My name is Éléonore Vassel and I am years old at the time I am recording these words. For years, I said nothing. Not because I had forgotten, but because I remembered too well. Some memories cannot be erased . They are hiding. They live in silences, in sleepless nights, and in the inexplicable fear of the sound of boots on hard ground.
Before the war, my life was simple. I lived in a small rural village in France in my father’s bakery. Every morning, the smell of fresh bread filled the house and I believed the world would always be like that. I was 17 years old. I was helping to wrap the still-warm loaves of bread for the neighbors.
I was wearing a light blue dress sewn by my mother and I thought my future would be made up of ordinary things. A wedding, children, seasons that pass slowly. The war existed on the radio, but not yet in our streets. Then one morning in May, everything changed. It was 6 a.m. The sky was grey and heavy. I heard the trucks before I saw them, a metallic rumble in the narrow alleyways, then the repeated clatter of boots on the cobblestones.
The door was broken down without warning. Three German soldiers entered. One of them had a list. He didn’t shout. He simply raised his finger towards me and said a word that I have never forgotten. Advance. My mother tried to approach and she was pushed back against the wall with the butt of a rifle. My father tried to protest and fell to his knees after a violent blow.
I couldn’t kiss him. I didn’t take anything with me. I was dragged outside, barefoot on the cold earth, and I immediately understood that I would never see that normal morning again. The truck was already full of women. Some were my neighbors, others were strangers. They all had the same look. Open eyes, too big for their faces, and a silence heavier than screams.
There were 47 of us crammed together in the darkness. Nobody knew why we had been taken. We drove for almost two days with very little water and no food. The humiliation began even before we arrived, as we were already being treated as if we were no longer people. The night the doors opened, I remember the harsh light and the barking dogs. The air smelled of smoke, sweat, and something indefinable.
Later, I understood that it was the smell of human fear. We were lined up in front of a large iron gate. I did not understand the words written above, but I saw the barbed wire, the guard towers and the armed figures. Guards walked between us and watched us like animals in a market. One of them lifted my chin with a stick, turned my face left then right and wrote something.
I didn’t know yet that this moment was a selection. We were separated, some to the right, others to the left. I was part of a small group led to a different, cleaner shack, lit by a dim light. A guard speaking broken French told us that we had been chosen to work inside the camp. Some believed it was a chance.
I felt a coldness pass down my back without understanding why. Then he added that that same evening we would be examined and presented. No one asked any questions. We had already learned that the questions no longer existed. We were ushered into a freezing cold shower room . Two guards watched while we had to wash ourselves completely.
They inspected our hair, our arms, our skin. We weren’t just looking for dirt, we were looking for something else , something I didn’t yet understand. Then we were given a very thin grey dress, without underwear, and locked up to wait. We were seven, sitting on trembling wooden beds, silent.
Night was slowly falling, the door opened and an officer entered. Large, perfectly clean, shiny boot. He didn’t shout. He simply walked in front of us and observed us one by one. When he stopped in front of me, I felt his gaze as a physical contact. He ordered me to stand up, to turn around , to lift my dress. I obeyed because fear can transform a free person into a motionless statue.
He touched my shoulder then my waist as if checking a fragile object. Then he said something and the guard took note. Two girls were taken away. They never came back that night. We waited until dawn without sleeping. We didn’t yet know that this was only the beginning and that the first night wasn’t an accident.
It was a method, a silent message to teach us immediately that our bodies no longer belonged to us and that war could shatter a life long before work, hunger, or disease. That night, I stopped being the baker’s daughter. I became a number that didn’t yet exist. And even today, more than 60 years later, I can still hear the sound of the key turning in the lock.
The second night is the one I carried inside me the longest, not the first, because the first was still one of stupor, an almost childlike incomprehension. On the second night, she taught me. We spent the entire following day integrated into the camp. We were given wooden clogs that were too big, a striped outfit, and a number crudely sewn onto our chests.
