I was ten years old when I learned that the a woman’s body can transform into battlefield. Not in books, not in metaphor for real. On the skin, in the belly, in the silence who comes next. My name is Mélis Durock. I was born in 192 in a village called Saint-Rémy sur Loire, if small that it didn’t even appear on military maps.
I grew up between the vineyards and the wheat fields, between Sunday laughter and masses sung. My mother made bread mornings. My father repaired clocks. My sisters, Aurore and Séverine were all I knew of unconditional love. Aurore was 19 years old and dreamed of becoming teacher. Séverine, 21, embroidered wedding dresses which she never wore.
Me, I just wanted time stops, that the war of which all people talk never arrives until us. But she arrived in June 1942. They came for us. Not because we were criminals, not because we had done anything or, simply because we were young, French and in the wrong place at the wrong time. A VerreM officer knocked on the door at dawn.
My mother fell to knees. My father tried to argue but he was pushed against the wall. Three soldiers dragged us out while the the sun was still rising over the fields that we would never see again same way. They threw us the back of a truck covered in dirty tarpaulin. There were other women there, all young, all terrified. Nobody spoke.
She just cried silently. I held it Aurore’s hand so strong that I felt her under my palm. Séverine whispered prayer that never ended. The truck was moving on the broken road while the smell of sweat, fear and Burning gasoline was choking us. We don’t didn’t know where we were going. We don’t didn’t know if we would come back.
We only knew that something had ended that morning. Some something that would never be recovered. We arrived at camp late afternoon. It was not a camp concentration like Auschwitz or Dachao. There were no gas chambers or crematory. It was something different, something that the story official rarely mentions.
A camp directly administered forced labor by a high-ranking officer of the Vermarthe. A place where the rules were dictated by one man. He was called Auberst Friedrich Viner, general. 42 years old, gray hair combed into rear, straight posture, quiet lane. He never shouted, he never hit. He gave orders in a tone almost polite as if he was asking for sugar his coffee.
That’s what was the scariest. von Steiner administered this camp as one administers a rural property. There had rules, there were hierarchies, there were punishments who didn’t need to be told loud voice because everyone knew what was happening to the one who disobeyed. He personally chose who would work in the kitchen, who would clean the officers’ rooms, who would sew the uniforms and who would be chosen for something else.
Nobody explained what this was something else, but we knew it all. The first days we tried to become invisible. We let’s work in silence, let’s keep our heads lowered, avoided looking directly any soldier. But Von Steiner was still watching us. He passed between the rows of women during the morning count and its gaze lingered.
It was not a look of vulgar lust, it was something worse. It was a look of property. One evening, Séverine was called. Two soldiers appeared at the door of our barracks and pronounced his name. She got up slowly, legs trembling and looked in back before exiting. I will not forget never this look. It was a farewell. It was a request for forgiveness.
It was pure fear. She returned at dawn. She didn’t say anything. She simply lying on the board bed and turned his face towards the wall. Aurora has tried to touch her, but Séverine curled up as if she had received a blow. I stayed there, sitting on the frozen ground, feeling something die in me. Three weeks later, It was Aurore’s turn.
Then mine, I’m not going to describe what happened spent those nights, not because it is forbidden or because I’m ashamed, but because there are things which, even after so many years, are still too heavy to be transformed into a word. I would say only this. Fun Steiner didn’t need to use physical violence. He used absolute power and it was sufficient.
When I realized that I was pregnant, it was winter. My body was skeleton, my hair had fallen parouff, but my stomach started to gain weight. Aurora too, Séverine too, three sisters, three pregnancies, same father. The silence that fell on the camp when they discovered was deafening. The other women looked at us with pity, with horror, with relief not to be her.
The soldiers looked away. Even the guards the most brutal seemed difficult to comfortable. Von Steiner, however, remained impassive. He summoned us to his office one afternoon in February. We we stood there, the three sisters rock while he signed papers without looking at us. Finally, he looked up and said in a French almost perfect, you will give birth here.
Children will be registered as war orphans and sent to suitable German families. You will return to work as soon as you will be physically capable of doing so. There was no room for discussion. There was no call possible. Séverine gave birth premiered in April 1943. A girl, they tore her from his arms even before the umbilical cord is cut.
Séverine shouted during three days in a row. Then she stopped. She simply stopped speak, eat, react. She is died six weeks later. Officially tyfus. In reality, the broken heart. Aurore had a boy in May. She managed to hold it for a few hours before he came look for it. I was next to her when it happened. I saw his face break into pieces so small that it could never be reunited again.
I gave birth to another boy in June. Dark hair, closed eyes, hands tiny ones that clung to my finger with inexplicable force. I have felt love and hate in same time. Love because it was my son, hatred because it was his own son. They took him away next day. The war ended in Maisteiner disappeared before the arrival of the allies.
