There was a corridor in the basements of the old textile factory in Lille that did not appear in any official German documents during the occupation. The soldiers of the Vermarthe knew where they were but never mentioned the location in reports or correspondence. It was a secret whispered between guard shifts, passed on only orally between officers who needed to know, and recorded in personal notebooks that would be burned before the German withdrawal in 1944.
The corridor led to a reinforced steel door painted industrial grey with no external identification. Just a number scribbled in white ink that someone had tried to erase several times but which always reappeared. 47 On the other hand, the reality was so brutal that many women who entered prayed to die before dawn, because death seemed more merciful than surviving another night in that place.
Marguerite de Lorme was 18 years old when she first descended its wet concrete steps on a freezing March dawn in 1943. She was a Red Cross volunteer nurse, daughter of a respected pharmacist from Roubet, and had spent the last 18 months treating wounded civilians in makeshift hospitals in the area. Marguerite was not a member of the resistance, did not carry weapons, did not know how to make bombs or sabotage railway tracks.
His only crime, if it could be called that, had been to treat a young wounded man who was bleeding on the sidewalk in front of the municipal market without asking which side of the war he was on. The boy was a messenger for the resistance. Three days later, the Gestapo knocked on the door of the Deorme family home at four-thirty in the morning with that methodical violence which did not need a shout to terrorize.
Just the sound of boots climbing the wooden stairs and the light of lanterns cutting through the darkness of the rooms. Marguerite was taken away without the right to say goodbye, without time to put on a coat or proper shoes. She was put in the back of a military truck covered with a tarpaulin with six other women she had never seen before, all with the same dazed look of those who have not yet fully understood what is happening to them , but already sense that something terrible awaits them at the end of this journey.
The journey lasted less than 20 minutes, but seemed like an eternity, each bump in the road causing bodies to slam against the cold metal walls, each sudden braking eliciting stifled sighs from the women who tried to hold themselves up where they could. When the truck finally stopped and the tarpaulin was pulled back, Marguerite saw for the first time the dilapidated facade of the old Rousell and Fels textile factory, a red brick building blackened by soot and acid rain from the war years.
with shattered windows that resembled empty eyes watching for the arrival of new victims. The factory was decommissioned in 1940, just after the German occupation, when the owner fled to England, taking the plans for the machines with him and leaving behind only the rusted iron structures and empty halls where more than 200 workers once worked.
But the Germans had found a use for this forgotten space. They had transformed the ground floor into a supply depot, the first floor into temporary accommodation for passing troops, and the basement, that damp and cold basement which once housed boilers and industrial dye vats, into something that would never be mentioned in the official records of the occupation.
There, in that maze of narrow corridors, lit by dim bulbs that constantly flickered, they had created a space where the rules of war did not apply, where the Geneva Convention was only a distant memory, and where French women disappeared for days, weeks, or forever. Marguerite smelled the scent even before going down the stairs.
It was a nauseating mixture of mold, cheap disinfectants, accumulated sweat, and something metallic that she immediately recognized as old blood. That specific smell that sticks to the wall and floor when there is no adequate ventilation or real effort to clean. A German soldier in a stained uniform pushed her from behind, causing her to stumble on the first step, and she had to hold onto the rusty railing to avoid falling face-first against the concrete.
Behind her, the other women descended in silence, just the sound of footsteps echoing in the descending tunnel. And Marguerite realized that none of them were crying, none of them were begging because they had all already understood that down below supplications had no value. When they arrived at the main basement corridor, Marguerite saw the doors for the first time.
There were seven in total, irregularly distributed along a passage that stretched for about 40 m, each made of heavy metal with small grilled windows at eye level and reinforced locks on the outside. Some were open, revealing tiny cells with iron bunks and makeshift buckets for toilets. Others remained locked, but from inside came muffled sounds, low moans, whispers in French that sounded like incomplete prayers.
And then Marguerite saw the door at the end, the last one in the corridor, the one that stood out from all the others not by its size or its color, but by the absolute silence that emanated from its interior and by the number scribbled in white chalk. 47 If you listen to this story now, it may be hard to imagine that places like this really existed, hidden in the forgotten corners of occupied Europe, operating in the shadows while the official war was being waged on the battlefields and in the headlines of the newspapers.
But room 47 was real. And if you are curious to know what happened to Marguerite and the other women who passed through this door, leave a like on this video to support this historical memory work and write in the comments where you are watching from. Stories like this must be told, even if it hurts to hear them, because oblivion is the second death of those who have suffered.
A middle-aged German officer with wire-framed glasses and a small board under his arm emerged from one of the side rooms and walked calmly over to the group of prisoners. He did not shout, did not threaten, simply observed each of them with the cold professional detachment of someone evaluating livestock or laboratory equipment.