We were no longer called by our names. Mine was never spoken there again. I had become a number repeated rapidly by the guards like reading an inventory. We were made to stand motionless in the courtyard for hours for the roll call. The sun rose, burned our eyes, then disappeared. Some girls were trembling with fatigue but no one dared to move.
A woman fainted. and no one intervened for several long minutes. I then understood that suffering was not an accident of the camp, but a normal element of its functioning. In the afternoon, I was sent to the officers’ kitchen. The contrast struck me immediately. Where the shacks smelled of damp and disease, the kitchen smelled of hot soup, coffee, and white bread.
I was cleaning huge pots and pans while the soldiers laughed behind me. They were talking loudly and smoking. They told stories about their family and their post-war plans. I was listening against my will, and a thought terrified me. For them, the war was not a permanent tragedy. This was their ordinary daily life.
They could joke with a few hungry women without feeling the slightest contradiction. On several occasions, one of them asked me my age. I simply answered 17. He nodded his head as if he judged an object too fragile. In the evening, we returned to the small shack. No one was speaking. The youngest girl was crying silently, facing the wall.
When the door opened, we all jumped. It was the same officer as the day before, but this time he was not alone. Behind him, a guard carried a lamp. The yellow light made the room look even smaller. The officer looked at each of us slowly, patiently. He didn’t shout, he didn’t threaten. It was worse.
He acted as if everything was perfectly normal. He stopped in front of a girl named Simone, a seamstress from a neighboring town. He placed his hand on her shoulder and gestured for her to come forward. She didn’t move. Then the guard approached and repeated the order. Simon whispered. No. It was barely audible, but it was a refusal. The officer did not raise his voice.
He simply placed his pistol calmly on the table between us. Nobody screamed, nobody moved. Simon got up all by herself. She walked as if her legs no longer belonged to her. The door closed behind her. We waited a long time. Time no longer had any meaning. We counted the breaths, the sounds in the corridor, the wind against the walls.
When she returned, she was no longer the same. His face was blank, his eyes staring at the ground. I took her hand, but she didn’t squeeze mine. She was murmuring something incomprehensible, a phrase repeated over and over again. It wasn’t just fear, it was as if a part of her had stayed somewhere else.
An hour later, the officer returned and this time he stopped in front of me. My heart was beating so fast that I could almost hear its echo in my ears. I stood up before the guard even spoke. I already knew that resisting would change nothing, except add to the violence. We crossed the courtyard, which was plunged into darkness.
I could hear music coming from a building further away, an old German radio playing a light melody. This contrast struck me more than anything else . The normality of the sound and the abnormality of the situation. The room he led me to resembled an ordinary bedroom, with a table, a chair, and an oil lamp. Nothing frightening on the surface.
And that’s precisely what was terrifying, the banality. He spoke slowly in German, as if to someone he wanted to reassure. I didn’t understand the words, but I understood the intention. I fixed a point on the wall so as not to disappear completely in fear. I mostly remember the silence afterwards, the moment he opened the door as if nothing important had happened.
He uttered a short word that I learned later. Tastes good. I’m back at the shack. The girls looked up at me and no questions were asked. We all knew that words were useless. That night, I understood what the camp wanted to teach us. Before the end, before the work, before the blows, we had to be stripped of any illusion of control.
If the mind gives way, the body will follow. The following day during the roll call, the senior officer stated that none of what had happened had actually occurred. He demanded that we understand. We answered yes in a single, weak voice. And so, the first night was officially erased. But not for us.
For me, it never ended. It repeated itself for decades in my dreams, even into my old age. It wasn’t just a memory, it was an invisible border separating my life before and my life after. From that moment on, I no longer thought about surviving for myself. I wanted to survive so that one day I could say that it had existed, even if no one wanted to hear it.
After the second night, life in the camp became a repetitive routine. almost as regular as clockwork. Waking up before dawn, endless roll call in the cold, work, thin soup, return to the barracks, silence. However, it wasn’t fatigue that was destroying us the most, it was the constant uncertainty. Every night, we dreaded the opening of the door.
