In the national archives of France, there is a document that remains classified until 1995, i.e. 50 years after the end of the Second World War. A document if disturbing that even historians who discovered it, hesitated to return it public. This document mentions a place which does not appear in any register official of the German occupation.
No map, no military report. Just a name. whispered between survivors of the Nazi camps in France, the Paris room. Not because she was at Paris, but because that’s where we sent homosexual prisoners to the Paris region, those wearing the pink triangle, those that even the others detainees despised those of whom no one didn’t want to hear the story after the war.
The Paris room was located in the basements of an old mansion requisitioned by the Guestapo in the 16th district. An elegant building on the surface with its facades and its wrought iron balconies. But underneath, in what had once been cellars at 20 and domestic reserves, the Germans had created something else.
A space where the already brutal rules of the occupation no longer applied. A place where men already broken by months of imprisonment begged their jewels not to free them but to let them die. This story begins with a man who never wanted to die, not at first any case. André Morau was 28 years old in March when the guestapo knocked on the door of his apartment in Montmartre six o’clock in the morning.
He was a hairdresser, owner of a small salon on rue Leique where he had worked for 7 years. Andrew was known in the neighborhood, appreciated for his discretion and professionalism. Wealthy women came from all over town for his hairstyles that are impeccable, men for its clean cuts and pleasant conversations. But Andrew had a secret, a secret he kept carefully hidden even from his family.
André loved men. In Paris busy, it wasn’t just a secret, it was a crime. The paragraph of the criminal code imposed in the occupied territories criminalized homosexual acts. The French had their own law against debauchery, but the Germans were much more systematic, much more ruthless. He considered homosexuality to be degeneration corrupting the race aria, a disease to be eradicated.
André had been betrayed by someone in who he trusted. A man met in a clandestine bar near Pigal, a place where other men like he found himself in the shadows, looking for a few hours of normality, of authenticity, of human connection. This man was an informer. Three days after their meeting. The guestapa knew everything.
They took him without allowing him to dress correctly, without letting him take his papers or say goodbye to his mother who lived in the apartment below. André, in pajamas, handcuffed, was thrown the back of a black truck. He passed from weeks at the Guestapo headquarters, rue sausages. Interrogation, blow, humiliation. He wanted names.
Who else? Where did he meet? who organized his gatherings of degenerate. André refused to speak, no not out of heroic courage, but because that he knew that giving names would not save. This would only condemn other men to the same hell. After weeks, the verdict came. Not formal trial, no lawyer, just an administrative decision.
Transfer to a detention center specialized pink triangle, category homosexual criminal. He was taken in a truck with seven other men, all already wearing the marks of interrogations, all with this empty look of those who begin to understand that their life, as they knew, is finished. The truck drove less than 30 minutes through Paris, but none of them could see the outside.
When the doors opened, they found themselves in an interior courtyard surrounded by high walls. In front of them, the entrance of a Belle Epoque mansion. A German officer, Auberchtm Fourur Klaus Richter was waiting for them. The forties, graying hair, metal frame glasses. He doesn’t did not shout, he did not threaten them, he simply observed with detachment clinic of a scientist examining laboratory specimens.
“Welcome,” he said in French approximate. You are now in a center of rehabilitation. If you cooperate, if you accept the treatments, perhaps will you one day be able to become useful members of society. If you resist, he left the sentence in suspends, but the message was clear. They were led inside, descending a stone staircase leading in the basement.
And there, André lives for first time the place which entered its nightmares for the rest of his life. A long hallway lit by bulbs low with hux metal doors each side. On one of these doors painted in white letters and visibly repainted several times, a name was registered: Sal Paris. Andrew and the Seven others were separated and placed in individual cells.
Spaces tiny, barely 2 m square with a iron berth, a jump for the needs and nothing else. No window, just a small grille in the door allowing the guard to monitor. The first night, André only heard sounds, moaning coming from the neighboring cells, muffled cries and sometimes something worse, screams followed by brutal silence.