Marguerite felt his gaze travel over her face, down to her neck, assessing her physical structure. Then he made a note on the tablet with a fountain pen too expensive to be in the hands of someone working in a filthy basement. The officer pointed to three women, including Marguerite, and said something in German to the soldiers on guard.
Marguerite did not speak fluent German but recognized a word that would be repeated many times in the following days. Veruk experience. The three selected women were separated from the group and led to a smaller room to the left of room 47 where there was a metal table, medical instruments arranged with surgical precision on an enameled tray and a strong earthy smell that made the eyes burn.
Marguerite, who was a nurse and familiar with the environment of medical procedures, immediately realized that this was not a common care station. There was no first aid equipment, no adhesive bandage, no clean bandage, not the basic care that we give to patients. There were glass syringes lined up, vials with strangely colored liquids, handwritten labels in German with terminology she didn’t fully understand, and a notebook open to a page filled with numbers and tables.
A military doctor, wearing a white coat stained with something that looked like iodine, entered the room without greeting anyone. This simply involves putting your hands in a dirty sink and starting to prepare an injection. It was at this moment that Marguerite understood that she was not there to be questioned about the resistance, that she was not there to sign confessions or denounce companions she did not even know.
She was there because her young, healthy body was useful in another way, as a human guinea pig for tests that no civilized government would allow, as disposable material for medical research that would later be buried with the evidence and the corpses. The doctor approached her with the syringe and Marguerite tried to back away, but two soldiers grabbed her arms with brutal force, immobilizing her completely.
She felt the needle pierce the skin of her forearm. She felt the cold liquid enter her vein and then felt a wave of dizziness that made her stagger, her legs gave way, her vision blurred, and the last thing she saw before she fainted was the doctor noting something in the notebook with the same indifference as someone recording the temperature of a chemical solution.
Marguerite woke up on a narrow iron cot, covered only with a thin blanket that smelled of mold and other people’s sweat . His head throbbed with a dull ache that spread from the back of his neck to his eyes, and his mouth was so dry that his tongue seemed stuck to the roof of his mouth .
She tried to get up, but her body wasn’t responding properly, her muscles were weak and trembling as if she had gone days without eating. Gradually, her vision adjusted to the dimness of the place and Marguerite realized that she was in a cell shared with five other women, all lying on similar bunks, some sleeping, others simply staring at the ceiling with that empty expression of those who no longer expect anything from life.
One of the older women, perhaps in her forties, with greying hair tied up in an elaborate bun, turned slowly over on the neighboring bunk and murmured in French with a southern accent. Don’t try to get up quickly. What he injects into us leaves the body limp for hours. Wait until you can feel your toes again. Marguerite looked at the woman and saw recent needle marks on her arms, small purple spots that formed almost a line along the vein.
“How long was I unconscious?” Marguerit asked, her voice coming out hoarse and weak. The woman gave a sad smile. I don’t know. Down here, we lose track of time. It could have been a few hours. It could have been a whole day. He doesn’t let us see natural light and the guard shifts change without a plan. Everything is designed to disorient you.
The woman introduced herself as Simon Archambau, a literature professor from Toulouse, arrested three weeks earlier for hiding books banned by the Germans in the library of the school where she taught. Simon recounted, with the resigned calm of someone who has already gone through all the stages of despair and has arrived at a kind of fatalistic acceptance, that room 47 was used primarily for two purposes: medical experiments and violent interrogations.
According to her, German doctors were testing experimental vaccines against typhus and dysentery, diseases that were ravaging German troops on the Eastern Front, and were using French prisoners as guinea pigs because they considered their disposable lives to have no significant political or military value.
He injects things into us and then observes our reactions. They write everything down. Fever, vomiting, convulsions, everything. Some women have terrible reactions, remaining delirious for days. Others don’t seem to feel anything. But then they increase the dose and try again. Marguerite felt a shiver run down her spine.
She knew of stories of Nazi medical experiments , had heard whispers about what was happening in concentration camps, but had never imagined that something like this could happen here in northern France, in an abandoned factory a few kilometers from her hometown. “Room 47,” asked Marguerite, remembering that silent door at the end of the corridor.
Simon looked away and for the first time Marguerite saw genuine fear in his eyes. Room 47 is different. These are not just medical experiments. That’s where they take women who try to resist or whom they consider particularly problematic. What’s going on in there. Nobody talks about it much. Those who come back don’t want to remember, and many never come back .
The following days turned into a brutal and dehumanizing routine. Marguerite was woken at irregular hours, sometimes at what seemed to be dawn, other times in the middle of what must have been the afternoon. Following the same routine, two soldiers opened the cell, shouted names from a list, and the women called had made their way to the procedure room.
There, the doctor in a stained gown administered injections, took blood samples with thick needles that left painful bruises, and sometimes forced the prisoners to ingest bitter- tasting liquids that caused intense nausea and diarrhea that lasted for hours. Marguerite was subjected to at least seven different injections during the first two weeks, each producing side effects that ranged from very high fevers that made her tremble uncontrollably to episodes of vomiting so violent that she thought her stomach was exploding.