We didn’t always call someone, but the waiting was enough to exhaust us more than the workdays. We weren’t really sleeping anymore. We fell into a sort of half-sleep where every noise made our hearts leap. I observed a lot in the officers’ kitchen . I had understood that seeing and memorizing was a form of resistance.
The soldiers spoke freely in front of me, because for them, I didn’t really exist. They talked about the fighting, the leaves, sometimes their families in Germany. A young soldier was showing a picture of a blond child to another. smiling with pride. This image moved me more than the cries from the camp.
I wondered how a man capable of loving a child could participate in what we were experiencing. It was on that day that I understood something essential. Cruelty did not always come from recognizable monsters. It could have come from ordinary men who compartmentalized their conscience. Sometimes the officer with Kruger glasses stayed longer in the kitchen.
He spoke to me softly, almost politely. He asked if I was hungry, if I could handle the work. One day, he slipped a piece of bread near me, pretending he had forgotten it. I hesitated for a long time before buying it. This gesture was not kindness, it was power. He wanted me to understand that my well-being depended on him.
Several girls had accepted this kind of protection. They ate a little better, worked less hard, but their eyes seemed lifeless. No one judged them. We knew that everyone was surviving however they could. The nights continued. Not every day, not according to a fixed rule. It was intentional.
Unpredictability prevented any adaptation. For a week, no one was called. Then suddenly, two or three of us disappeared from the barracks for a few hours. We never spoke on the way back. Only once did the unknown 15-year-old girl whisper that she wanted to die. Jacqueline, the older woman, held his face in her hands and said something I will never forget.
They want you to be nothing more than a body. Remain a person in your head. Think of your name, your childhood, someone who loves you. From that day on, I mentally repeated every night: “My name is Ééonora Vassel, daughter of a baker. It was my way of staying alive.” Winter has arrived. The cold penetrated the walls.
Our fingers were bleeding while we were working. The skin was splitting. The soup was becoming even clearer. Some women chewed potato peelings stolen from the kitchen bins. I would sometimes pretend to tip over one of the bags to let some leftovers fall out. It was dangerous, but it was also what allowed me to endure my own survival.
One inmate thanked me one evening with such an intense look that I cried silently. In this place, a tiny gesture took on the value of a heroic act. One morning, Simon did not show up for roll call. We understood without anyone explaining it to us. No one asked questions, because the answers were always the same.
Disappearance, illness, transfer. The words changed, but the result remained absence. In the evening in the barracks, his empty space felt heavier than his presence had ever been. It was on that day that fear transformed into something else within me. It was no longer just the fear of dying, it was the fear of being erased as if I had never existed.
The bombings began to be heard in the distance towards the end of winter. The officers were becoming nervous, they were speaking faster, smoking in front of them. I once heard the word American. For the first time since my arrival, I felt a strange sensation, almost forgotten. Hope.
It was fragile and dangerous, because hope could also lead to disappointment. Yet, it circulated among us without a word. The looks changed slightly, but the nights continued nonetheless. The system did not stop, even when the war was nearing its end. And I understood that what we were experiencing was not an individual excess.
It was an unwritten, unofficial, but tolerated method. She broke women before work or death could exhaust their strength. By destroying dignity from the outset, the camp obtained obedience without the need for constant violence. Every night, I promised myself that if I got out alive, I would talk. However, I already knew that after the war, no one would want to listen.
The world prefers stories of battle and victory. What happens to women in the shadows is more disturbing. So, I decided at least to memorize everything, the faces, the gestures, the smells, the phrases, because if I survived, I would become the memory of the one who would no longer have any. Spring 1944 arrived without us really noticing.
In a camp, the seasons exist only through temperature. The burning cold on the fingers disappears. Mud replaces ice, then dust replaces mud. That’s how we knew that time was passing, not thanks to the calendar, but thanks to suffering changing its form. However, something else began to change as well.