Some say he fled South America, others it was killed by his own men when they realized they were going to lose. We don’t we’ll never know. I returned to Saint-Rémi sur Loire. My mother died of grief. My father didn’t recognize me when I knocked the door. I stood there, watching the old watchmaker watch me like I was a ghost.
Maybe that I was. I survived another 65 years after the end of the war. I lived alone. I worked as a seamstress. I never got married. I don’t have never had other children. During decades, I have not spoken about what happened in this camp. Not because that I wanted to forget, but because no one wanted to hear.
until what enving years old, I agree to give an interview for a historical memory project on the forgotten women of the Second War worldwide. It was the first and only time I told my story complete. What I revealed in this interview goes well beyond what already been said so far because what happened to my sisters and our children did not end in 1945.
In fact, it was only start. In the next chapters of this documentary series, I will reveal secrets that have remained buried for almost years. Of secrets about the real destiny of children born in this camp, on the network clandestine that Von Steiner coordinated on the day I found something something I thought was lost forever.
But before continuing, if my story affects you in one way or another other, if you believe that stories like mine deserve to be remembered, leave your support with a like and tell us in the comments where you look because memory is built collectively and every voice counts. I spent the next two years the end of the war in a sort of fog.
I wasn’t really sleeping, I wasn’t really living. I simply existed like a yellowed photograph that we keep it in a drawer without ever look. Aurore returned with me to Saint-Rémi, but she was no longer Aurora. She almost never spoke. She sat by the window for hours, hands placed on knees, gaze fixed on something something that only I could not see.
Sometimes she would whisper a name, always the same, the one she had given to his son during the few hours when she had been able to hold him. She died in 1947. The doctor said it was tuberculosis. I knew it was sorrow. I remained alone. The people of village look at me differently, not with pity, with discomfort, as if I was a living reminder of something something he wanted to forget.
France wanted to turn the page, rebuild, move forward. Women like me, those who bore the scars of war in their bellies and in their soul, did not fit into this new image. So I did this that was expected of me. I kept quiet. I found work as a seamstress in a workshop in Orléan. I rented a small room above a bakery.
I sewed dresses married for women who believed still in the fairy tale. I was coming home at home in the evening. I ate alone. I fell asleep thinking about my son. To what did he look like now? Was he five years old? Six years? Did he know read? Was he afraid of the dark like me? his age? Had he been told that he was an orphan? Do we lied about who I was? These questions gnawed at me, but I didn’t know where to start.
I don’t didn’t even know his name had given. I didn’t know in what city, in what country he had been sent. Then in 1953, something has changed. I received a letter, a simple envelope without return address, posted from Munique. Inside, a single sentence written by hand German. If you want to know what happened to your child, come to the following address on March 12 at 2 p.m.
My heart stopped. My hands were shaking so much so that I had to put the letter down on the table to read it again. Who had me sent this? How does this person Did she know who I was? Was it a trap? But I knew I would go. Little no matter the danger, no matter the blow. On March 12, 1953, I took the train to Munich.
It was the first time I left France since my return. Each kilometer traveled revived memories that I had tried to bury. The uniforms, the orders shouted in German, the smell of the camp. The address indicated was a gray building in a working-class district of Munich. I went up the stairs to the third floor, heart beating so hard I was afraid let it explode. I knocked on the door.
A woman opened fifty, gray hair, pulled into a bun, face severe but gentle eyes. She looked at me at length before saying “My propeller of the rock!” I nodded. She told me brought in. The apartment was modest but clean. photos of children covered by the walls. She invited me to sit down and served me some tea.
Then she started to speak. My name is Greta Hoffman. During the war, I worked as a nurse for the Vermarthe. Not by choice, but because I had no other options. I have been assigned to the camp where you and your sisters were detained. My sense was frozen. I did not participate in what happened to you, she continued quickly, but I saw and I hated every day for having nothing done.
She got up and took out a box from a closet. Inside the documents, registers, lists of names. Von Steiner kept files meticulous. He recorded everything. The mothers’ names, dates of birth children, German families to who they were entrusted with. After the war, these documents had to be destroyed. But I saved some a few.
She put down a sheet in front of me. My name was there and just below another line. Child male, born June 18, 1943, transferred June 20, 1943. Host family, Adler ambour family. I read and reread this line until that the letters get jumbled. He is alive,” I whispered. “I don’t know not,” she replied softly. “But you now have a starting point.
I returned to France with this folded sheet in my bag and I took a decision. I was going to find him. Little no matter how long it would take, no matter how many doors I should hit.” My son existed somewhere and I wouldn’t die without trying. The research lasted almost twenty years.
