I was 22 when I learned that hell is not underground. He is behind barbed wire under spotlights that never sleep inside the barracks where the smell of fear mixes with urine and despair. I was 22 when I ceased to be Élise Morau to become the number 4719. I was 22 when a German soldier started coming to me search every night.
And no, this was not for the reason why you think. It was something much more dangerous, something which, if discovered, would kill us all both. Today I am 86 years old. My body hurts. My hands are shaking holding that warm cup of tea. But my memory, my memory is cruel. She doesn’t forget not. Every detail of this era is engraved like invisible scars that no one sees but I feel every day.
I passed 64 years silent. 64 years brought a secret that few I will understand. But now, sitting in this chair in my little house in the south of the France, I decided to speak not because the pain is over, but because silence also kills and because that these women who could not tell deserve someone to speak for her. It was October 1942.
France was no longer France. It was a occupied, divided, stifled territory. I lived in Lille in the north in a modest house with my parents and my little sister Margaot. My father worked in a textile factory. My mother sewed for rich families who still pretended that war was just an inconvenience temporary. I helped with the sewing.
I embroidered dresses that I would never wear never. I dreamed of a future that is not never came. We were a family ordinary, invisible. At least, the we thought. This October night, the door of our house was smashed at three o’clock in the morning morning. I know the exact time because that I looked at the wall clock when I heard the noise.
Three sharp blows, the wood shattering, screams German, heavy boots on the wooden floor that my father had polished with so much care. My mother doesn’t even have had time to turn on the light. They came in like a storm, uniform gray green, expressionless face, weapons pointed in all directions. one from them shouted my name, Élise Morau..
Like if he knew me, as if I were important. But it wasn’t a question of importance, it was different thing. At that time, young women disappeared throughout the region. not necessarily Jewish, just young people. Too beautiful, too healthy, too useful for drawings that the machine Nazi war had been developed out of sight of the world.
There were lists, lists established by collaborators French who knew every street, every family, every girl. I was on one of these lists, Margaot, who was also only 17 years old. My mother thrown in front of her, grabbed her legs from a soldier, to begged in French chopped then in a German that she barely knew.
He pushed him away foot. She fell. My father tried to get up from the chair where he was sitting, paralyzed. He received a blow cross to the temple. The sound was horrible, dry, definitive. Maybe it’s better to tell everything this now, decades later late, until the pain blinds me no more rage. Maybe you need to hear this as it happened, without filter, without pity, because it was like this: “Without pity, they dragged us out, me and twenty other women of our neighborhood, some still in their shirts night, barefoot in the October cold.
We were all young, all terrified. None understood why. They pushed us into a military truck covered with a tarpaulin dark green. It rained thinly. I still remember the smell of the tarpaulin wet mixed with the sweat of fear. There was a soldier in the back with a rifle watching us. His eyes do not did not blink.
He was young too. Maybe he was my age, but he was already dead inside. We We traveled for three days. We we stopped in military camps temporary. We were given water dirty, hard bread, nothing more. The night, we heard screams coming other parts of the camps. Nobody was talking about what was happening was passing. But we all knew.
When you are a woman in territory busy, you learn quickly. You learn that your body does not belongs more, than your life has value than that which we decide for him give. I prayed every night that Margot is fine. She had stayed behind. I had been taken alone. I still don’t know why they don’t didn’t take it too.
Maybe was she too young, maybe did he have another list for her. On the third day we arrived. The camp was located in the east of the France, near the German border. It wasn’t Auschwitz, it wasn’t Ravensbruck was smaller, less known. One of those places that history forgot to save because they were so numerous, scattered throughout all of Europe occupied, that they lost in the immensity of horror.
Camps for specific purposes, camps which have never appeared before the Nurember tribunals. This one was a disguised forced labor camp. Young women, all between and years old, selected to work in ammunition factories, sewing uniforms, produce supplies. But it wasn’t just that. It was not never more than that.
When we are got off the truck, we were taken in a reception barracks. We made us take off all our clothes, all clothes in front of soldiers who wrote things down on boards with pliers. who looked at us like livestock being inspected. We have shaved his head. We were given worn striped uniforms that smelled of moldy and the sweat of other women.
We tattooed numbers on us the left forearm. I was number 419. This number burned. Not because of physical pain, but because at that moment I understood. I was no longer a person, I was a unit. One thing. The camp was divided into barracks sections numbered from 1 to 12. I have been assigned in barracks 7.