He curled up on his bunk, trying to understand where he was and what we was going to do to him. At dawn, a guard opened his door and dragged him out. They took him to a room where a German doctor in scrubs white was waiting for him. Not to heal, but to examine. The doctor took methodical notes: height, weight, general state of health.
Then he asked questions in German which a translator repeated in French. How long have you been gay? How many partners have you had? Do you know that your condition is one illness? André did not answer. The doctor noted simply uncooperative on his file. Then came the first injection. The doctor prepared a syringe containing an amber liquid and injected it into the André’s arm without any explanation.
A burning pain traveled up the length of his vein. André felt his vision disturbed, his legs gave way. The guardians took him back to his cell. where he collapsed, overcome by violent nausea and dizziness which lasted for hours. This was the beginning of what the Germans called conversion therapy, daily injections of chemical substances that no one actually knew the composition.
Some caused vomiting uncontrollable, others caused head words so intense that André had the impression that his skull was going explode. Still others triggered painful erections followed by total helplessness, a humiliation additional step inflicted for to treat but to examine. The doctor took methodical notes: height, weight, general state of health.
Then he asked questions in German which a translator repeated in French. How long have you been gay? How many partners have you had? Do you understand that your condition is an illness? André did not answer. The doctor simply noted: “No cooperative on his file.” Then came the first injection. The doctor prepared a syringe containing an amber liquid and injected it into the André’s arm without any explanation.
A burning pain traveled up the length of his vein. André felt his vision troubled, his legs gave way. The guards took him back to his cell where he collapsed, overcome by nausea violent and dizzy spells which lasted hours. This was the beginning of what the Germans called conversion therapy, daily injections of chemical substances that no one actually knew the composition.
Some caused vomiting uncontrollable. Others caused head words so intense that André had the impression that his skull was going explode. Still others triggered painful erections followed by total helplessness, a humiliation additional inflicted in a manner systematic. But it wasn’t the injections worse. The worst was the Paris room.
The first time that André was taken to the Paris room, it was his second night in the center. A guard opened his cell, grabbed him by the arm and wandered down the hallway. André saw other prisoners being also taken out of their cell. Six men in all, all already wearing the marks from treatments, sunken eyes, uncontrollable shaking.
The door to the Paris room opened. It was a room bigger than the cells, maybe 20 square meters, with a cold concrete floor and walls bare, except for chains attached to regular intervals. In the center was a table metal with leather strap. On a side wall, canded instruments recognized with horror, electrodes, cables, a machine resembling a generator.
The six men were lined up against the wall. The furrier oberstum Richer entered accompanied by the doctor and two others officers. Richer spoke to them in German, then the translator repeated in French. You are here because you are sick. Your sexual perversion is a disease that can be cured. But only if you accept the treatment.
What you will experience this evening is part of this treatment. It’s what we call therapy aversion. You will learn to associate your unnatural impulses with pain, with suffering. Gradually, these impulses will disappear. The first man was tied to the table. Electrodes were placed on him temples and other parts genitals.
The doctor activated the machine. The man’s body convulsed violently, his muscles contracting uncontrollably while he screamed. It lasted 10 seconds, then 20, then 30. When they untied him, the man could barely walk. They dragged out of the room and brought the second. André was the 4th. When his turn came, he tried to resist, but the guards mastered it easily.
We tied him up so firmly that he could no longer move. The doctor adjusted the electrodes. Richter leaned towards him and murmured in broken French: “If you pray to God to help you, he won’t hear you because what you you are not loved by God.” Then came electric shock. André does not didn’t remember shouting, but he shouted: “All the men who passed through room Paris were screaming.
” The pain went beyond description as if every nerve in his body was simultaneously on fire and this started again and again. The doctor adjusted the intensity, observed reactions. Take notes. When they brought him back to his cell, Andri no longer felt his extremities. His heart was beating irregularly. He vomited everything he had in stomach then continued to feel up dry hearts for hours.
He understood then that it was only the beginning. The following days transformed in a cosmardesque routine. Each morning, injections. Each afternoon, therapeutic sessions during which the doctor forced the prisoners watching pictures of naked men, while administering to them substances causing nausea and dizziness, trying to create a negative association.