The goalkeepers were becoming more nervous and unpredictable. The strict order remained, but behind it appeared a new agitation, almost a disquiet. In the kitchen, I could hear more low-pitched conversations. The maps were often spread out on the table after the officers’ meal. He would talk for a long time, sometimes angrily.
Several times the name of a French city was spoken, then German words that I did not understand, but I recognized fear when I saw it. For the first time, it wasn’t just us who were scared, they were too. This tension was having repercussions throughout the camp. The punishments became sudden, often without apparent reason.
One woman was beaten for turning her head during the call, another for keeping a piece of fabric in her sleeve to protect her skin from the cold. The decision was entirely arbitrary. It wasn’t just to punish, it was to remind us that we weren’t in control. Domination was achieved through unpredictability. One night, the door of the barracks suddenly opened.
We all stood up at the same time as one body, but this time it was n’t to take someone away. We were ordered to go outside. It was raining. We stood in the courtyard for hours without explanation. Some were shivering with cold, others were fainting. No one dared to move. I understood later. He was looking for someone who had tried to escape to another part of the camp.
We had no connection with her, but collective punishment was part of the system. A female prisoner who had fallen next to me was whispering her son’s name over and over again to stay conscious. After this episode, several women changed, not outwardly, but inwardly. Their gaze seemed to empty itself as if they had stopped expecting anything.
It was no longer fear, but resignation. and resignation was more dangerous than fatigue because it removed the will to live. Jacqueline, the oldest among us, began to speak softly every evening. She recounted memories of her youth: summer markets, music, village festivals. She said that this memory was a form of food for the soul. We listened to him in silence.
These stories were our invisible refuge. A few days later, Officer Kruger summoned me alone to the kitchen after service. My heart was beating very fast, but I obeyed. He sat down opposite me, surprisingly calm. He asked me my age, I answered. He looked at me for a long time and then said in French, “The war will end soon.
Some will survive better than others.” He spoke slowly, almost like an advisor. He offered me the option of remaining assigned solely to the kitchen with extra rations if I cooperated more. He did not specify. It wasn’t necessary. Got it. I remained silent. Not for heroic courage, but because something inside me refused.
It was not a judgment against the one who accepted. It was a personal boundary, the final frontier of my identity. He waited for my answer. I didn’t say anything. After a long while, he simply sighed and sent me back to the barracks. I knew that this refusal could cost me dearly. However, when I went back to the others, I felt a strange sensation.
For the first time since my arrest, I had made a decision myself. The following nights were calmer. Not sure, never sure, but calmer. In the distance, the bombings were becoming more audible. Sometimes the floor vibrated slightly. We looked up, not daring to speak. Hope returned, but accompanied by a new fear. What if the guards decided to eliminate us before fleeing? One evening, while we were lying down, the unknown girl whispered.
Do you think they know what we’re going through here? No one responded immediately. Then Jacqueline whispered, “One day, someone will know because someone will survive.” In the darkness, I understood that she was looking at me, not just me, but each of us. Survival became a responsibility. That moment changed my perception. Before, I wanted to live to see my family again.
Now, I also wanted to live in order to tell stories. Physical suffering fades with time, but forgetting can kill a second time. And I already felt that if we remained silent after the war, what was happening in the shadows would disappear completely. From that night on, I began to memorize every detail intentionally.
the layout of the buildings, the unheard sounds , the approximate dates, the faces, not to take revenge, but to prove that we had existed, because in this place, the worst threat was not only to die, it was to be erased. The summer of 1944 was when hope entered the camp for the first time, but in a strange, almost dangerous way.
We received no official news. Yet, the signs were everywhere. The guards smoked more, the officers spoke louder than before, and most importantly, some suddenly disappeared for several days. We sensed that something was slipping out of their control. For us prisoners, hope was a fragile thing. Believing in it too much could break the spirit if nothing changed.
In the kitchen, deliveries became irregular. The crates arrived late, sometimes damaged, and the rations for the soldiers were dwindling. When the army lacks food, it often means that it is retreating. One evening, I heard two soldiers talking to each other without noticing my presence. I only understood a few words, but one name struck me: Normandy.