There were 120 women inside, wooden berths three floors, fine blankets which didn’t warm anything, a jump in the corner for needs. The smell was unbearable. urine, excrement, illness, despair. But we get used to it, the human body is strange like that. He even gets used to the unbearable. The first weeks were the worst.
We wake up at 5 a.m. with screams and blows whistle. We formed sons to counting. We stood frozen while soldiers marched between counting us, again. Then we walked towards the factory. 12 working hours without breaks, assembling ammunition parts, sewing uniforms, packing supplies. Those who fainted were dragged outside.
Some came back, others don’t. In the evening, a clear apple soup rotten earth and cabbage, a piece of bread that looked more like sour, then return to the barracks, then the heavy silence of a woman who no longer had the strength to cry. But there was something worse than work, something we all feared more than hunger, more than cold, more than illnesses, soldiers.
He walked between the barracks night. They chose, they pointed, they took away. The women who were taken away came back different or wasn’t coming back. There was an infirmary in the camp, but it was not for to care for was to throw away. I saw women enter there pregnant, come out empty. I saw women there enter with bruises exit covered with white sheets.
Fear being chosen was constant. You are trying to become invisible. You you dirty your face, you bend the shoulders. You avoided looking at a soldier in the eyes. But sometimes this was not enough. It’s the 5th week that he saw me for the first time. We We were in the morning count queue. It was raining.
the kind of fine rain and ice that penetrates clothing and settles in the bones. I was shaking, my lips were purple. I was trying to think about nothing, just survive the next few seconds, then the next minutes, then the next day. It’s while I felt it. A look different from the others. It wasn’t the look of a predator evaluating prey was something else.
I looked up without meaning to and saw him. He was tall, uniform, impeccable, polished black boots that reflected the faint morning light. Close-cropped blonde hair, face angular, clear eyes that seemed gray in the light of the rain. He stood a few meters from distance, a clip board in hand, but he wrote nothing.
He me looked. Our eyes met for two seconds, maybe three. Then he looked away, but I knew. Something had happened to this moment. Something I don’t didn’t understand yet, something that filled me with terror. That night he came. It was almost midnight when I heard the barracks door open, the metallic sound of the lock that we lift.
We all awake. The fear was instantaneous. She always was. He entered alone, a flashlight in his hand, the beam of light cutting through the darkness. He walked between the bunks slowly in a calculated manner. He got stopped in front of mine. He pointed to the lamp towards me. He said a number in German. Vier Siben 11 4719.
My number. My heart stopped. He has gestures with his head. Get up. Come on. I couldn’t move. My body was paralyzed. He repeated more firmly. Schnel, quickly! I am got off the bunk. My legs barely supported. He pushed me slightly towards the exit. The others women looked at me with pity. They knew everything it meant to be taken away at night. I knew it too.
And walking behind him, for first time since I arrived here, I wished I was dead. And if you think you know what happened this that night you are wrong. Because this what this soldier did with me and what that he continued to do all the nights for the next two months was something that no one could imagine.
Something forbidden, something impossible, something something that changed everything. This story don’t talk about war. She talks about this which happens when two people meet in the most forbidden from the universe and the price that we pay for it. Stay until end because what I’m going to tell now.
Few had the courage to listen. He took me to a small wooden cabin located behind the block officers. I never had it noticed before. It was a structure simple, perhaps an old repository or a converted garden shed. The door was rusty metal. He opened it without saying a word beckoned to me entry. I hesitated. He placed a hand on my shoulder, not brutally but firmly. Between. I obeyed.
To inside there was a small table wooden, two chairs, a lamp oil which dimly lit the bare walls. No bed, no weapons visible, just a cold, silent room. He closed the door behind us. I backed away instinctively. My back has hit the wall. My heart was beating so hard that I heard the blood thumping in my ears.
He remained motionless for a few seconds looking at me. Then he did something I didn’t expect not. He took off his cap, put it down on the table, he took off his jacket, he folded it carefully and placed it on the back of the chair. Then he sat down. He looked at me and he said in French with a heavy but understandable accent : “Sit down, I haven’t moved.
” He has repeated more gently this time. “If he please, sit down.” I got myself sitting on the chair in front of him, trembling, my hands clenched on my knees. He took something out of the pocket of his pants, a piece of bread, not the rotten bread we are told gave real bread, fresh, white. He placed it on the table between us.