Every evening, for some of them, the Paris room. André took the names of the others prisoners. There was Marcel, 19 years old, medical student, arrested for having writes a love letter to a friend class. There was Philippe, years old, literature teacher, father of two children, who had lived a double life for 20 years before being denounced by a jealous neighbor.
There was Louis, 28 years old, carpenter, arrested simply because that he was in a bad place bad time during a reminder in a Suspicious coffee. He spoke little. Speaking required the energy he no longer had. But sometimes, late at night, André heard murmurs coming from neighboring cells, prayers, tears and more and more more often something else, supplications.
Kill me, please, kill me, I can’t anymore. Let me die. The first to say it out loud was Marcel. After his third session in the Paris room, he began to hit his head against the wall of his cell screaming “Let me die, I’m sorry let me die.” The guards took it out, built it until he passes out then thrown back into his cell.
But the next day, Marcel started again and this time, he no longer asked to die. He demanded it. The Germans found this fascinating. Richter ordered doctor to document this phenomenon. “He prefers death to healing,” he noted in his report. “This demonstrates the depth of their mental perversion.” But they did not kill them.
At On the contrary, it kept them alive just on the verge of total collapse, just conscious enough to continue suffer. André off for 3 weeks. 3 weeks injection. daily shocks electrical, sleep deprivation and of malnutrition. His body, once in good health, was only one trembling skeleton. He had lost at less than 15 kg.
Her hair was falling wrist. His skin was covered with burn where the electrodes had been placed repeatedly. But these were not not the physical marks that had it broken. This was what made him the mind. After each session in the room Paris, the doctor forced him to repeat: “I’m sick. I’m a degenerate, I deserves what happens to me.
” At the beginning, André refused, but after hours of shock electric, he said anything for this to stop. And slowly, part of him started to believe it. That was the goal. not only punish, but completely destroy the sense of self, force prisoners to internalize their own dehumanization. On the night of the 22nd day, Andrew took a decision.
He waited for the guards made their rounds, then tore a piece of his tattered uniform and tried to hang himself, tying the fabric to the gate of his door. The fabric was not not strong enough. He tore himself apart and André collapsed on the concrete floor, failing even to end his own life. A guard found him there, lying in his own urine, crying silently.
Instead of punishing him, the guard lifted him up and put him back on his bunk with an unexpected sweetness. Then he says something André will never forget never. Don’t do this. They want that you would die thinking that you deserve. Don’t give them this satisfaction. The goalkeeper was Oto Weber. He was German but not SS, just a soldier of Vermarthe assigned to this post against his gray.
In the days which followed, Auto made small things for André. A piece of bread additional slipped under the door, a little clean water, words whispered in approximate French. Hold on, war will not last forever. These little acts of kindness, too insignificant as they might seem, returned to André something that he thought I had lost, a reason to survive.
Not because he wanted to live for himself, but because he refused to give the Nazi the satisfaction of see it completely destroyed. André was not alone in his suffering. Through the thin walls, he heard other people’s stories. Marcel, the young student, did not survive not. After five weeks of treatment, his heart gave out during a session particularly brutal in the room Paris.
The doctor simply noted: “Heart failure following therapy.” Then the body was taken away. No official register, no notification to family. Marcel disappeared as if he had never existed. Philippe, the professor lost completely the reason. The shocks repeated electric shocks caused permanent neurological damage. He started to hallucinate talking to invisible people, laughing then crying for no apparent reason.
The Germans transferred him to an asylum psychiatric where he died 6 months later late. Louis, the carpenter tried to escape. enjoying a moment inattention during a transfer, it ran towards the stairs leading to the ground floor. He almost reached the front door before a guard shoots him in the back.
We left him bleed in the yard for two hours before a doctor comes to see his death. Other men arrived to replace those who had died or transferred. The cycle continued. of new prisoners, new patients, new victims for doctor’s experiences and therapies Richeteur’s aversion. André learned to recognize those who would not survive.
