My name is Éléonore Vassel and I am years old as I record these words. For years, I said nothing. Not because that I had forgotten, but because I remembered too well. Some memories do not crumble. They hide. They live in the silences, in the sleepless and fearful nights inexplicable sound of a boot on a hard ground.
Before the war, my life was simple. I lived in a small village countryside in France in the my father’s bakery. Every morning, the smell of warm bread filled the home and I believed the world would be always like this. I was 17 years old. I was helping to wrap the breads while still warm to the neighbors. I wore a blue dress clear sewn by my mother and I thought that my future would be made of things ordinary.
A marriage, children, seasons that pass slowly. The war existed on the radio, but not still on our streets. Then one morning May, everything has changed. It was 6 a.m. The sky was gray and heavy. I heard the trucks before you see them, a rumble metallic in the narrow streets, then the repeated courses of boots on the cobblestones.
The door was broken without warning. Three German soldiers entered. One had a list. He didn’t shout. He simply raised the finger at me and said a word that I never forgot. Advance. My mother has tried to approach and was pushed away against the wall with the butt of a rifle. My father wanted to protest and he fell to his knees after a violent blow.
I I couldn’t kiss him. I have nothing taken with me. They pulled me out, foot naked on the cold earth and I understood immediately that I will never see again never this normal morning. The truck was already full of women. Some were my neighbors, others unknown. They all had the same look. Eyes open, too big for their face and more silence heavy as screams.
We were 47 huddled in the dark. Nobody knew why we had been taken. We drove almost two days with very little water and no food. The humiliation started even before arrival because we were already being treated as if we were no longer people. The night the doors opened open, I remember the light brutal and barking dogs. The air smelled of smoke, sweat and something indefinable.
Later I understood that it was the smell of human fear. We have lined up in front of a large iron gate. I didn’t understand the words written above, but I saw the barbed wire, guard towers and silhouettes armies. Guards walked between us and observed us as we observes animals in a market. one of them lifted my chin with a stick, turned my face to the left then right and wrote something.
I don’t didn’t yet know that this moment was a selection. We were separated, some to the right, the others to left. I was part of a small group led to a barrack different, cleaner, lit with a weak light. A speaking guard broken French told us that we were chosen to work at inside the camp. Some believed that it was a chance.
Me, I felt a cold pass down my back without understand why. Then he added that the same evening we would be examined and presented. Nobody asked questions. We had already learned that the questions no longer existed. We brought into a shower room frozen. Two guards watched that we had to wash ourselves completely. We inspected our hair, our arms, our skin.
We weren’t looking only dirt, we were looking for something else something, something that I don’t I didn’t understand yet. Then we gave a gray dress, very fine, without underwear and we were locked up for wait. There were seven of us sitting on trembling wooden beds, silent. Night fell slowly, the door opened and an officer entered.
Large, perfectly clean, shiny boot. He didn’t shout. He just walked in front of us and observed us one by one. When he stopped in front of me, I felt his look like physical contact. He ordered me to get up, turns, I lift my dress. I have obeyed because fear can transform a free person as an immobile statue. He touched my shoulder then my waist like checking a fragile object.
Then he said something and guard noted. Two girls were taken away. They never came back that night. We waited until dawn without sleeping. We did not yet know that this was only the beginning and the first night was not an accident. It was a method, a silent message for immediately teach us that our body no longer belonged to us and that the war could shatter a life long before work, hunger or illness.
That night I stopped being there baker’s daughter. I became a number that did not 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 wore the longest in me, not the first, because the first was still amazement, incomprehension almost childish.
The second night, she taught me. All day following, we were integrated into the camp. We were given wooden shoes too big, a striped outfit and a number roughly sewn on the chest. We were no longer called by our names. Mine was never again spoken there. I had become a number repeated quickly by the guards like reading an inventory.
We have makes you stay still for hours in the court for appeal. The sun was rising, burned our eyes then disappeared. Some girls were shaking with fatigue but no one dared to move. A woman fainted. and no one is intervened for many minutes. I understood then that suffering was not an accident of the camp, but a normal part of its functioning.
In the afternoon, I was sent to the officers’ kitchen. The contrast hit immediately. Where the barracks smelled of humidity and disease, kitchen smelled of hot soup, coffee and white bread. I was cleaning huge pots while the soldiers laugh behind me. They were talking loud, smoked. told their family, their post-war project.