20 years of writing letters that remained unanswered, twenty years ago knocking on office doors administrator who looked at me as if I was crazy. 20 years to save every franc to be able to take the train to Germany once or twice per year. The Adler family had moved from Hamburg in 1950. Nobody knew where or at least no one wanted me to say. The 1950s were the most difficult.
Europe was rebuilding, forgot, buried his dead and his secrets with the same effectiveness. The archives had been destroyed, scattered, hidden. The witnesses refused to speak out of fear, shame, out of cowardice. I contacted aid organizations to victims of war. I consulted lawyers who looked at me with pity before explaining to me that my case was unprecedentedly complicated.
probably dead end. I even wrote to the International Red Cross response was polite, professional and completely useless. The archives were incomplete. The witnesses were dead or refused to speak. Post-war Germany wanted forget her too. And I wasn’t that one voice among thousands, a mother among many others who were looking for children lost in the chaos of war. But I couldn’t forget.
Every night I saw his face, the closed eyes, tiny hands, the way he clung to my finger. I woke up with a start, body soaked in sweat, convinced of having heard a baby crying. But there is no had only the silence of my empty room. I worked during the day as a seamstress, sewing hems and buttonholes with mechanical gestures.
In the evening, I wrote letters, requests, supplications. I have used dozens of filled pens entire books of names, addresses, trails that led nowhere. The 60s arrived, then the 70s. My body was aging, my hair were graying, but my determination remained intact. I refused to die without knowing. I refused to leave my son disappear into oblivion as if his existence had never mattered.
In 1972, I finally had a serious lead. A former administrator of the VerreMarthe had agreed to meet. He lived in a house retirement in Strasbourg eaten away by illness and guilt. When I entered his room, I saw an emaciated old man, his eyes pressed down, hands trembling. He told me looked at it for a long time before speaking.
Are you Maéise du roc? Yes. Sit down. I sat down. My heart was beating so hard I was scared let him hear it. I remember the Adler family, he said slowly. They were privileged, close to the regime. They have received several children during the war, children of programs special. I tightened the points to stop me from shaking.
Where are they now? They went to Austria after the war, Salzburg, I believe, but I don’t know if they’re still there. He gave me a street name, a neighborhood. It was more than I had in 29 years. I thanked him. He diverted the eyes, unable to meet my gaze. I left for Salzburg the month next. I was years old. My hair were almost entirely gray.
My hands were constantly shaking because of arthritis. My knees felt suffer at every step. But here I am gone. The train journey took hours. I watched the landscapes out the window, mountains, forests, villages. I was thinking about all these wasted years, to all this time when my son grew up without me somewhere, maybe a few only hundreds of kilometers.
Did he look like me? Is this that he had inherited my eyes, my mouth? Did he know he was adopted? Had we spoken to him about me? I found an Adler in the Salzburg telephone directory. Hans Adler. I noted the address in my worn notebook, the one where I had written hundreds of names over the years. Then I walked to this house as we walk towards a precipice knowing we’re going to jump anyway.
It was a good bourgeois house maintained with a flower garden. Of roses climbed along the facade. A children’s swing was installed under a large chain. Everything exuded normality. Peaceful life, quiet happiness. I rang the bell. The seconds that followed were the longest of my life. Then the door opened.
A man of a thirty years old stood there. Hair brown, dark eyes, very marked. My heart stopped. It was him. I knew. Every cell in my body knew. I recognized something in his face. A resemblance to my mother, with Séverine, with myself maybe. “Yes,” he said in German with a touch of impatience. I couldn’t speak.
The words were stuck in my throat. I watched unable to turn away eyes. I was looking for traces of myself him, my sisters, my family disappeared. Are you doing well ? Did he asked, its changing, becoming worried. I’m looking for someone, am I finally managed to say in my hesitant German, a man born in June 1943, adopted by the Adler family.
His face changed instantly. All color has left him. A shadow is passed into his eyes. He stepped back a not. For what ? I took a large inspiration. I gathered all my courage because I am his mother. The The silence that followed was unbearable. He looked at me like I was a ghost out of his past for haunt.
His hands clenched the door frame. His breathing quickened. Then slowly, without a word, he stepped back and closed the door. I stayed there, standing on the porch, legs trembling, heart racing crumb. I heard voices the interior. A woman who asked for this what was happening, he who responded something I couldn’t understand.
I waited maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour. Time no longer made sense, but the door did not open. Finally, I left a letter in the mailbox letters. A letter where I explained everything, who I was, what had happened, why I had come. I left him the address of my hotel. Then I came home and cried for three days. He didn’t want of me. He didn’t want to know.
I had been traveling for almost 30 years, cross borders, saved every sub, pursued every lead and now that I had finally found it, he rejected me. But I couldn’t give up. Not now, not after all this way. I came back on next day. I rang the bell, no one answered. I came back two days later. Same result.