I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but their tone wasn’t one of victory. Nevertheless, for us, daily life remained the same. The early morning calls, the chores, the constant fatigue. The bodies eventually got used to it , but the mind never did . Some women counted the days by carving marks under their beds.
Others had abandoned all notion of time. Jacqueline used to say that you shouldn’t count the days, only the breaths. One more breath meant one more minute gained over death. One event profoundly marked this period. A new prisoner arrived at our barracks. She was older than us, maybe 40 years old. His gaze was different.
She observed everything silently. Her name was Hélène and she came from another camp. She didn’t speak the first night. The next day, during a break, she murmured, “They won’t win anymore.” We looked at her without understanding. She explained that she had heard constant bombing before her transfer and had seen destroyed military trains .
These words were not a speech, but a simple certainty. For the first time, hope became concrete. However, hope also brought a new cruelty. The guards became tougher, as if they sensed the end, they sought to maintain their authority through fear. Collective punishments increased. A woman was locked in a dark room for several days for picking up a potato peeling.
We understand that their power was diminishing, and that is precisely why they were becoming more dangerous. One evening in August, Officer Kruger came back to see me in the kitchen. This time, he offered nothing. He simply stared at me and said, “Soon, everything will change here.” His face expressed neither threat nor compassion, only immense weariness.
I understood that he was speaking as much for himself as for me. This was the first time I targeted an officer not as a symbol of authority, but as a man aware that his world was collapsing. In the barracks, we began to talk about what would happen next, without daring to utter the word freedom. What would we do? Where would we go? Many no longer had family, others were afraid to return and not be recognized.
War did not only destroy bodies, it shattered identities. We were no longer the same women who had been torn from their homes. One night, the unknown girl asked me : “Do you think we can go back to normal?” I didn’t know how to answer because I already understood something terrible.
Surviving did not mean forgetting. The camp was etched in memory like an invisible scar. Even when free, we would always carry that place within us. The bombings were getting closer. Sometimes the sky trembled slightly and a distant glow appeared behind the clouds. We raised our heads in silence. No one dared to smile, but our expressions had changed.
For the first time, we were not just waiting for the end of the day, we were waiting for the end of the war. And deep inside me, another new and disturbing thought was born. If I were to leave here alive, would I be able to tell what happened the first night? Or , like so many others, would I choose silence so that I could continue to live? I didn’t know the answer, but I already knew that the real test might begin after freedom.
Autumn 4 arrived with an earlier cold than in other years. In the camp, the wind blew through the loose planks of the barracks and the night became almost as harsh as the day. However, something had changed. The guards were still shouting, the calls were still there, the end remained the same, but their confidence had vanished.
He checked the fences more often, spoke to each other in hushed voices, and constantly consulted maps in the administrative office. We understood without understanding. The war was getting closer to us. In the kitchen, military rations became even poorer. The soldiers sometimes received a thin soup that was barely different from ours.
Some of them seemed nervous, irritable, and several had tired eyes as if they were no longer sleeping. One evening, I heard distant gunfire. It wasn’t an exercise, it was regular, profound, almost continuous. Hélène simply looked at me and murmured, “They’re approaching.” But hope did not erase fear.
On the contrary, it made her stronger. A rumor was circulating among us. Some camps were evacuated before the arrival of the enemy armies. The prisoners were taken far away, sometimes on foot, sometimes by train, and many died during these journeys. Freedom could still have slipped through our fingers at the last moment.
We knew that surviving until then guaranteed nothing. One morning, a woman collapsed during the phone call. She did not get up. The camp doctor quickly confirmed his death without even kneeling. No one cried. Not because we were insensitive, but because tears no longer existed here. They had been replaced by a fatigue too profound to express.
I continued working in the kitchen. This work sometimes allowed me to obtain a peeling or a piece of paint that I shared with Margaot, or rather with Margaot’s memory. Because after his death, I had gotten into the habit of keeping a small portion of food which I would discreetly place behind the shack as if it still existed.