I listened in spite of myself and a thought occurred to me terrified. For them, the war was not not a permanent tragedy. It was their ordinary daily life. They could joke to some masters of women hungry without feeling the slightest contradiction. On several occasions, one of them told me asked my age.
I simply replied 17. He nodded as if considered an object too fragile. In the evening we returned to the small hut. Nobody spoke. The the youngest daughter cried silently, turned towards the wall. When the door opened, we all startled. It was the same officer that the day before, but this time he was not not alone.
Behind him, a guard was carrying a lamp. The yellow light made the even smaller room. The officer has looked at each of us slowly, with patience. He didn’t shout, he didn’t threaten. It was worse. He acted as if everything was perfectly normal. He got stopped in front of a girl named Simone, a seamstress from a neighboring town. He has placed his hand on his shoulder and signals to move forward.
She doesn’t have moved. Then the guard came closer and repeated the order. Simon whispered. No. It was barely audible but it was a refusal. The officer did not raise the track. He simply put his pistol on the table between us calmly. Nobody has shouted, no one moved. Simon got up on its own. She walked as if his legs no longer belonged to him.
The door closed behind her. We We waited a long time. Time no longer made sense. We counted the breathing, the sounds of the corridor, the wind against the walls. When she is When she came back, she was no longer the same. Sound face was blank, his eyes stared at the ground. I took her hand, but she didn’t tighten mine.
She whispered something incomprehensible, phrase repeated over and over again. This wasn’t just fear, it was as if a part of her had remained elsewhere. An hour later, the officer came back and this time he stopped in front of me. My heart was beating so loudly that I could almost hear its echo in my ears. I got myself up before the guard even spoke.
I already knew that resisting would change nothing, except adding violence. We crossed the courtyard immersed in the darkness. I heard music coming from a building further away, an old german radio playing a melody light. This contrast struck me more than everything. The normality of sound and the abnormality of the situation.
The room he took me to looked like to an ordinary room, a table, a chair, an oil lamp. Nothing frightening in appearance. And it is precisely that which was terrifying, the banality. He spoke slowly in German as if someone we want to reassure. I don’t I didn’t understand the words but I understood the intention.
I set a point on the wall so as not to disappear completely in fear. I remember especially the silence afterwards, the moment when he opened the door as if nothing important had happened. He uttered a short word that I learned later. Tastes good. I came back to the barrack. The girls looked up to me and no questions were asked posed.
We all knew that words were useless. That night I understood what the camp wanted from us learn. Before the end, before the work, before the blows, it was necessary take away any illusion of control. If the mind gives in, the body will follow. The next day during the call, the officer superior declared that nothing had happened had not existed.
He demanded that we understood. We answered yes in one weak voice. And so, the first night was erased officially. But not for us. For for me, it never ended. She was repeated for decades in my dreams, even in my old age. This was not just a memory, it was an invisible border that separated my life before and my life according to.
From that moment on, I thought more about surviving for me. I wanted to survive so that one day we could to say that it had existed, even if no one wanted to hear it. After the second night, camp life is become a repetitive mechanism. almost set like clockwork. Alarm clock before dawn, endless call in the cold, work, clear soup, return to barracks, silence.
However, it was not fatigue that destroyed us the most, it was permanent uncertainty. Every evening, we dreaded the opening of the door. We didn’t always call someone, but the wait was enough to exhaust us more than working days. We weren’t really sleeping anymore. We fell into a sort of half-sleep where every sound made the heart skip a beat.
In the officers’ kitchen, I observed a lot. I understood that seeing and memorizing was a form of resistance. The soldiers spoke freely in front me, because for them, I did not exist really. They talked about the fights, permissions, sometimes their family Germany. A young soldier showed the photo of one blond child to another.
in smiling with pride. This image upset me more than the cries from the camp. I wondered how a man capable of loving a child could participate in what we we lived. It was on this day that I understood something essential. The cruelty did not always come from recognizable monsters. She could come from ordinary men who compartmentalized their consciousness.