Eaten. I didn’t move. He pushed the bread towards me. Please eat. Nobody will see. I looked at the bread. Then him, then the bread again. It was obviously a trap, but my stomach growled. The hunger was more strong as fear. I reached out my hand slowly. I took the bread. He was hot. I brought it to my mouth.
I have bitten. The taste exploded in my mouth. I started crying helplessly stop me. He didn’t say anything. He just told me watched eating, tears streaming down my cheeks, the bread disappearing piece per piece. When I was finished, he got up, took a hanging water bottle on his belt, waiting for me. Drink. It was water, clean, cold.
I drank it like it was the first water of my life. When I was finished, he resumed stuffs its staleness. He looked at me silence for a long time. Then he said “My name is Carl. Carl Hoffman, I’m 26 years old. I come from Munich and I don’t I don’t want to be here.” These words floated in the cold air of the cabin like strange objects that I didn’t know how to enter.
I didn’t know what say. I didn’t even know if I had the right to speak. He continued. You your name is Élise, you come from Lille, you I’m 22 years old. You were arrested six years ago weeks. You work in workshop 3. You sleep in barracks 7. I know all that, but I don’t know who you are really. He leaned slightly forward, elbows on knees, hands joined.
How did you get here ? Why you? Why not another ? I opened my mouth. No sound is released. He waited. Finally, I whispered. I don’t know no, I sewed dresses. One morning they came. My voice was thin, broken. I haven’t used it since weeks. He nodded slowly as if it was the answer that he was waiting for, as if that explained everything.
During the 20 minutes following, he asked me questions about my family, about my life before, about what I loved doing. My answers were short, hesitant. I didn’t understand not what he wanted, why did he did that. Every moment I I expected the mask to fall, that he becomes violent, that he strength. But that never happened. When he decided it was enough, he got up, put his jacket back on, his cap, he opened the door.
Outside, the night was still dark. He told me looked one last time. Tomorrow evening, same time, don’t tell anyone. He accompanied me to the entrance of the barracks. He left without a word. I came home. Women me looked, some with relief, others with suspicion. One more woman old, Simone, whispered to me.
He made you bad? I shook my head. She has frowned. So what is what did he want? I didn’t answer. I I lay down on my bed. I fixed the ceiling until dawn. I don’t didn’t understand anything. The following night he came back. Same time, same rhythm. This time he brought a cover. He placed it on my shoulders when we arrived at the cabin.
He gave me bread again and cheese. A small piece but it was cheese. He told me about his life before the war. of his studies in architecture, of his mother who wrote letters that he could not can no longer bear to read because it spoke of a world that no longer existed. He spoke and I listened to him. I don’t still didn’t understand why he did that, why me? The third night I found the courage to ask why are you doing this? He stopped speak. He looked down for a long time.
Then he said “Because I’m tired to see dead people, because I am tired of being complicit, because when I saw you in the trembling rain, trying to disappear, I saw my sister. She was your age. She is dead 2 years ago. Bombardment, Munique. I wasn’t there. I couldn’t protect. He looked up at me. But you, I can.
These words should have reassure me, but they terrified me because I knew what that meant. If someone found out, if another soldier saw us, if one officer was asking questions, we We were both dead. But some something in me wanted to come back. Some something in me began to wait for night. Not just for bread, not only for water, but for him, for this stolen hour when I became again human. The nights kept coming.
Every evening he came. Every evening, we were talking. He told me about his childhood, his dreams, his regrets. I him I told mine. Slowly, piece piece by piece we built something, something impossible, something that should never have exist in this cursed place. A evening, he brought a book, a collection of Rilke’s poems.
He read it to me German. I didn’t understand all the words, but I understood the pain in his voice. I understood what he was trying to tell me. After three weeks, he kissed me. It was late night. We We sat side by side on the chairs, close, our knees touching. He was talking about something, I didn’t remember what.
I turned my head towards him. He stopped talking. Our faces were inches away. For a moment, time suspended. Then he placed his lips on the mine gently, as if I were something precious that he had afraid of breaking. I didn’t resist. I I didn’t want to because for first time in months, I felt alive. We knew that it was madness.
