a German reaction. This is how Rolla remembers: “On the morning of July 7, there were so many women, because we went to get them all; you go and get them all house by house, they came out, ‘Come out’, ‘no’, ‘come out’; if you don’t want to leave, if you don’t want to evacuate Carrara, to make everyone taken away, come out, come out, for God sake! […] We were all together, those who had more responsibility and those who had less responsibility, understood, however, that we were all a scrum, let’s say, practically we were all in the scrum. […] There were also Republican women and Christian Democrats, we were all together. The bravest ones that day would show up in front of the German command, or even in front of the tanks: me for example.I have a photograph that I can’t find – in front of a tank that Renata, poor woman, poor Renata, I can still hear her: ‘Oh Francé, come away they will shoot you!’ ‘And if they shoot me, after all I am just one, in case it is just me dying, come on girls, are you stupid? Do we have to show that we are afraid ? I’m not afraid, I stand here in the front: tell me they will try to shoot, try to shoot – and meanwhile I was looking at them, right? In the muzzle – let them try to shoot, to see if they are capable of shooting’. There was no moving in front of that tank, which was near there. Then we went to the little square, throwing everything out so that all women would have gone with us; we forced the schools to close, the stores, we shut down everything, everything”.

The women who stood in front of the military command were each beginning to show their opposition in their own way by enhancing civilian resistance: some laid on the ground, others stood in front of the machine guns, others began throwing objects at the facade. “When we were confronted by the German military, we, standing in the front row, understood that if we showed our fear everything would be useless and the women who were behind us would flee. So we took the courage and with our bare hands pounced like beasts to frighten the soldiers. That was how the Carraresi women won their battle”. “There were all the trucks nice and ready… So the Germans got scared, they got scared”, and again, “we had nothing, we were completely unarmed, we went as we were – like that, so they got scared because we were really fierce and, you know, when a woman gets fierce she’s meaner than a weapon, sometimes… she can be scarier than a weapon”. Four of them were arrested by the fascists and taken to the former Gil [Fascist Youth Association] barracks, while a second notice was issued with new instructions for displacement. The next day the arrested women were released and the evacuation order was at first postponed, then in fact suspended. Despite their stated intentions and the roundups carried out to seize men for work on the Gothic Line, the Nazi and Fascist commands failed to implement their goals due to a lack of funds, logistical shortcomings, and an opposition from the population. In the following months, the occupiers’ strategy shifted from the idea of creating a no-man’s land to that of scorched earth, practicing a series of roundups and massacres along the Gothic Line.

The popular protest would immediately take on a strong political significance. Although historiography has now ascertained that it was not totally decisive, because in any case the evacuation was carried out up to the gates of the city of Carrara, it represented a test of strength and an example of civil resistance that, together with an armed resistance, opposed Nazi-Fascism. Moreover, the protest had an additional symbolic bearing: women moved visibly from a typically female and familiar private or public space (such as homes and the fruit and vegetable market) to an unexplored and masculine public space (the military command), taking responsibility for their actions, in a not always conscious path of emancipation.

Francesca Rolla’s activity continued in the GDD and as a courier girl “one went to carry leaflets, on foot, taking risks, eh! I went to the villages to warn of reprisals: I went to S. Terenzio”. One day on her way back from Parma, where she went to get food, she was arrested, and after undergoing interrogation, released. On another occasion, while carrying weapons, she managed to save herself by taking advantage of the pity of a German, thanks to the invention of a dying mother, and by putting a strategy of the partisans into practice: the metamorphosis of the self, in order to appear more credible.

Rolla, with her family, did not fail to assist. For example the time they hid and disguised a boy to save him: “We had dressed him as a woman, we  put him there; when they went inside and saw him, (…) he looked like he was dying: the handkerchief on his head, whitewashed all over his face, in short, we did all kinds of things to this boy. My mom, poor woman, half pissed herself. Because my mom had to feed others at night, you know; so if they saw the fire, they knew someone was there”.

Rolla, like many other women in the Resistance, used her being a woman not only to go unnoticed as a courier girl, but also to get information from the Germans and to distract them during actions. One day she acted as a diversion to a German during the course of an action by her comrades and before fleeing, she took cigarettes and ammunition that she had been eyeing: “We were fond of those things (…), I saw that stuff there and slipped it all into my pocket”. Later, the Germans went looking for her, asking her the reason for the escape and  the disappearance of ammunition: “Ah, I don’t know anything about what is missing, I don’t know anything at all (…) Moreover, how am I possibly using that stuff? (…) And that’s it, it was over like that”. The non-stop activity to help the people of her town continued even in the hospital. “I was there in the last period, I worked at the hospital to take away the sick. In the last period they were clearing out the hospital, they were clearing out the hospital, because they had targeted the hospital, because of these partisans”. Carrara was liberated by partisans and Anglo-Americans on April 11, 1945.

Francesca Rolla was recognized as a partisan fighter in the postwar period. Throughout her life she continued to bear witness to her resistance choices with tenacity and conviction, despite the difficulties it subsequently entailed for women. After the Liberation, in fact, all the problems and mistrusts emerged for crossing the boundary of the established model that saw women relegated to the private and passive sphere: “Partisan women were seen very badly; even before the Liberation. They saw us with men and women, in the mountains, you see, and women’s brains are like that: if they see you with a man, you are already his friend, you sleep with him, that’s clear. And we didn’t care, because look, anyway we were just like brother and sister, really […]. It has to be said though, because they told you even after the war was over. They said women were all thieves, whores, they made money; and in fact you can see we made money; you saw, I wasn’t even listening to them. […] When my conscience is clear I don’t care what you say or think […]. They said all kinds of things, look: we were the parasite of the Germans, of the partisans, we were the parasite of everyone”.

To this day Francesca Rolla is remembered in the city; a mural has been dedicated to her in Piazza delle Erbe, honoring her and all the women who participated in the resistance without weapons.