Sometimes the officer with the Kruger glasses stayed longer in the kitchen. He spoke to me softly, almost politely. He asked if I was hungry, if I could stand the work. One day he slipped a piece of bread next to me pretending to have forgotten it. I have hesitated for a long time before taking it. This gesture was not kindness, it was a 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 dull. Nobody didn’t judge them. We knew that each survived as best he could. The nights continued. Not every day, not according to a fixed rule. It was voluntary.
Unpredictability prevented any adaptation. One week, no one was called. Then suddenly, two or three of us disappeared from the barracks to a few hours. We never spoke on the way back. Only once, the young 15 year old stranger whispered that she wanted to die. Jacqueline, the woman older, held her face between hands and told him something that I will never forget.
They want that you are nothing more than a body. One left no one in your head. Think of your name, to your childhood, to someone who loves you. To From that day on, I repeated mentally 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 working. The skin was splitting. The soup became even clearer. Some women chewed stolen potato peelings in the kitchen trash cans. I sometimes pretended to spill one bag to drop some remains. It was dangerous, but it was also what allowed me to support my own survival. An inmate told me thanked one evening with a look intense that I cried in silence.
In this place, a tiny gesture took on the value of a heroic act. One morning, Simon didn’t come to the call. We understood without explains to us. Nobody 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, its space emptiness was heavier than its presence had never been.
It was on this day that the fear turned into something else in me. It was no longer just the fear of dying, it was fear to be erased as if I had never existed. The bombings began to to be heard in the distance towards the end of winter. The officers became nervous, they spoke faster, were smoking in front. Once I heard the American word.
For the first time since my arrival, I have felt a strange feeling, almost forgotten. Hope. He was fragile and dangerous, because hope could also lead to disappointment. However, it circulated between we without words. The looks changed slightly, but the nights continued despite everything. The system does not did not stop, even when the war was nearing its end.
And I understood that what we suffered was not an individual excess. It was a method not written, not official, but tolerated. She was breaking women even before the work or the end does not complete their strength. By destroying dignity from the At first, the camp obtained obedience without the need for constant violence. Every night I promised myself that if I came out alive, I would speak.
However, I already knew that after the war, no one would want to hear. The world prefers stories of battle and victory. What happens to women in the shadow is more disturbing. So, I decided to at least memorize everything, the faces, the gestures, the smells, the sentences, because if I survive, I will become the memory of the one who would have no more.
Spring 1944 arrived without us really noticed. In a camp, the seasons exist only through the temperature. The cold that burns fingers disappears. The mud replaces the ice, then dust replaces the mud. This is how we knew that time moved forward, not thanks to calendar, but thanks to suffering which changed shape.
However, something else started change too. The guards became more nervous and more unpredictable. Strict order remained but behind him a new agitation appeared, almost a worry. In the kitchen, I heard more whispered conversations. The cards were often spread out on the table after the officers’ meal. He talked for a long time, sometimes with anger.
Several times the city name French was pronounced, then words Germans that I didn’t understand, but I recognized fear when I saw. For the first time, this was no longer us who were only frightened, they too were. This tension reverberated through the camp. The punishments became sudden, often for no apparent reason. A woman was beaten for turning her head the call, another for having kept a piece of fabric in his sleeve in order to protect your skin from the cold.
The arbitrator was total. It was not only to punish, it was to remind that we didn’t control anything. Domination went through unpredictability. One night, the door to the barracks opened opened suddenly. We are all straightened at the same time like one only body, but this time it was not not to take anyone away. We have ordered to go outside. It was raining.
We stood for hours in the courtyard without explanation. Some were shivering from the cold, others were fading away. Nobody dared move. I understood later. He was looking for someone who had tried to flee to another area of the camp. We had no connection with her, but the collective punishment was part of the system.
An inmate who fell next to I whispered his son’s name over and over again to stay conscious. After this episode, several women changed, not externally, internally. We saw their gaze empty as if they had ceased to wait for anything. It was not no longer fear but resignation. and the resignation was more dangerous than tired because she was removing the will to live.
Jacqueline, the most old among us, started talking gently every evening. She told memories of his youth, summer markets, music, festivals village. She said that this memory was a form of food for the mind. We listened to him in silence. These stories were our refuge invisible. A few days later, Officer Kruger summoned me alone to the kitchen after service.