It was those who still had hope. Those who believed that if they were cooperative, if they did everything they were told asked, they would finally released. This hope made them vulnerable, because when they realized that liberation would never come, they were completely collapsing. Those who survived, it was those like André who had abandoned all hope of justice or freedom.
They survived out of pure obstinacy, out of refusal to give the naz what he wanted, a victim accepting his own annihilation. On June 6, 1944, the world changed. The successful Normandy landing. The allies were on French soil and were progressing. In the center of detention, the prisoners do not know not immediately, but they felt a change.
The guards were more nervous, there were fewer sessions in the Paris room. The injections continued but less systematic. Auto whispered one evening to André: “The Americans are in France, It won’t be much longer now. Hold on a little longer.” But hold on was becoming more and more difficult. André had spent 4 months in the center.
His body was destroyed. The shocks repeated electric shocks had caused permanent neurological damage. His hands shook constantly. He had lost almost all his teeth due to malnutrition and infections processed. His vision was blurry, but he was still alive and every day of survival was an act of resistance. At the beginning of August, the rumors became clearer.
The allies were approaching Paris. The Germans began to destroy documents, to evacuate certain facilities. In the center of detention, Richer ordered intensification of treatments. “We must finish our work before leave,” he told the doctor. This meant more sessions in the room Paris, higher doses of chemicals, shocks longer and more intense electric shocks.
Two prisoners died in a week. A third became catatonic, staring into space without reaction to any stimulus. Andrew felt he was approaching his own limit. His body could no longer bear a lot and for first time since Otto had restored a little hope, André found himself thinking about suicide again, not out of despair, but out of something cross.
If he were to die of all way, as much as it is of his own hands rather than giving to the Germans the satisfaction of killing him. But before that he could not act, everything changed. The August 24, 1944, Paris was liberated, but the center of detention was not immediately. They were in a neighborhood that was still controlled by the Germans and they had no intention of leaving their patients fall into the hands allies.
Richter ordered evacuation. All documents had to be burned. All material medical had to be dismantled. And regarding prisoners, Richter gave clear orders. They cannot not testify. Liquidate them all. But Otto Webber overheard this conversation. That night, while the others guards were sleeping or preparing evacuation, Otto did something extraordinary.
He opened all the cells. “Leave !” he whispered in French. “Now the doors are open, Run away!” Of the 12 prisoners still alive, only five could walk. Andrew was one of them. They dragged themselves out from their cells and went up the staircase leading to the ground floor. For the first time in four months, André saw the light of day filter through windows the private mansion.
They went out through a side door and scattered through the streets of Paris. André didn’t know where to go. He didn’t have no money, no paper and carried still the striped uniform of the prisoners. He walked for hours, hiding in the alleys, avoiding retreating German patrols. He ends up collapsing in the entrance of a marsh building.
An elderly woman found there, barely conscious. Instead to call the authorities, she did enter her house, wash him, feed him and the cchahausuntil the last ones Germans leave Paris. Andrew survived. Against all odds. He survived. But what the Germans had done didn’t stop with the liberation of Paris. France liberated wanted to turn the page, celebrate the victory, rebuild, forget.
The stories of German atrocities were told but only some. Those that fit the story heroic of resistance and liberation. Prisoners’ stories homosexuals did not fit this story. André tried to speak. He surrendered to the authorities, recounted what happened in the center of detention in the Paris room, but the answer was always the same.
embarrassment, averted glance, insinuation which exaggerated it, that perhaps the Germans were right to consider homosexuality as an illness requiring treatment. After all, in France too, homosexuality remained criminalized. The law against acts unnatural was still in force. André discovered with horror that if he insisted too much, he risked being no longer stopped by the Germans, but by the French authorities.
So he kills himself like so many other survivors. André never returned to his living room hairstyle. He could no longer bear touch people, to have them so close of him. Physical trauma and psychological made all life normal impossible. He lives small jobs, moving from one city to another, never staying in the same place for long place as if it were still in leak.