I left others letters, photos of me when I was young, a photo of Séverine and Aurore, camp documents, everything I had kept for all these years. The fifth time it opened. He had looking exhausted, deep dark circles under the eyes. His face sunken. “What What do you want from me?” did he asked. His voice almost broken pleading.
“Nothing,” I replied softly. “I don’t don’t want to take anything from you. I just want that you know that you were desired, that I did not abandon you, that I was torn from you, that not a single day of I never stopped thinking about you my whole life.” He closed his eyes. A tear fell on his cheek.
They told me that my mother died during the war, I was an orphan, that my parents biological had perished in a bombing. “I know,” I whispered. “I know what they told you.” They got me lied. His voice trembled with anger and mixed pain. “Yes, he opened the eyes and looked at me, really looked at me for the first time.” “How do you do you call, Maéice?” He nodded head slowly as if recording every syllable.
I’m Mathias and for the first time in 29 years, I heard my son’s name. Mathias and I never became close. Not really. How could we? I was a stranger who wore her face. He was a man built on a lie that I came to destroy. We we are seen sometimes after this first meeting. polite cafes, careful conversations. He asked me questions about Aurore and Séverine, on the camp, on Von Steiner.
I answered honestly, even when hurt. One day he asked me “Did you love me?” “Even a little. I looked at this 30 year old man, this stranger who was my son and I tells the truth. I loved you from the first second I felt you move inside me and when they tore you from my arms, part of me is dead. I spent my life try to find you.
So yes, Mathias, I loved you. I still love you. He cried, me too. But love does not is not always enough to cure what has been broken. Mathias had his own family, a wife, two children, a built life far from me. I couldn’t demand a place in this life. I didn’t want not. I just wanted him to know. We we are written for a few years.
Then the letters were spaced apart, then they stopped. In 2005, I learned through an announcement that he had died of cancer. He had sixty years. I was not invited to funeral anyway. I stood at the bottom of the discreet, invisible church. I have watched his children cry, his wife collapsed and I realized something thing.
My son had a life, a real life despite everything, despite Funsteiner, despite the camp, despite myself. And maybe that was enough. In 2010, when I gave this interview for the historical memory project, I was six years old. My body was worn out, my fragile voice, but my mind remained clear. I was asked if I regretted something. I answered no.
Not for having looked for Mathias, not for having knocked on his door, not for having said the truth, because silence also kills and because some stories don’t cannot die buried. von Steiner was never tried. The children born in this camp have never been officially recorded. Women like me have never received recognition, apology, repair.
We were simply erased. But as long as there is someone left tell, we still exist. I am died 5 years after this interview, in 2015. I was 91 years old. I was alone as I had experienced most of my life. But my words remained. And today, decades later, thousands of people hear my history.
Perhaps among them there are to a woman who recognizes something, a familiar pain, a silence that she wears. If so, I want let her know this. Your story account. Your pain is real and you you are not alone. The world tried to fade away, but we are still there in every testimony, in every memory preserved, in each person who refuses to forget.
It was my history, the history of Maéis du Rock, the story of three sisters who survived the unthinkable. And now, it’s also yours because also long as you remember, we will still live. This story is not only that of Maise Duroc, it is that of thousands of women whose names have been erased history books. Women who carried in their womb the scars of a war that they had not chosen.
Mothers to whom their children were snatched away even before to have been able to memorize their smell. Of survivors who had to learn to live with a void that cannot be filled. While Mis was looking for her son for twenty years the world continued to turn. Memorials to the dead were inaugurated, the speeches officials pronounced, heroes celebrated, but she, like so many others, remained in the shadows because his story was uncomfortable, because that it reminded us that war doesn’t stop when the guns go are silent. It continues in the bodies,
in memories, in the silences that cross generations. Today, years after the end of the Second War world, we have a duty to remember not only the battles and treaties, but women like Maéis, Aurore and Séverine. Children like Mathias torn from their history, truths that have been buried because that they disturbed the established order.
If this story touched you, if it awakened something in you, if you believe that these voices deserve to be heard, so don’t let this story stops here. Subscribe to this channel so that other stories like this one can continue to be told. Activate the bell to not miss any testimony. Share this video with those who, like you, believe is an act of resistance against oblivion.
In the comments, tell us what appeals to you the most marked in the history of But? Did you know this little-known facet of war? Do you have in your own family stories that have no never been told? Your voice counts, your testimony counts. Together we build a memory collective which refuses to leave its women disappear into silence.
But left in 2015 at the age of 91 years, but his words remained. Sound courage to break the silence after so much of years opened the voice to others testimonies, to other truths long stifled. She proved that It’s never too late to tell, never too late to search, never too late to refuse oblivion. So today, in his honor, in the honor of all these forgotten women, ask yourself this question: what story carry in you who deserve to be heard? And who around you maybe just wait until is someone finally listening?