This gesture served no purpose, but it helped me to remain human. One day, Captain Kruger entered the kitchen earlier than usual. He was not accompanied. He remained motionless for a few seconds, staring at the empty pots. Then he said to me softly: “If things go wrong, stay hidden.” I did not reply.
I didn’t know if it was sincere advice or just a casual remark, but I understood one thing: even some of those guarding us were no longer certain of their future. The bombings were getting closer . At night, the Earth vibrated slightly, the windows trembled. Several guards were now sleeping in uniform, ready to leave at any moment.
We, the prisoners, remained silent because hope could be dangerous. If he disappeared, he would take reason with him. A week later, an unexpected order arrived. We were told to pack our things, which was almost nothing. Many believed that the evacuation was beginning. The fear became stronger than ever.
Some women prayed, others remained frozen. Hélène squeezed my hand very tightly. No one was speaking. But the departure did not take place. The order was cancelled a few hours later. We learned that fighting was taking place on the nearby roads and that no convoys could leave the area. That night, nobody slept. We were suspended between two destinies.
Death during evacuation or imminent freedom. I then understood a strange truth. Freedom was almost as frightening as captivity. Because in the camp, life was simple. to survive until the next day. Outside the camp, one would have to live with the memories. I sat near the door of the barracks and watched the dark sky. For the first time since my arrest, I actually imagined getting out of here.
But this thought brought up a question I had never dared to ask myself. What would become of us afterwards? Who would listen to what we had seen? And above all, would we have the strength to tell the story? The cannons continued to roar in the distance. Each explosion seemed to herald the end of a world. We did not yet know that liberation was near, but we all felt that the camp was living its last days and that our lives would soon begin again without anything ever being able to become the same again . The morning of April 18, 1945
began in an eerie silence. No whistling, no shouting. Usually, even before dawn, the guards would bang on the doors with their metal sticks. But that day, nothing. The women remained lying motionless for a few more minutes, believing it to be a trap. Then someone whispered, “Listen, there were no footprints in the yard.
” Hélène was the first to get up and approached the window. She slightly moved aside the board that served as a shutter. His face changed immediately. No smiles, no joy, only disbelief. There’s nobody left . We slowly left the barracks. The wind was blowing in the courtyard. The watchtowers were abandoned.
The doors of the administrative buildings remained open. The guards had left during the night, leaving behind papers, still-full cups, and even coats. No one dared to cross the gate. After years of obeying orders, freedom seemed unreal. A woman knelt on the muddy ground and began to laugh nervously.
Another one wept silently. I remained motionless, unable to move forward. The fear persisted. We thought he might return at any moment. For two days, we remained in the camp unsupervised. Some searched for food in the deserted kitchens. Others remained lying down, too weak to understand what was happening. Freedom was coming, but our bodies were no longer used to deciding for themselves.
Then on the 3rd day, we heard unknown engines, not the German trucks, not the curt orders we knew. Several different vehicles entered the courtyard. Soldiers were wearing uniforms we had never seen before. A man got out of a vehicle and stood frozen, staring at us. I remember his face more than anything else .
He did not shout, nor did he give any orders. He simply removed his helmet and brought his hand to his mouth. Her eyes became moist. It was the first time in years that a man had looked at us as human beings. They gave us blankets, bread, and warm milk. Several women became ill after eating too quickly. Our bodies were no longer able to accept normal food.
The soldiers walked slowly among us, speaking softly as if they were afraid of frightening us. One of them handed me a cup. I couldn’t hold it . My hands were shaking too much. He supported her without directly touching me, with a delicacy that moved me more than anything. I realized something then. The external war was over for me, but the internal war was only just beginning.
We were then transported to a care center. We were given civilian clothes. When I saw my reflection in a window, I did not recognize the person in front of me. My face was hollow, my hair was grey in places, my eyes were old. I was twenty years old, but my gaze belonged to an older woman. A few weeks later, I was sent back to France.
