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It was pure fear. The soldier who commanded the operation was young. He couldn’t have been more than five years old. Light eyes, angular face. expressionless. He walked slowly in front of us, his boots crushing the dirty snow. He stopped in front of me. He said something in German that I didn’t completely understand, but the tone was clear: contempt.
Then he pushed my head against the wall. The impact was so strong that I saw stars. At the end of the interchange at Mrucen, with my hand behind my back, I obeyed. I felt the cold barrel of a gun touch the base of my skull. My whole body froze. I thought, this is it , I’m going to die here against this wall without anyone knowing.
But the gunshot did not come. Instead, something worse happened. the tent. They left us standing there facing the wall for hours. I don’t know exactly how many. Time lost all meaning when every second was torture. My arms were starting to tremble, my legs were threatening to give way. The cold bit my toes through the holes in my shoes.
I could feel the warm breath of a guard on the back of my neck. Then he would walk away and then come back. It was a game to them. kept us in this state of terror suspended between life and death, without knowing which would come first. To my left, I could hear Séraphine breathing with difficulty. To my right, Nadine was murmuring a prayer in Polish.
Colette, further away, said nothing, but I knew she was there. I could feel her presence, that silent strength she carried within her. The little Polish girl was crying softly. A guard hit him in the ribs with a rifle butt. She collapsed. They dragged her away. I never saw him again . Around 5 a.m.
, the sky began to pale. A dirty, grey light filtered through the clouds. It was at that moment that I understood something terrible. Dawn could be cruel. All my life, I had loved sunrises. My father would open the bakery before dawn and I would watch the pink sky unfold above the village. It was a moment of peace, of promise.
But here, dawn was a betrayal. It meant that we had survived another night, but also that a new day of suffering was beginning. The sun was rising for everyone except us. The guards finally ordered us to turn around. My legs almost gave way. Séraphine fell. A guard kicked her to her feet.
They made us walk on trampled ground through the snow to another building. It was a medical shack, but there was nothing medical about it . It was a place of experimentation, of torture disguised as science. We were led into a cold room tiled in white. The smell of disinfectant burned my nostrils. There were metal tables, lined-up surgical instruments, syringes.
An SS doctor in a white coat examined us like cattle. He took notes in a notebook. Then he pointed at Nadine and me. The others were sent back to the barracks. Nadine gave me a desperate look. I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t say anything. They tied us to tables, leather straps around our wrists, ankles, and torsos.
I couldn’t move anymore. The doctor approached me with a syringe filled with a yellowish liquid. He spoke in German to an assistant, then he injected the product into my arm. A searing pain shot up to my shoulder. I was shouting, he smiled. It was the first time I had seen a smile in that camp and it was the most terrifying smile I had ever seen.
I don’t know what they injected into me . For days, I had incredibly high fevers. My body was writhing in pain. I was vomiting blood. Nadine in the next bed was in the same state. Séraphine and Colette would come to see us secretly, bringing stolen water and damp cloths for our burning foreheads. They risked their lives for it, but they did it anyway.
Three weeks later, I could finally get up . But something inside me had changed. My body no longer belonged to me . My hands were trembling for no reason. My vision blurred at times and above all I felt a cold rage growing inside me. A rage I had never known before, against the Germans, yes, but also against God, against the world, against all of humanity that had allowed this.
However, I could not allow myself to hate completely because to hate was to give them what they wanted, to transform us into beasts, into creatures emptied of humanity. So, I clung to the small gesture, shared a crust of bread, smiled at a terrified newcomer, recited a poem with Collette. These tiny acts were our resistance.
BakedGoods
One evening in March, the sirens sounded. Allied bombing raids in the distance. The guards were panicking. Some of us dared to hope. Perhaps the end was near . Perhaps we would be free. But hope is dangerous in one camp. It can kill you more surely than a bullet. The bombings have intensified.
The guards were becoming more nervous, more violent. The punishments against the wall were increasing. Every act of disobedience, even the smallest, was punished. One woman who looked up, another who coughed while shoveling, a third who kept a piece of fabric to make a handkerchief. Everything ended against the wall at dawn in the biting cold.