But there were even more cruel methods used in that basement. Marguerite learned from other prisoners that some doctors were testing forced sterilization techniques by injecting chemicals directly into young women’s uteruses to see if they could induce permanent infertility without the need for surgery. A young girl of only 10 years old named Colette was subjected to this procedure and spent three days screaming in pain in the cell, bleeding profusely until she was finally taken away on a stretcher and no one ever knew what
had happened to her. Another prisoner, a woman five months pregnant who had been captured during a raid in Saint-Homé, was used to test the effects of controlled radiation on fetal development. And when the baby was finally born, three weeks premature, the tiny body had deformities that even made the guard soldiers turn their faces away .
Marguerite, with her nursing training, tried to offer some comfort to the other women, sharing what little they knew about how to minimize infections, how to clean wounds with the meager resources they had, how to control fever with cold compresses of dirty water. But the truth is that she felt completely powerless in the face of the scale of the suffering around her.
There were women who could no longer walk properly due to nerve damage caused by improperly applied injections. There were women who had lost teeth after untreated mouth infections. There were women who simply gave up eating, lay down on the cot and waited for death to come because death seemed more dignified than continuing to be used as a laboratory animal.
And then there was the room. Marguerite was first taken there one April night when a German officer, different from the usual ones, appeared in the corridor and pointed her out directly. The man was younger than the others, perhaps in his thirties , with blond hair combed back with pomade and wearing an impeccably clean uniform that contrasted with the general filth of the basement.
He said nothing, just gestured with his hand for her to follow him. And Marguerite, knowing that resisting would be useless and would only result in immediate violence, got up from the bunk and walked behind him with her legs trembling with fear. Simone, from the next bed, briefly held Marguerite’s hand as she made a final gesture of human solidarity and murmured: “Enough not to show fear.
They like it when you show fear.” The door to room 47 was opened by a soldier who stood guard permanently on the other side, and Marguerite entered a space larger than she expected, perhaps twenty square meters, lit by bare bulbs suspended from the ceiling that cast harsh shadows on the concrete walls and notebooks.
The floor was covered in dark stains that looked like dried blood, and in the center there was a heavy wooden table with leather straps attached to the sides. There were no medical instruments there, no syringes or bottles of chemicals. There was only this table, these straps and three German soldiers whom he was observing with expressions that Marguerite immediately recognized as predatory, that look she had seen before in men who did not see women as human beings, but as objects available for use.
What happened in the following hours inside room 47 was something Marguerite could never fully describe, even decades later, when she finally found the courage to speak about that period of her life. She remembered fragments of being forced to undress while one of the soldiers laughed at something the other had said in German.
To feel the leather straps tighten around her wrists and ankles until they cut off circulation, to scream until her voice gave out and realize that no one would come to help because down below the writing was so common that it just became another background noise. She remembered the smell of sweat and cheap alcohol in the men’s wool , the physical pain that seemed to have no hunger, and the deep humiliation of having her body used as if it did not belong to her , as if she were nothing more than a disposable object that would be thrown away as soon as it
lost its usefulness. When they finally removed her from the table and threw her back into the cell, Marguerite could no longer walk properly. Simon and another prisoner helped her onto the bunk, cleaned the blood from her legs with wet rags and stayed by her side in silence because there were no adequate words for this type of suffering.
Marguerite spent three days without managing to eat anything solid. Her whole body ached as if she had been beaten. And when she finally managed to get up and go to the bucket that served as a toilet, she saw that she was still bleeding from small red spots that stained the only garment she had left. Life in the basement of the island’s textile factory continued without a predictable pattern, which was part of the strategy to psychologically break the prisoners.
There was no fixed schedule for meals which generally consisted of a thin soup with pieces of rotten potato and hard bread that tasted like catfish. There were no regular baths, only buckets of cold water that the women used to wash themselves as best they could. Always watched over by soldiers who were making obscene comments in German and laughing amongst themselves.
There was no natural light, no calendar, no way of knowing whether it was day or night outside. And this temporal disorientation meant that many prisoners completely lost track of the time they were spending there. If weeks or months had passed since their capture. Marguerite began making small marks on the concrete wall with a piece of metal she had found on the ground.
One mark for each time she woke up from what she assumed was a period of sleep. trying to create a mental structure that would help him maintain his mental health. From what she could calculate, about 6 weeks had passed in this underground hell and her body was showing the accumulated signs of constant abuse.
She had lost at least 10 kg. Her hair was starting to fall out in clumps due to malnutrition and extreme stress. And she had a persistent toe pimple that worsened at night because of the dampness in the basement. But the worst part isn’t the physical marks. The worst part was feeling like she was losing pieces of herself.
