Her husband was a partisan, hiding in the mountains, and she knew the Germans were looking for her and their children as hostages to flush him out. A shepherd found them and would give them milk, some crusts of bread. . . . Maria was thrown in a cell and stayed there three years, sleeping on bare cement. She never recovered her health, but somehow they all survived. Stories of the occupation and the brutal civil war are still recounted as if they took place yesterday.
Friends recall walking to school past rows of heads stuck on fence spikes.
Villagers are still described by the role they played then, partisan or collaborator. This is what we talk about during the rainy days. I ask Georgia what she thinks of their changed life. When I met them in 1970, they had a herd of a thousand goats and sheep and one donkey. This has been supplemented by televisions, refrigerators, telephones, cars, trucks, butcher shop, bathroom fixture shop, auto repair shop, olive oil press, four houses.