Séraphine was caught one night because she had hidden a needle, a simple needle that she used to sew torn clothes. They put her against the wall for 6 hours. When she returned, she could no longer move her neck. Something had broken in his spine. She was in terrible pain but never complained. She continued sewing, even with trembling hands, even with silent tears streaming down her cheeks.
April arrived, news circulated in secret, the allies were advancing, Germany was retreating. But for us, prisoners, it also meant something terrifying. The Nazis were beginning to erase the evidence. The kilns were running day and night. The selections became a daily occurrence. They burned the archives, they moved the prisoners to other, more isolated camps where they could be executed without witnesses.
One morning, we were told that we were going to be transferred. Destination unknown. We had two hours to get ready. Prepare what? We had nothing, just our exhausted bodies and our burning memories. Séraphine was too weak to walk. Nadine and I wore it. Colette walked in front, reciting to Polinir in a low voice like a mantra.
They crammed us into trucks. 100 women in each truck. No seat. Just a rough wooden floor and a tarpaulin that let in the icy wind. We had been driving for hours. Some died standing up, pressed against us, and we couldn’t even let them fall because there was no room. Then suddenly, the truck stopped. Screams, gunshots.
We thought it was the end, but when the tarpaulin opened, it wasn’t SS, it was American soldiers. I don’t remember crying when the Americans opened the truck. I don’t remember smiling. I only remember an immense emptiness, as if my body had forgotten what freedom meant. A soldier extended his hand to me.
I looked at it for a long time before buying it. Her eyes were blue, full of pity. He said something in English that I didn’t understand. Then he helped me downstairs. We were in the middle of a forest. The truck had been abandoned by the SS guards who had fled upon hearing Allied gunfire. He had left us locked up there, perhaps hoping that we would die before being found.
But we had survived. Once again, the American soldiers took us to a transit camp. military tents, camp beds, clean blankets, real food, hot soup, white bread, chocolate. Some women threw themselves on it and immediately vomited. Our stomachs had forgotten how to digest. I ate slowly, one spoonful after another, tears flowing without me realizing it.
Food
Séraphine was dying. The American doctors examined him and shook their heads. Widespread infection, extreme malnutrition, damaged spine. They did what they could, but it was too late. She died 5 days after our liberation. She was 32 years old. Nadine, Colette and I buried him under a chain near the camp.
We recited a prayer. Colette read Verlin. We cried for the first time in months. The following weeks were strange. We were free, but we didn’t know what to do with that freedom. Many women were desperately searching for their families. The Red Cross had endless lists of missing persons. Each day, names were crossed out: living, dead, unknown.
I was looking for Madeleine and Rachel, the two neighbors I had tried to save. Their name did not appear on any list. They had simply disappeared like millions of others. I returned to France in June 1945. The train journey was endless. At each station, I saw emaciated faces, empty stares, bodies moving out of habit rather than will. We were ghosts returning to a world that had moved on without us.
When I arrived in my village, the bakery was closed, the shutters were rotten, the front door was hanging off its hinges. My father had died 6 months earlier of a heart attack. The neighbors told me that he had never gotten over my deportation, that he waited every day for a sign, a letter, something.
Nothing had happened. Then, his heart had simply stopped beating. I sat on the threshold of the bakery and cried, not for myself, but for him, for all the invisible victims of this war, those who were not in the camps but who were still destroyed. I tried to take over the bakery. For a few months, I kneaded the dough, lit the oven, and sold bread to the villagers.
But my hands trembled too much. The fevers returned without warning and above all I could no longer stand the smell of burnt bread. It reminded me of something else, a smell I couldn’t name but that haunted me. I closed the bakery, I sold the house. With the money, I went to Paris. I found a small apartment in the Marais district.
I worked as a saleswoman and then as an employee in a library. Simple jobs where I did n’t need to talk much, where I could blend into anonymity. Nadine and I wrote to each other regularly. She had resumed her nursing studies. Colette was teaching literature again. They were trying to rebuild their lives. I survived. It’s different.
Doors& Windows
For decades, I didn’t talk about the camp to anyone, not to friends, not to colleagues, not even to the men who briefly crossed my life. How do you explain it to someone who wasn’t there ? How can you describe the smell of death, the cold that breaks your spirit, the hunger that gnaws at your mind? Words always seemed inadequate.