That the daisy, who had been a devoted nurse, a loving daughter, a young woman with dreams of one day getting married and having children, was slowly being erased and replaced by an empty, mechanized version, who only reacted to orders and survived by animal instinct. Other women were unable to maintain even that.
Marguerite witnessed two prisoners being taken away after psychotic episodes. One of them shouted that she saw angels on the ceiling, the other repeated the same name dozens of times until her voice became hoarse. She witnessed a young student from Lyon trying to hang herself with her own tattered clothes and she only succeeded because Simon noticed in time and called for help.
The Germans removed her from the cell, applied some kind of sedative, and when they brought her back hours later, the girl had glassy eyes and walked like a zombie, completely drugged with some substance that kept her docile and unresponsive. But there were also moments of silent resistance, small acts of solidarity that kept the humanity of the prisoners alive.
Simon organized poetry sessions, murmured at night, reciting from memory verses by Baudir and Rimbeau, and other women contributed with folk songs from their region. Sung so softly that they could barely be heard , just to remind ourselves that they were still French, that they still had a culture and a history and an identity that no German could completely tear away.
A peasant woman from Brittany, arrested for hiding grain that she should have delivered as tribute to the occupying forces, shared the few portions of bread she received with the weakest, even when she herself was dying of hunger. and Marguerite used her medical knowledge to teach other women basic hygiene and first aid techniques, small pieces of knowledge that sometimes made the difference between surviving and succumbing to infections.
It was during one of these late -night conversations that Marguerite learned the story of Jeun Viève Laurent, one of the first prisoners taken to room 47 months before Marguerite’s arrival . Jeun Viè was 29 years old, was a piano teacher in Haras and was arrested after a collaborationist neighbor denounced him for allegedly listening to illegal BBC transmissions.
She spent 4 months in the basement, being used for experiments with experimental drugs that German doctors were testing to enhance soldiers’ resistance to fatigue on the Eastern Front. Jeun Viève was given very high doses of amphetamine and other stimulants, remained for days without sleep under medical observation, and when her heart finally went into severe arrhythmia, they simply let her die in the cell without any attempt at resuscitation.
His body was removed on a stretcher covered with a tarpaulin and never appeared in the official death records of the occupation. Stories like Jeuneviève’s were countless. Marguerite heard about Thérèse Bonet, a 52-year-old midwife from Amiens who was subjected to hypothermia experiments to test how long a human being could survive in ice water before going into fatal thermal shock .
She heard about Isabelle Rousseau, a young textile worker of 20, who was deliberately infected with Tyfus bacteria to test the effectiveness of an experimental antibiotic and who died of generalized septicemia after 10 days of very high fever and delirium. She heard about Emilie Garnier, a 23-year-old medical student who ironically had enough knowledge to understand exactly what the German doctors were doing to her and who tried to resist by explaining in broken German that what he was doing violated all international medical standards, but was
brutally beaten and taken to room 47 from which she emerged three days later so traumatized that she could never speak. The stories multiplied in the darkness of his damp cells. Each woman carried within her the weight of memories she would have preferred never to have had. Marguerite learned of the existence of Claire Fontaine, a 36-year-old librarian from Valenciennes, arrested for lending prohibited books to students.
Cla was used in sensory deprivation tests, locked in a completely dark and silent room for days, fed only through a tube, until she began to have auditory and visual hallucinations so intense that even after her release from this room, she never fully regained her lucidity. The German doctors meticulously documented her reactions, taking notes on the progressive deterioration of her mental state, as if she were merely a fascinating subject of study, rather than a suffering human being.
There was also the story of Hélène Morau, no relation to Marguerite despite the similar name. A 43-year-old seamstress from Dunkirk who was captured while sewing civilian uniforms for members of the resistance. Helene was subjected to repeated injections of a substance that German doctors simply called compound B7, a chemical mixture whose exact composition no one really knew . The effects were devastating.
Helene developed uncontrollable tremors in her hands, gradually lost sight in one eye, and her hair fell out completely within two weeks. When the doctors realized that she was no longer useful for their test, they simply stopped feeding her properly and Helen died of starvation, combined with the toxic, accumulated effects of the injected substances.
Every morning, when the prisoners woke up, there was always this anxiety of not knowing who would be called that day, who would be dragged to the procedure room or worse still to room 47. The soldiers seemed to choose at random sometimes. In the past, he deliberately selected women who still showed signs of resistance or physical strength.
Marguerite noticed that the most fragile ones, those who were already so weakened that they could hardly walk anymore, were generally left alone as if they had no value left, not even as guinea pigs. This cruel realization made Marguerite understand that their survival depended on an impossible balance. To be strong enough not to die, but weak enough not to be considered useful for new experiments.