We knew that we were playing with our lives, but in this camp, life was already worthless. So, why not waste it on something that looked like love? The weeks passed. Our nights together became our refuge. He protected me during the day without let no one know. When a soldier got too close to me, he intervened subtly.
When the rations were decreasing, he was slipping discreetly food in my pocket during distribution. When I caught the flu and I almost being sent to the infirmary, this which often meant death, he falsified papers to keep me in the barracks. But nothing remains secret forever. One evening, while we were in the cabin, we heard voices at outside, soldiers talking loud, who laughed, who got closer.
Carl turned off the lamp immediately. He grabbed me by the arm, pushed me in a dark corner behind crates stacked. He covered me with his jacket. Don’t Don’t move, don’t breathe. The voices are stopped right in front of the door. Someone tried to open it. The handle moved. Carl had locked the interior.
A soldier knocked on the door. Hoffman, are you in there? Carl has waited 3 seconds. Then he shouted firm voice. Busy. Inspection of material, cleared. Silence. Then muffled laughter. A soldier said something thing in German that I don’t have understood. They left. We are remained motionless for ten minutes. When Carl turned the lamp back on, his hands were trembling. He looked at me.
It was minus one. Next time, we won’t be maybe not lucky. I took him the hand. So stop coming to me search. He shook his head. I can’t. Two weeks later, I understood why he couldn’t. I was pregnant. I knew even before miss my period. My body spoke to me differently. constant nausea morning, a fatigue which was not that of the end or of the work, a sensitivity strange in my chest.
I tried to ignore it. I told myself that it was the stress, malnutrition, fear, but deep down, I knew and this certainty made the blood run cold. Get pregnant in a labor camp, it was a death sentence. Women pregnant women were either transferred to extermination camps, be forced to abort under conditions terrible, be left to die.
And if the child was born, he was immediately killed. No baby survived in these places. None. I don’t have nothing said to Carl for a week. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what that would change. But one evening, while we were in the cabin, he looked at me differently. He frowned eyebrows.
You are pale more than usually. What’s going on? I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. He came closer, took my face in his hands. Elise, tell me. My eyes filled with tears. I am pregnant. He took a step back. Sound face turned white. He wore a hand to his mouth. He remained standing, motionless for what seemed like a eternity.
Then he sat down slowly on the chair, head in hands. Shit, shit, shit! I started to cry. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. He raised his head abruptly. Never apologize. You hear me? Never. It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I should have been more careful. I should have. He didn’t finish his sentence. He got up to walk in a circle in the small room, hands on head.
I saw his brain working at full speed, look for solutions. Finally, he stopped in front of me. We will find a solution. I’m going to get you out of here. I’ll find a way. I tell you promise. But I shook my head. It’s impossible. There is no exit. You know it. He tightened the stitches. There is always an exit. The following days were the most terrifying of my life.
Carl started to develop a plan. He explained to me that he there were convoys of prisoners who regularly left for other camps or to work areas exterior. If I could be transferred in one of these convoys, if I could escape during transport, if I could reach an area controlled by the French resistance. It was a lot of S’s but that was it what we had.
The problem is that I had to remain invisible until until the plan is ready and a pregnancy does not remain invisible long time. Carl falsified documents for me temporarily remove from the workshop. He claimed I had an illness contagious and that I must be isolated. This gave me some weeks, but the weeks passed and my stomach was starting to swell.
I hid under my loose clothes, under the blanket Carl had given me. But the other women in the barracks were not stupid. Simone, the older woman who had me talked the first night, stuck me one morning. She looked down at me stomach then raised them towards me. How long ? I hesitated. 3 months, maybe four.
She nodded slowly. It’s the soldier, isn’t it? ? The one who comes to pick you up at night. I wanted to lie. But what’s the point? I acquired. She sighed deeply. My poor little one, you know What awaits you if someone finds out? I nodded. I know, she got me took the hand. I won’t say anything. But be careful.
The walls have ears here and some women would exchange any information for a piece of bread additional. I thanked. She left but her warning terrified me. We were on borrowed time. Carl was becoming more and more nervous. One evening, he is arrived in the cabin with a face tense that I didn’t know him. He there is a problem.
A senior officer arrives tomorrow for inspection general. He will examine all files, all prisoners. If he sees you, if he asks questions, if anyone mentions anything. My heart stopped. What do we done? He clenched his jaw. Tomorrow evening, there is a convoy leaving towards west, direction a textile factory near Lyon. This is our only chance.