The trembling of his hands never stopped, the nightmares didn’t more. Every night, André woke up screaming, seeing the Paris room again, feeling the electrodes on his skin, hearing the cries of others prisoners. He never married, nut never children. Physical intimacy had become impossible. Of a certain way, the Nazis had succeeded.
They had not cured his homosexuality, but they had destroyed his ability to to love, to trust, to live fully. In 1967, over 25 years old after his release, André made a last attempt to testify. He recounted a historian working on the German occupation. He told everything. The Paris room. the experiences medical, aversion therapies, the men who beg to be begged let it die.
The historian listened to him politely, took notes then said: “Mr. Morau, I understand that you have suffered, but you understand that your condition makes it difficult the inclusion of your testimony in a serious historical work. People don’t don’t want to hear about this kind of things. André left the interview knowing that his story would not be never told during his lifetime.
He died in 1987 at 15, alone in a small apartment of the Parisian suburbs. On his table night, the police officers who discovered his bodies found a notebook. To inside, André had written in his trembling writing all that had happened passed in the Paris room. Each detail, every name he remembered, every horror.
The notebook was entrusted to a lawyer with instructions not to open it only in 2007, 20 years after the death of Andrew. Maybe then, wrote André in a letter accompanying the notebook, the world will be ready to hear what happened to men like me. In 2007, the notebook by André Morau was finally all green and given to the Choa memorial in Paris.
Historians examined it, cross-checked the facts with other archives of the time. They found documents confirming the existence of a detention center in the 16th district, medical reports signed by the doctor, notes of rich on his experiences of rehabilitation. They looked for others survivors. There were no more.
Andrew was the last. But they found families, descendants of those who were dead in the Paris room. And slowly, after more than years of silence, the story finally began to emerge from the shadow where she had been buried. In 2008, an exhibition was organized at memorial. The forgotten ones of the occupation, the victims of the pink triangle.
For the first time, the history of the room Paris was told publicly. The visitors could read the testimony of André, see the documents proving that all this had really happened and understand that the Nazi horror had extended into the basements elegant people from occupied Paris. The exhibition attracted attention considerable.
Some were shocked, claiming they didn’t know. Others admitted that they knew but that they had chosen not to see, not to hear because it was more comfortable that way. In 2010, the French government presented official apology to the victims homosexuals of the occupation, recognizing not only what the Germans had done them, but also the complicit silence of society French after the war.
In 2012, a commemorative plaque was installed on the building which had formerly housed the detention center. It bears a simple inscription on the memory of persecuted men and tortured in this place for their identity. May their suffering not be never forgotten. Today, the old mansion is divided into luxury apartments.
Of families live there and raise their children there without knowing that beneath their feet are the basements where men begged to be allowed to die. But their story survives in the notebook of André, in the historical archives, in the collective memory of those who choose to remember rather than to forget. The history of the Paris room recalls several truths uncomfortable.
Firstly, horror does not need battlefield or camp gigantic concentration to exist. She can hide in basements ordinary buildings behind elegant facades at the very heart of our cities. Second, dehumanization never limit yourself to just one group. As soon as we accept that a group of people are considered sick, degenerate or less than human, we create the conditions for anyone can be dehumanized.
Third, silence after atrocity is also a form of violence. The men of the Paris room suffered twice. A first once under Nazi torture and second time under the silence of their own compatriots who refused to hear their story. Even today, in many country, homosexuality is criminalized. Conversion therapies are still practiced, claiming to cure which is not an illness.
People still suffer for whom they love. The story of André Morau and all those who passed through Paris room reminds us that we we can’t stay silent, that forgetting is not peace, only human dignity is indivisible. If this story touched you, leave a like to allow others discover. Subscribe to continue hear these stories that time has wanted erase and above all write in the comments from where you are looking at us.
Say you heard, say that you remember. Say you testify. Because it’s in this chain from memory, in this collective refusal to the forgetting that the men of the Paris room finally regain their dignity. No not because justice has been fully done to them returned, it never was, but because their story is told, their names are pronounced and their humanity finally recognized.
André Morau survived hell. He carried his testimony through decades of silence and today through you voice still reasons. Thanks for having it listened. Thank you for remembering.
