We had just set up home. We ended up closing the door, taking only the clothes that were necessary. - Lilica Boal

I worried the secret police would use our daughter to pressure us and said this to my husband. He said when a person joins this sort of thing, they have to be prepared for anything. It wasn’t easy.

All this leaves its mark on a 20-year-old woman. When people started talking about our liberation, I saw reasons to join the fight.

I was not under suspicion because I was studying on a loan given by the Portuguese Youth Organisation, a movement led by the fascist government and based, I came to understand, on the Hitler Youth. What the police wanted to do was warn me not to mix with those ‘communists’ at the house of the students of the empire.