Prima i asnìt e dopü i puerèt

After the war Adriana’s father looked for work and ran up against party membership cards. A Brianza saying, so as not to forget.

Adriana’s father was a very religious man: he always went to church like a good Christian and was a hard worker; he was a stonecutter. Adriana says: “a tiring job with little satisfaction”. At the end of the war there was little work and it was not easy to start again.

So Adriana’s father turned to a well-known shop in the centre of Monza, because he had heard they were looking for people to send to work in Switzerland. It could be a good chance to bring some money home.

When he presented himself, they put an unexpected question to him: “do you have a Christian Democrat party card?”.

Adriana’s father was a simple man, who had fought in the war, and so he tried to explain that he had never had anything to do with politics. It was not enough, and he was not hired. After a visit to church, he came home and said to his wife: “they’ve done it to me again…”.

Prima i asnìt e dopü i puerèt — first the donkeys and then the poor wretches.

Adriana is keen to tell me this story to explain how hard those times were after the war. She ends the tale by telling me to remember to write down a saying of hers: “prima i asnìt e dopü i puerèt” (first the donkeys and then the poor wretches).

Sadly, war sometimes leaves wounds that are slow to heal, and we forget the most important thing of all… that we were all made equal.

Collected by Riccardo Beretta · AVO Concorezzo volunteer