My heart was beating very hard, but I obeyed. He sat facing me, surprisingly calm. He asked me my age, I answered. He looked at me for a long time 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 to remain assigned only 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 something in me refused. It was not a judgment against the one who accepted. It was a personal limit, last frontier of my identity. He has waited for my response. I didn’t say anything. After a long time, he simply asked and sent me back to the barracks.
I knew that this refusal could cost me expensive. However, returning to the others, I felt a strange sensation. For the first time since my arrest, I had taken a decision myself. The following nights were calmer. Not sure, never sure, but calmer. At further away, the bombings became more audible.
Sometimes the ground vibrated slightly. We looked up without dare 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, the unknown girl whispered. Do you think they know this? that we live here? Nobody responded right away.
Then Jacqueline whispered : “One day, someone will know because Someone will survive.” In the dark, I understood that she was looking at me, not me alone, but each of us. Survive became a responsibility. This moment changed my perception. Before, I wanted to live to see my family again. Now I wanted to live too tell.
Physical suffering fade with time, but oblivion can kill a second time. And I already felt that if we were silent after the war, what was happening in the shadow would disappear completely. To From that night on, I started to memorize every detail on purpose. the layout of the buildings, the no heard, 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 the one where hope entered for the first times in the camp, but in a way strange, almost dangerous. We don’t received no official news. Yet the signs were everywhere. The guards smoked more, the officers spoke louder than before and above all, some disappeared suddenly for several days. We felt that something was missing their control.
For us, prisoners, hope was a fragile thing. Too much believing could break the spirit if nothing did not change. In the kitchen, deliveries became irregular. The boxes were arriving late, sometimes damaged and the rations for the soldiers decreased. When the army lacks food, this often means she is moving backwards. A evening, I heard two soldiers talking between them without noticing my presence.
I only understood a few words, but one name struck me, Normandy. I didn’t know not what exactly was happening there, but their tone was not that of the victory. Despite everything, for us, life daily remained the same. Calls mornings, chores, fatigue constant. The bodies got used to the end, but the mind didn’t get used to it never.
Some women counted the days by engraving marks under them bed. Others had abandoned everything concept of time. Jacqueline said that he should not count the days, only the breaths. A more breathing meant one more minute gained from death. An event profoundly marked this period. A new inmate arrived in our barracks. She was more older than us, maybe 40 years old.
Sound look was different. She observed all silently. Her name was Hélène and came from another camp. The first night she didn’t speak. The next day, during a break, she whispered: “They won’t win again.” We I looked at her without understanding. She explained that she had heard constant bombing before its transfer and view of military trains destroyed.
These words were not speech, but a simple certainty. For the first time, hope became concrete. However, hope also brought new cruelty. The guards became harder, as if they sensed the end, they sought to maintain their authority through fear. Punishments collectives increased. A woman was locked up for several days in a room dark for having picked up a peel of potatoes.
We compress that their power was diminishing and it was precisely for this reason they became more dangerous. One evening in August, Officer Kruger returned see me in the kitchen. This time he offered nothing. He just stared at me and says: “Soon everything will change here.” Sound face expressed neither threat nor compassion, only fatigue immense.
I understood that he was speaking as much for him as for me. This was the first time targeting 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 the after without daring to pronounce it word freedom. What would we do? Where would we go? Many no longer had family, others were afraid of return and not be recognized.
The war did not only destroy the body, it broke identities. We we were no longer the same women as those torn from their homes. A night, the unknown girl asked me : “Do you think we can go back to being normal?” I couldn’t answer because that I already understood something terrible. Surviving did not mean forget.
The camp was part of the memory like an invisible scar. Even free, we would still wear this place within us. The bombings were getting closer. Sometimes the sky shook slightly and a distant glow appeared behind the clouds. We raised the head in silence. Nobody dared smile but our looks had changed. For the first time, we weren’t expecting no longer just the end of the day, we were waiting for the war to end.
And deep inside me another thought was born new and disturbing. If I went out alive from here, could I tell what What happened the first night? Or well, like so many others, would I choose silence to be able to continue live. I didn’t know the answer, but I already knew that the real test would perhaps begin after the freedom.
Autumn4 arrived with a cold earlier than the other years. In the camp, the wind crossed the disjointed boards of the barracks and the night was almost becoming as hard as the day. However, something had changed. The guardians were still shouting, the calls existed always, the ending remained the same, but their confidence was gone.