The return journey was silent. Nobody was talking about the camp. No one mentioned the first night. We already understood that it would be a secret shared without words. When I arrived in my village, it no longer really existed. The streets seemed narrower, the houses lower, but it wasn’t the village that had changed, it was me.
I had returned alive, yet I no longer felt like I belonged to this world. My mother held me in her arms for a long time. She was crying. I wasn’t crying . I was incapable of it. She asked me only one question. Have you come home? I simply answered yes. She didn’t ask for anything more, and I didn’t say anything.
Because how can you explain something that doesn’t exist in any book? How do you describe the first night to someone who just wants to find their daughter? Thus began a life that was seemingly free but inhabited by memories that knew neither Armistice nor victory. Years passed. Outwardly, my life was like that of all the other women of my generation.
I worked, I cooked, I sometimes laughed with my neighbors. In 1948, I married Marcel, a patient, calm man, who had never asked unnecessary questions. He only knew that I had been deported. That word was enough at the time to end any conversation. We smell two children. When my daughter was born, I held her and cried with joy, but no tears came.
Not because I didn’t love him , I loved him deeply, but because something inside me had remained frozen in that first night at the camp. I looked at his face and only one thought crossed my mind. She is safe. That had become my definition of happiness. I think I was a good mother . I watched over them constantly. During the night, I got up several times to check that he was breathing.
Marcel thought I was simply worried. He didn’t know that for me, danger could arise at any hour behind any door. I couldn’t stand the sound of boots echoing on the cobblestones. I couldn’t stand men shouting in the street, and above all, I couldn’t stand being grabbed by the arm without warning.
In those moments, my heart raced, my hands became icy cold, and I was no longer in my kitchen in 1955. I was back in that dark hallway. For 60 years, I didn’t talk about it to anyone. The company wanted to move forward. After the war, France rebuilt its cities, its families, its future. The heroes had their place, the resistance fighters had their story.
But women like me, we had no story to tell. What we had experienced was disturbing. It was neither glorious nor understandable. So, we learned to live with the silence. Marcel died in 1998. After his funeral, I was left alone in the house which had become too big. The silence I had carried all my life suddenly became deafening.
At night, I had no one left to wake me up when I cried in my sleep. Then in 2009, a historian contacted me. He had found my name in some archives. He wanted to record my testimony. My first reaction was anger. What’s the point now? The person in charge was dead. Time had covered everything. Opening that door meant reliving every second.
But he said something to me that I have never forgotten. Madam, if you don’t speak up, they will win a second time. For weeks, I hesitated. Then one evening, I was watching my grandchildren playing in the garden. Their laughter was free. He lived in a world where war was just a school subject. And I understood, if they were unaware of what had really happened, then there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again . I accepted.
On the day of the recording, I was trembling more than when I arrived at the camp. The camera was not a weapon. Yet, it seemed heavier to me than any gaze. At first, no soft parts came out. Then, slowly, the sentences came. I was talking about the truck, the gate, the selection process, and finally the first night.
I cried for the first time since 1945. When it was all over, I felt something unexpected, not relief, but air, as if I had been breathing fully for 60 years. After the documentary aired, letters arrived, dozens, then hundreds. Other women were writing. Some from France, others from Poland, Austria, and Hungary.
They had experienced the same thing. They had also remained silent all their lives. Then I understood. My story was not unique. She was simply one of many voices waiting to be heard. I am not looking for pity, I am not looking for hatred. What I want to convey is a simple truth. War does not only destroy cities and armies.
It penetrates human beings and continues long after the official peace. Today, I am old, my body is tired, but my memory remains clear. I’m no longer afraid to speak. Shame has never been ours. If you hear my voice, remember this : “Forgetting is the ultimate victory of violence. As long as someone listens, as long as someone tells the story, those who suffered still exist.
My name is Éléonore Vassel, I survived, and now I’m sharing this story with you so it won’t disappear. Yeah.”