I’m going to put you on this convoy and during the journey, you will escape. It was a desperate plan. The convoys were heavily guarded. The escapes were almost impossible. And even if I managed to escape, I was pregnant, weakened, without money, without papers. But it was that or die. I accepted.
Carl told me held in his arms that night like if it was the last time. Maybe that it was. He kissed me. He told me said he loved me. He told me that he regretted everything. That he would have wanted me meet in another world, in a other life. Me too, I whispered. Me too. The next evening he took me discreetly towards the loading area.
There were three trucks. Dozens of women were already waiting in line. Carl slipped me among her. He gave me a small bag hidden under his jacket. There was French money, a knife, a map roughly drawn, stolen civilian clothes. He whispered to me. When the truck stops for the night, they will take you out to go to the toilet.
This is where you run. You run and you don’t look backwards. I acquired tears eyes. And you ? What will happen to you? He has looked away. Don’t worry for me. But I was worried because if I disappeared, if someone made the connection, Carl would be executed for treason, for fraternization with the enemy, for having helped a prisoner to escape.
He knew it and he did it anyway. The convoy left at 10 p.m. I was sitting at the back of the second truck, piled up with 20 other women. We were driving since 3 hours when the truck stopped. The soldiers opened the doors. Get out! 5 minutes, toilet on the right. We obeyed. I waited for the right one moment when the guards were distracted, when other women slightly blocked their view.
So, I ran. I ran into the forest dark, my legs burning, my lungs exploding, my stomach pulling me upwards low. I heard screams behind me, gunshots, bullets whistling close to my head, but I kept going. I ran like my life depended on it because it was. I fell. I got up. I fell again. I got up again until what I can no longer, until my body gives up.
I collapsed behind a tree thick, trembling, certain that they were going to find. But they never came. Either they had given up or they thought I was dead. I stayed there all night, curled up, frozen, half conscious. In the morning, I heard French voices, men, resistant. They found me, they found me took me away, they hid me, they took me away neat.
And 6 months later, I gave birth to a baby boy in a isolated farm in the south of France. He had his father’s eyes. I don’t have it never seen again. Carl, I don’t know if he has survived the war. I don’t know if he was punished for helping me. I don’t know not if he thought of me, but me, I think of him every day for-4 years. My son’s name is Thomas.
I have it called that because it was a name French, a name that betrayed nothing, a name that did not reveal that his father was German, soldier, enemy. After the liberation, France was a country broken, violent, hungry for justice or rather hungry for revenge. Women who had me sleeping with German soldiers whether they were forced or not were mowed publicly, humiliated, beaten.
Their children who were called the children of Bche were marked for life, rejected, insulted, treated as mistakes, as stains on national honor. I have understood very quickly that I had to lie, always, everywhere, to everyone. I have told that Thomas was the son of a resistance fighter died during a bombing. I invented a name, a story, details.
People believed me because they wanted to believe, because it was more simple like that. But there were moments, especially when Thomas grew up, where people watched his light eyes, blond hair and asked your questions. Where does it come from Exactly ? This resistant father, which region? Which network? I answered with enough precision to be credible, enough vagueness to discourage investigations.
It was exhausting. Lying is exhausting. Thomas has grew up without knowing. How to tell him? How to explain to a child that his father was a German soldier in a forced labor camp? How explain that we loved each other in the most forbidden place in the world ? How to explain that this love too real as it was was also a betrayal in the eyes of millions of people? I couldn’t.
So I continued to lie. Even to him, especially to him. We lived in a small town in south for years. I worked as a seamstress, as before the war. I redid dresses, suits, curtains. My hands remembered the gesture, but my mind was elsewhere, always somewhere else. I was physically present but emotionally absent. Thomas suffered from this distance.
He asked me childish questions. Mom, why are you sad? Mom, why you never smile? Mom, does do you love me? I answered yes but but yes its hollow because part of I had remained in this camp of me stayed in this cabin of me had stayed with Carl. The years have passed. Thomas became teenager.
He looked more and more more to his father. not only physically, in his way of thinking, in his kindness, in his way of look at the world with sadness old that he didn’t understand himself. One day, he had only come back from school with a swollen face. someone had hit him, an older boy who had done research, who had asked questions, who had discovered inconsistencies in my story.