He checked the fences more often, spoke among themselves in low voices and constantly consulted maps in the administrative office. We we understood without understanding. The war was getting closer to us. In the kitchen, military rations became even more poorer. The soldiers received sometimes a barely clear soup different from ours.
Some of them seemed nervous, irritable, and many had tired eyes as if they were not sleeping more. One evening I heard shots distant. It wasn’t an exercise, it was regular, deep, almost continuous. Hélène simply looked at me and whispered: “They are approaching.” But hope did not erase fear. At On the contrary, it made her stronger.
A Rumor was circulating among us. Some camps were evacuated before the arrival enemy armies. The prisoners were taken far away, sometimes on foot, sometimes by train and many died during these trips. Freedom could still escape us at the last moment. We knew that to survive until then guaranteed nothing. A morning, a woman collapsed during the call. She didn’t get up.
The camp doctor quickly noted his died without even kneeling. Nobody cried. Not because we were insensitive, but because the tears no longer existed here. They had been replaced by excessive fatigue to express yourself. I continued to work in the kitchen. This work sometimes allowed me to obtain a peel or a piece of painting that I shared with Margaot, finally with the memory of Margaot.
Because after his death, I got into the habit to keep a small portion of food which I deposited discreetly behind the hut as if it still existed. This gesture was of no use but it helped me stay human. One day, Captain Kruger entered the kitchen earlier than usual. He was not accompanied. He remained motionless for a few seconds looking at the empty pans.
Then he told me softly: “If things go wrong, remains hidden.” I didn’t answer. I didn’t know whether it was sincere advice or with a simple sentence, but I understood one thing, even some of those who kept were no longer certain of their future. The bombings were getting closer again. At night, the Earth vibrated slightly, the windows were trembling.
Several guards were now sleeping in uniform, ready to leave at any time. We, prisoners, remained silent because hope could be dangerous. If he disappeared, he took away his reason with him. A week later, an order unexpected happened. We were made to prepare our business, which is to say almost nothing. Many believed that the evacuation began.
The fear grew stronger than ever. Some women prayed, others remained frozen. Helene Serra my hand very strong. Nobody spoke. But the departure did not take place. The order was canceled a few hours later. We learn that fighting is taking place took place on neighboring roads and that no convoy could leave the area. That night, no one slept.
We were suspended between two destinies. Death during evacuation or imminent freedom. I then understood a strange truth. The freedom was almost as scary as captivity. Because in the camp, life was simple. survive until next day. Outside the camp, it would be necessary live with the memories. I sat down near the door of the barracks and look at the dark sky.
For the first time since my arrest, I really imagined get out of here. But this thought brought a question that I had never dared 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 cannons continued to roar in the distance.
Every detonation seemed to announce the end of a world. We did not yet know that the liberation was near, but we we all felt that the camp was alive these last days and our lives would soon start again without nothing can ever be the same again before. The morning of April 18, 1945 began in a strange silence. None whistle, no shout.
Usually, even before dawn, the guards banged the doors with their metal sticks. But this nothing that day. The women remained lying down for a few more minutes, motionless, believing it was a trap. Then someone whispered: “Listen, there is no There were no footsteps in the yard.” Helene stood up first and approached the window.
She slightly spread the board which served as a shutter. His face changed immediately. No smile, no joy, only of disbelief. There is no one left. We went out slowly from the barracks. The wind was blowing in the courtyard. The watchtowers were abandoned. The doors administrative buildings remained open. The guards had left during the night, leaving behind papers, cups still full and even coats.
No one dared to go through the gate. After years of following orders, the freedom seemed unreal. A woman knelt down on the muddy ground and got down laughing nervously. Another cried without noise. I remained motionless, unable to move forward. The fear persisted. We thought he could come back at any moment.
For two days we stayed in the camp without surveillance. Some looked for food in deserted kitchens. Others remained in bed, too weak to understand what was happening. Freedom was coming, but our bodies were no longer accustomed to deciding for themselves. Then on the 3rd day we hear engines unknown, not German trucks, not the dry orders that we knew.
Different vehicles entered the court. Soldiers wore uniforms that we had never seen. A man got out of a vehicle and remained frozen looking at us. I remember his face more than anything the rest. He didn’t shout, he didn’t give of order. He simply took off his helmet and put his hand to his mouth. His eyes became wet.