In June 1943, there was a significant change in the dynamics of the subsoil. New prisoners arrived, among them several women captured during a large Gestapo raid in Roubet, Marguerite’s hometown. Among these new prisoners was a young girl whom Marguerite immediately recognized. It was Véronique Petit. daughter of the baker on the street where Marguerite had grown up, a child whom Marguerite had watched grow up from a very young age and who now at 16 years old had been arrested for distributing resistance leaflets at school.
Seeing Véronique there, with that terrified look of someone who does not yet understand the extent of the nightmare she has entered, awakened in Marguerite a protective fury that she did not yet know she possessed. Marguerite hugged the young girl , murmured words of comfort that she herself did not completely believe, and promised that she would do everything in her power to protect her.
But there was little Marguerite could do. Véronique was selected for experiments on the second day and Marguerite watched helplessly as the young girl was dragged towards the procedure room. When Véronique returned hours later, she was vomiting violently and had injection marks on both arms.
Marguerite dyed her hair while she vomited in the bucket, cleaned her forehead with cold water and prayed for the first time in years, asking God to give the girl the strength to survive. Véronique survived that night, but was taken away five more times for procedures in the following weeks and with each return she was weaker, more subdued, until one morning she simply did not wake up, her small, thin body already cold, when Simon tried to shake her for the bread distribution, Véronique’s death broke something inside Marguerite. She realized
that if she continued only to survive passively, only to react to what the Germans imposed, she would end up like Véronique, like Jeun Viève, like all the others whose names would never appear in the official records, erased from history as if she had never existed. Marguerite began to pay more attention to the guards’ movement pattern , the times the medical officer arrived and left, and the small inconsistencies in the routine that could represent vulnerabilities.
She shared her observations with Simon and other trusted prisoners. And together, they began to devise a plan that was almost suicidal, but seemed preferable to simply waiting for death. She would try to escape. The plan depended on several factors aligning perfectly. First, they needed a night when there would be less guard in the basement, which usually happened when troops were detached for operations in other towns in the region.
Secondly, she needed to create a distraction that would draw the guards away from the main cells. Third, she had to gain access to the staircase leading to the ground floor and then find an exit from the building before the alarm was raised and reinforcements arrived. The chances of success were minimal and all knew that if they were captured in the middle of the escape, the punishment would be worse than anything they had already suffered.
But the alternative was to continue there, being slowly destroyed until nothing human remained in it. The days leading up to the escape attempt were filled with almost unbearable tension. Marguerite and the other women involved in the plan were to continue acting normally. to show no signs that she was planning anything, while remaining constantly vigilant to identify the opportune moment.
They secretly collected small objects that could be used as improvised weapons, fragments of metal, a piece of pipe detached from a broken sink, even a heavy stone that one of the prisoners had found in a corner of the corridor. These objects were hidden under the bunks, wrapped in rags so as not to make noise if they moved accidentally.
Simon, with his experience as a teacher accustomed to organizing and planning, naturally became the main coordinator of the plan. She assigned specific roles to each participating woman. Some would be responsible for creating distractions, others for overpowering the guards if necessary, and still others for guiding the group towards the exit once they had reached the ground floor.
Marguerite, with her medical knowledge and ability to remain relatively calm under pressure, was designated to deal with any immediate injuries that might occur during the attempt. They all knew that the chances of all surviving were practically nil, but the hope of seeing at least a few manage to escape and testify about what was happening in that basement justified the risk.
The opportunity arose one night in July when an Allied bombing raid hit a railway station about 15 km from the island and half of the garrison’s soldiers were mobilized to help control fires and secure the area. There were only three guards left in the basement and one of them was the young soldier whom Marguerite had already observed falling asleep during his watch the previous night.
Simon caused a simulated collapse, falling to the cell floor and convulsing convincingly. And when the guard opened the door to check what was going on, two other prisoners attacked him with the piece of metal pipe they had managed to detach from a broken sink. The soldier fell, his head hitting the concrete violently, and lost consciousness before he could even scream.
Marguerite took the key from the bunch attached to the soldier’s belt , opened the other cells and within minutes there were 14 women in the corridor, all fragile, malnourished, traumatized, but animated by a last spark of will to live. They climbed the stairs in a silent line, each step carefully measured so as not to make a sound, their hearts beating so fast it seemed the Germans could hear it even from a distance.
They arrived on the ground floor where the supply depot was plunged into semi-darkness and Marguerite guided the group towards a side door which she had seen being used by soldiers to exit through smoke. It was there, just a few meters from freedom, that everything collapsed. A German officer returning from the toilets appeared in the corridor, saw the group of prisoners fleeing and shouted the alarm before any of them could react.
Within seconds, soldiers appeared from all sides, weapons pointed, shouts in German echoing through the building. Some women tried to run anyway, but were knocked down by blows from rifle butts. Others simply gave up and knelt on the ground, knowing that resisting would be useless. Marguerite looked at the nearby side door and for a second considered running, trying her luck.