Your father never existed, he had him said. Your mother slept with a Bushman. You You’re a child of a Nazi. Thomas returned at home crying. He asked me if it was true, if his father was German. I wanted to lie again times, but when I saw his eyes, his eyes so similar to Carl’s, I I couldn’t. I sat down. I him I said to sit down too and I have everything told.
everything, the camp, Carl, the nights, pregnancy, flight. I told him that his father was not a monster, that he was a man trapped in a infernal machine, that he had saved me, that he had saved us. Thomas listened in silence. When I was finished, he stayed still for a long time. Then he asked, is he still alive? I don’t know, I replied. I don’t know.
This conversation changed everything between us. Thomas started to understand why I was like I was, why was I wearing this sadness, why I never spoke of the past. He also began to search. He wanted to know who was his father. He contacted archives military in Germany. He wrote letters. He asked questions. But the war had destroyed so many documents.
So many soldiers were dead without a trace. So much life was gone without register. He never found definitive answer. Carl Hoffman, Munich, born in 1916, assigned to the camp near from Mulouse in 1942. After that, nothing. Missing, perhaps dead at the front, maybe executed, maybe left to live under a false identity. Impossible to know. Thomas finally gave up.
He got married. He had two children, but grandchildren, children who carry in them the blood of a German soldier and of a French prisoner. A mixture impossible, a story that we don’t not told in the history books, but a story that exists nonetheless. Thomas never held it against me. He has understood, or at least he tried.
He said to me one day “Mom, you did this what you had to do to survive and dad too. There is no shame in there, but I still carry shame every day. In 2007, years after the end of the war, I received a letter. She came from Germany from a woman named Greta. She Said to be Carl Hoffman’s niece. She said she found letters in his uncle’s business after his dead.
Letters he never had sent. letters addressed to a woman named Ése. Letters where he spoke of an impossible love, of a child he would never see, of a regret that he had haunted him until his dead. Carl died in 1989, 44 years after the end of the war. He had survived. He had lived in West Germany. He hadn’t never married.
He had never had other children. He had become architect as he had dreamed of before the war. He had built schools, libraries, houses. He had spent his life trying to fix this that he had seen being destroyed, but he never forgot. Greta said that he sometimes spoke of a woman French, that he woke up at night while crying, that he kept a photo blurred hair of a young woman short, taken clandestinely in a camp.
It was me. When I read this letter, I cried for three days. Thomas too. Because we understood that Carl hadn’t been punished for helping me, that he had survived, but that he had carried this weight all his life, that he never looked for us because he thought it was better that way, that he had chosen to remain alone rather than to expose ourselves.
Greta sent the letters, I read them all. 54 letters written over 20 years, all for me, none sent. In his letters he recounted his life after the war. Sound speedy trial in court military where he had been cleared, for want of of concrete evidence of treason, its return to destroyed Munique, the reconstruction, nightmares, guilt, the impossibility of loving new.
He wrote “Élise, if you read this one day, know that you were there only light in my life, the only pure thing that I have known. I don’t know not if our son was born, I don’t know if you survived. But I pray every days so yes. I pray that you have a better life than this that I could give you. He had reason.
I would never have accepted it in our life. Post-war France was too brutal. The people were too injured. We would have been destroyed all three. But reading these words, to know that he had thought of us, that he loved us until his death. It changed something. It closed a plaice that had been bleeding for sixty years.
Thomas wanted to go to Germany, meet Greta, see her grave father. I told him to go. Me, I don’t couldn’t. I was too old, too tired, too marked. He’s gone. He returned two weeks later with photos. Carl’s grave was simple. just his name, his dates, nothing else. But Thomas had posed flowers. He had spoken to his dead father. He told her that he didn’t blame her not, that he understood, that he hoped that he had found peace.
I am old now. I am 86 years old. My body is worn out, my hands tremble, my eyesight is failing, but my memory remains intact, cruel and intact. People ask me sometimes how I could survive everything that’s how I was able to continue afterwards having been through hell, after wearing a such a secret, after losing the man that I loved, without even having had the chance to say goodbye? I don’t don’t really know.
I think the body survives by instinct, even when the soul would like stop. Three years ago, in 2019, I agreed to do this interview. A French documentary filmmaker was working on the forgotten stories of the Second World War. The stories that did not fit into the official narrative, stories too complex, too gray, too disturbing.