It was the first time in years that a man looked like human beings. They gave us blankets, bread, hot milk. Several women fell ill after having eaten too quickly. Our bodies were no longer able to accept the 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 I couldn’t hold it. My hands were shaking too much. He supported her without me touch directly with delicacy which upset me more than anything. I then realized something. The external war was over for me, but the inner war does not was just getting started. We were then transported to a care center.
We were given civilian clothing. When I see my reflection in a window, I didn’t recognize the person in front of me. My face was hollow, my gray hair in places, my eyes old. I was twenty years old, but my look belonged to an elderly woman. A few weeks later, I was sent back to France. The return journey was silent.
Nobody was talking about camp. Nobody mentioned the first night. We already understood that this would be a secret shared without words. When I arrived in my village, he no longer really existed. The streets seemed narrower, the lower houses, but it was not the village that had changed was me. I came back alive, however I no longer had the impression to belong to this world.
My mother held me in her arms for a long time arm. She was crying. I didn’t cry not. I was incapable of it. She asked me just one question. Have you returned? I only replied yes. She asked no more and I didn’t say anything. Because how explain what does not exist in any book? How to describe the first night to someone who simply wants find his daughter? So it began a life apparently free but inhabited by memories that did not know neither Armistice nor victory.
The years passed. Externally, my life was like that of everyone other women of my generation. I I worked, I cooked, I laughed sometimes with my neighbors. In 1948, I married Marcel, a patient man, calm, who had never asked unnecessary questions. He only knew that I had been deported. This word was enough at the time to close all conversation.
We have two children. When my daughter was born, I took her that I cry with joy, but no tears didn’t come. Not because I didn’t love him no, I loved him deeply, but because something in me was remained frozen in this first night of camp. I looked at his face and only thought crossed my mind. She is safe. It had become for me the definition of happiness.
I was a good mother, I believe. I watched over them constantly. At night I got up several times to check that he was breathing. Marcel thought I was just worried. He didn’t know that for me, the danger could appear at any time behind any door. I couldn’t stand the boots that reasoned on the cobblestones. I don’t couldn’t stand the screams of men in the street and above all I couldn’t stand to be grabbed by the arm without prevent.
In these moments, my heart got carried away, my hands became frozen and I was no longer in my kitchen in 1955. I was again in this dark corridor. For 60 years, I didn’t tell anyone about it. The company wanted to move forward. After the war, France was rebuilding its cities, its families, its future. The heroes had their place, the resistance had their story.
But women like me, we had no history relatable. What we had experienced disturbed. It was neither glorious nor understandable. So we learned to live with silence. Marcel died in 1998. After his funeral, I was left alone in the house that has become too big. The silence that I had worn all my life suddenly became deafening. At night, I had no one left waking up when I was screaming in my sleep.
Then in 2009, a historian contacted me. He had found my name in archives. He wanted to record my testimony. My first reaction was anger. To what’s the point now? responsible was dead. Time had covered everything. Opening this door meant living again every second. But he told me one phrase that I have never forgotten.
Madam, if you don’t speak, they will win a second time. During weeks, I hesitated. Then one evening, I watched my grandchildren played in the garden. Their laughter was free. He lived in a world where war was just a school chapter. And I have understood, if they did not know what had really existed, then nothing guaranteed that it wouldn’t happen again not. I accepted.
On the day of recording, I I was shaking more than when I arrived at camp. The camera was not a weapon. However, it seemed heavier to me than any look. At the beginning, no slack came out. Then, slowly, the sentences come. I told about the truck, the gate, the selection 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 been breathing fully for 60 years. After the broadcast of the documentary, letters arrived, dozens, then hundreds. Other women wrote. Some from France, others from Poland, Austria, Hungary. They had experienced the same thing.
They also kept the silence all their lives. So, I have understood. My story was not unique. She was simply one of many voices waiting to be heard. I’m not looking for pity, I don’t look for hatred. What I want let is a simple truth. The war does not only destroy cities and the armies. They penetrate beings humans 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. The shame was never ours. If you hear my voice, remember this : “Oblivion is the last victory of violence. As long as someone listens, as long as anyone tells, those who have suffered still exist. My name is Éléonore Vassel, I survived and now I entrust this story to you so that it does not disappear. Yeah.