But then she saw Simon being beaten by a soldier and she couldn’t abandon him. They were all taken back to the basement, but not to the communal cells. This time, they were all locked in room 47. What happened in room Cante-7 that night in July 1943 was the most brutal collective punishment that the Germans applied during the entire occupation of that basement.
The 14 women who attempted to escape were locked in the same 20-square- meter space without water, food, toilets, and with the door locked from the outside. The temperature in the basement was already naturally high due to the summer. But in room 47, without adequate ventilation, the heat became unbearable. In the first few hours, Marguerite felt sweat running down her body.
Thirst began to tighten in her throat and despair grew as she realized that the Germans had no intention of opening that door anytime soon. The women tried to take turns near the small crack at the bottom of the door where a thin stream of air entered, but it was not enough for 14 people to breathe comfortably.
Some began to hyperventilate due to panic, which worsened oxygen consumption. Simon, always the most rational, tried to keep everything calm, suggesting that she remain seated, breathing slowly, conserving energy. But as the hours passed and no soldiers appeared to free them or at least give them water, panic set in irreversibly.
The stifling heat transformed the room into a human oven. Bodies pressed tightly together worsened the situation. Each breath seemed to consume what little oxygen was available. Marguerite felt her own sweat soaking her tattered clothes, her tongue swelling in her parched mouth, and a throbbing migraine settling behind her eyes.
Some women began to moan softly. Others wept silently, tears tracing furrows on their dirty faces. The almost total darkness of the room, lit only by a faint glow filtering under the door, made the experience even more nightmarish. Each woman locked in her own terror, while being physically close to the others.
On the second night, one of the older women , who was already weakened by previous experiences, began to rave, talking to people who were not there, calling for children she would probably never see again . Marguerite tried to comfort her, but without water, without medicine, without anything but words, there was little she could do.
The woman died on the third day, her body simply succumbing to extreme stress, dehydration, and exhaustion. and the other prisoners had to coexist with the corpse for two more days until finally the door was opened. The smell quickly became unbearable. The decomposing body, combined with the excrement that the women had no choice but to leave in a corner of the room, created a stench that made even the strongest stomach nauseous.
Marguerite tried to breathe through her mouth, but that only made things worse. The nauseating taste settled on his tongue. She saw several women vomiting, which worsened their already critical dehydration. Some began to have hallucinations, seeing water where there was none, speaking of fountains and rivers that existed only in their thirst-tormented minds.
Simon, despite his own suffering, tried to maintain a semblance of order and hope. She recited poems in a raspy voice, encouraging the women to think about their families, happy memories, anything that might help them hold on a little longer . But even his remarkable strength was beginning to weaken.
Marguerite, life on the fourth night, collapsed against the wall, eyes closed, lips cracked and bleeding, murmuring words that no longer made sense. Marguerite crawled up to her, took her bony hand and thus remained two women on the verge of death giving each other the only thing that remained to them, human presence.
On the 5th day, when the soldiers finally opened room 47, they found three dead women and nine severely weakened. and two, including Marguerite and Simon, who were still able to stand, albeit with difficulty. The survivors were dragged out of the room, their legs no longer able to support them properly, and were taken back to the cells.
They were given water, but some drank too quickly and vomited immediately. Their stomachs could no longer handle rapid ingestion after so many days of deprivation. Marguerite drank slowly, forcing her body to accept the liquid in small sips, knowing that it was the only way to survive. In the days that followed, Marguerite noticed significant changes in the basement.
There were fewer guards, fewer doctors making their rounds, fewer experiments conducted. The Germans were clearly planning something, and the prisoners began to hear whispered rumors among the soldiers about the advance of the Allied forces. D-Day had taken place in June and now in August 1944, Allied troops were advancing through France.
Hope, that feeling which many women thought they had lost forever, was beginning to be reborn. But with this hope also came a new terror. What would the Germans do with the prisoners when they had to evacuate ? Rumors circulated in the cells about massacres in other facilities, about prisoners executed to leave no witnesses.
Marguerite and Simon discussed this possibility in hushed tones, wondering if they had survived all of this only to be shot down in the final days of the occupation. This uncertainty was perhaps worse than the experiments themselves, this agonizing wait to discover their fate. Then, on a misty outdoor morning, the cell doors suddenly opened.
A German officer whom Marguerite had never seen before shouted in broken French that all the prisoners had to leave immediately. The women, confused and terrified, looked at each other, not knowing whether their execution awaited them or something else. But when they arrived in the corridor, instead of being lined up against a wall, they were simply pushed towards the stairs.
“Go away, disappear!” shouted the officer in German and one of the younger soldiers translated roughly into French. Marguerite and the other survivors stumbled up the stairs, their weakened legs struggling to support their own weight. When they emerged on the ground floor and then outside the building, the sunlight was so bright after months in darkness that it hurt their eyes.
Some women had to cover their faces, as their eyes had become so accustomed to the dim light that they could no longer tolerate natural brightness. Marguerite blinked several times, letting her vision adjust gradually, and when she could finally see clearly, she realized that they were truly free, that the Germans had simply thrown them out like garbage they no longer needed.
The women dispersed slowly, each walking in a different direction, some collapsing after only a few steps, their bodies too weak to go any further. Marguerite wanted to run, to get as far away as possible from this cursed place, but her legs wouldn’t obey her. She stumbled forward through the streets of the island, unrecognizable, thin as a skeleton.
His hair was falling out, leaving bald patches on his skull, his skin marked with scars, bruises, and infected sores. The few civilians she encountered averted their eyes, either out of fear or an inability to confront the living proof of the horror that had unfolded so close to their homes. It took him 3 days to reach the home of a remote tent that still lived in the city.
The tent opened the door, looked at Marguerite for a long moment without recognizing her, then brought her hands to her mouth, stifling a cry when she finally realized who this skeletal creature on her doorstep was. She brought Marguerite in, washed her with infinite gentleness, fed her clear broths that Marguerite’s stomach could barely tolerate, and wept silently at the extent of the damage inflicted on her niece.
It took weeks before Marguerite was well enough to undertake the journey to Roubet, to her parents’ house. When she finally arrived, her mother opened the door and stood there, staring wide-eyed. “Marguerite!” she murmured, as if she were afraid that pronouncing the name too loudly would make the apparition disappear.
“You’re Marguerite’s father,” he arrived behind his wife, and he too took some time to recognize their daughter. The lively, smiling young woman who had left ten months earlier had returned transformed into a broken shadow, prematurely aged, carrying in her eyes a darkness that neither time nor love could completely erase.
Marguerite tried to resume a normal life, but quickly discovered that it was impossible. She could no longer work as a nurse, as hospitals triggered insurmountable panic attacks that made her vomit and tremble. the smell of disinfectant, the tiled corridors, the white uniforms.
Everything reminded him of the basement and the German doctors with their syringes and observation notebooks. She also couldn’t sleep normally. Awakened every night by nightmares where she found herself back in room 47, tied to that table, hearing the laughter of the soldiers and feeling the pain that never ended. The years passed slowly.
Marguerite never married, unable to contemplate physical intimacy after what she had endured. She never had any children. Partly because the medical experiments had damaged her reproductive system to the point of making pregnancy almost impossible. partly because she couldn’t imagine bringing a child into the world after witnessing so much human cruelty.
She lived discreetly, working as a seamstress in a small workshop, avoiding deep conversations, keeping her secrets locked away in the darkest corners of her memory. But Marguerite did one thing, one single thing that guaranteed that the story of room 47 would not be completely erased from history. When the memories were still painful but organized enough in her mind to be put on paper, she sat at her parents’ kitchen table and wrote.
She wrote for weeks, filling notebook after notebook with tight, shaky handwriting, documenting everything she could remember. She noted the names of the women who had died, those who had survived, the physical descriptions of the German doctors and officers, the details of the experiments conducted, the exact location of the basement, the room number, the approximate dates, anything that might one day serve as evidence that these horrors had really taken place.
Simon Harchambeau, who had survived and returned to live in Marseille, did the same. The two women corresponded for years, comparing their memories, filling in the gaps in one’s memory with details preserved by the other. Together, they created the most comprehensive document that had taken place in the basement of the island’s textile factory.
But neither of them dared to publish this document during their lifetimes. Post-war France wanted to turn the page, rebuild, and forget the darkest parts of the occupation. Testimonies about collaboration, specific atrocities, and individual suffering were often received with embarrassment or disbelief. Marguerite wrote in a metal box which she buried in the garden of the family home, under the old apple tree where she played as a child.
She left instructions in her will for the box to be opened only after her death, hoping that by then the world would be ready to hear what she had to say. Simon did something similar, entrusting his own testimony to his niece with instructions not to make it public until many years later. Marguerite de l’ Orme lived until 1998, reaching the age of 79.
She died of natural causes in her sleep. A peaceful death that contrasted cruelly with the violence she had endured in her youth. His niece, while emptying the house for sale, remembered the instructions in the will and dug under the apple tree. She found the metal box, rusted by decades but still sealed, and inside were Marguerite’s notebooks.
Their page is Johnny, but their words are still legible. The document was handed over to the Lille Resistance Museum where historians examined it carefully. They cross -checked the facts with other archives from the period, contacted Simon Archambau, who was still alive in Marseille, and confirmed the authenticity of the testimony.
Simon, then 85 years old, agreed to meet with the historians and corroborated every detail of Marguerite’s story, adding his own observations and remembering women whose names Marguerite had not noted. The story of room 47 was finally made public in 2001 during a special exhibition at the museum entitled The Shadows of the Occupation, Rediscovered Testimony.
The exhibition attracted considerable attention. Not only in France. But internationally, researchers began to investigate other similar sites that may have existed, realizing that Room 47 was probably not an isolated case, but an example of a wider network of clandestine facilities where the Nazis conducted illegal experiments on civilian prisoners.
Of the 28 women identified in the testimonies of Marguerite and Simon, only six survived the war. The others died in the basement, victims of experimentation, disease, malnutrition, or direct violence. No German soldiers were specifically prosecuted for the crimes committed in Room 47, partly because the majority of records had been destroyed during the withdrawal, and partly because many of the victims were either dead or too traumatized to testify in court.
Today, the island’s former textile factory no longer exists. It was demolished in 2003 to make way for a modern residential complex. But in 2005, thanks to the efforts of the museum and the families of the victims, a commemorative plaque was installed on the site. It bears the names of the 28 identified women and the simple inscription in memory of the women who suffered in the basement of this place.
May their courage never be forgotten. The story of room 47 reminds us of an uncomfortable truth. During war, the horror is not confined to the battlefield. It also hides in basements, in windowless rooms, in places that official maps do not show. It lives on in medical experiments conducted without consent, in systematic violence against the most vulnerable, in the silence of witnesses who look away because acknowledging the truth is too painful.
Marguerite de l’Orme and Simone Archambau refused to remain silent. They carried their testimonies across decades, keeping them safe until the world was ready to hear them. Their courage lay not only in their survival in the face of unimaginable brutality, but in their determination to ensure that the women who died in that basement would not disappear completely from history, that their name would be spoken again, that their suffering would be acknowledged.
Room 47 existed. The women who suffered there did exist. and their voices even six years later still resonate, reminding us that human dignity is fragile, that cruelty can lurk in the darkest corners of history, and that the courage to survive and bear witness is sometimes the only possible act of resistance when the whole world seems to have turned its back.
This story is not just about Marguerite, Simone, Véronique, Jeuneviève or the 24 other women whose names we know. It is also the story of all those whose names were lost, whose bodies were never found, whose families spent the rest of their lives wondering what had happened to their daughters, their sisters, their mother.
It is the story of memory itself, of our collective responsibility not to forget even when that memory hurts. Even when forgetting seems easier. Because if we forget, we allow these horrors to happen again. But if we remember, if we tell these stories, if we pronounce these names, we honor not only the dead, but also the survivors who found the strength to bear witness.
And we remind ourselves that even in humanity’s darkest moments, there have always been people who chose to resist, to survive, and to ensure that the truth, however painful, was ultimately revealed. What you have just heard is not simply a story from the past, it is a testimony wrested from silence, preserved by women who refused to have their suffering erased from collective memory.
Marguerite de Lorme and Simone Archambau carried her memories for decades, waiting for the moment when the world would be ready to listen, to understand, to no longer look away . Their courage lay not only in their ability to survive the horror of the Cante room, but in their fierce determination to ensure that the 22 women who died in that basement would not disappear into oblivion, that their name would continue to be spoken, that their lives would have mattered .
Today, by listening to this story, you become part of this chain of memory. You are now the custodians of these testimonies, guardians of a truth that some would have preferred to see buried forever. Every time we tell these stories, every time we refuse convenient oblivion, we perform the act of resistance that these women began in the damp cells of the island.
We say that their lives had value, that their suffering was not, that humanity can only move forward by honestly acknowledging these darkest moments. If this story touched you, if it awakened something essential in you about human dignity and the fragility of our freedoms, leave a like on this video so that the algorithm allows other people to discover these forgotten testimonies.
Each like is an act of remembrance, a way of saying that these women still matter, that their story deserves to be known. Subscribe to this channel to continue discovering these historical stories that time has tried to erase but that truth refuses to let die. And most importantly, write in the comments from where you are listening right now .
Tell us what country, what city you live in while you hear the story of Marguerite and all the women in room 47. Share your thoughts, your emotions, what this story awakens in you. Because it is in these conversations, in this exchange between people from all over the world who refuse to forget, that memory truly comes alive. Your comment is not just an interaction on a video.
This is your way of testifying that you heard, that you understood, that you remember. Room 47 no longer physically exists. The walls have been demolished, the basement filled in, and modern apartments now occupy this space that was once a place of nightmares. But as long as we tell this story, as long as we pronounce the names of Marguerite de LO, Simone Archambeau, Véronique Petit, Jeun Viè Laurent and all the others, room 47 continues to exist in our collective memory, not as a place of horror to be forgotten, but as an
urgent reminder of what humanity must never again allow. Thank you for listening until the end. Thank you for being among those who choose to remember rather than forget, to bear witness rather than remain silent . The story of these women now survives through you, through your attention, your empathy, and your willingness to pass on their memory.
And perhaps that is the greatest tribute we can pay them. to ensure that their courage, their suffering and their humanity continue to resonate in the hearts of those who, like you, have chosen to listen to their story until the very last word. Mr.