He found me thanks to Thomas. He asked me if I wanted to testify. I hesitated for months then I accepted not for me, but for all those women who have no never been able to speak, for all these stories buried under shame and silence. Tell this story publicly, it was taking a risk huge. Even 74 years after the end of the war, judgments persist.
The children of B are still stigmatized in certain environments. The women who loved German soldiers are still treated as a traitor. But I I’m old, I’m no longer afraid. What can they do to me now? Judge me, condemn me? I I don’t care. I’ve survived worse. What I want people to understand, is that history is never simple, that during the war, millions of individual sights were took place under circumstances impossible, that some people have makes choices that defy logic usual morality.
Carl was a soldier German. Yes, he wore the uniform of the enemy. Yes, but he was also a man. A man who hated what he saw. a man who saved a life peril of his own. Does this excuse everything? No. Does this redeems the crimes committed by his country, by his army? No. But does Does this still count? Yes. For me. Yes. Thomas is now six years old.
He lives in Germany for fifteen years. He got reconciled with this part of himself. He met the family of Carles, distant cousins. people who knew nothing of our existence but who welcomed him as one of the theirs. He learned German. He has visit Munich. He walked in the streets where his father had grown up. He has tried to understand the man he didn’t never known.
And in this process he found a peace that I never have found. My grandchildren know now. They know the story complete. They don’t hide it. They carry with dignity. One of them, Julien studies history at university. He write a thesis on relationships banned during the Second War worldwide. He uses my story as case study.
He searches archives, testimonies, letters. He tries to give a voice to all those people whose no one wanted to speak. I am proud of him. Proud that he transforms our pain in knowledge. There are nights when I still dream of the camp. I dream cold barracks, screams, gunshots, emaciated faces of women who have disappeared.
I dream of cabin, kerosene lamp, Carl sitting in front of me, handing me a piece of bread. I dream of his hands soft placed on my swollen belly. I dream of the last time I saw him standing in the shadows, watching me rise in this truck. His face was calm, but his eyes said goodbye. “I knew.” He knew it. We all knew both that it was over.
Do I regret? People often ask me this question. Do I regret for falling in love with him? Is this that I regret having had this child? No. A thousand times no. Thomas is here best thing ever to me arrival. He is my redemption. He is there proof that even in the worst darkness, something beautiful can be born.
Carl saved my life and in return, I gave him a son, a son he never had known but which bears his name in his heart. It’s unfair, it’s tragic, but it’s the truth. I often think of all these stories that will never be never told. All these women who have experienced similar things but who died in silence. All these impossible love stories, of survival, betrayal, courage, war doesn’t just leave dead and ruins.
She leaves secrets, millions of secrets buried in graves anonymous, in broken hearts, in families who carry lies for generations. 3 months after recording this interview, I fell seriously sick, cancer, advanced. The doctors gave me a few months. Thomas is came to live with me. My grandchildren too. They surrounded me.
They held me the hand. They listened to my stories again and again. I was lucky. Many survivors die alone into oblivion. I had a family. A family born from the forbidden. A family that should never have existed, but which still exists. Before die, I asked Thomas to do something for me, to return to Germany, to post a photo of me on Carl’s grave.
A photo taken just before my arrest where I smile, where I am alive, where I am me. I wanted him to know, even after death that I had never forgotten him, that I never regretted it, that despite everything, despite the war, despite the hatred, despite the absurdity of our situation, we had experienced something real. Thomas did it.
He left in Germany with my grandchildren. They took the photo, they planted flowers, they spoke to Carl. They him said that his wife, although she had never legally married him, loved him until his last breath. They told him that his son had become a good man, that his little children carried his memory, that his sacrifice had not been in vain.
I died on November 12, 2022. I was six years old, years after the end of war, years after leaving this camp after running through this forest with a child in my womb and the name of Carl on my lips. My life has not been happy, but she was worthy. I have survived, I testified, I transmitted. Today, this interview that I have recorded three years ago is circulating.
Thousands of people saw it. Some understand. Others judge, it’s normal, everyone’s story is different. But what I want from you remember, it’s this. War does not create not just heroes and monsters. It creates human beings trapped in impossible situations. And sometimes, in the middle of the horror, two people find each other, love each other, run away mutually.
It’s not glorious, it’s is not simple, but it is human. If you have come this far, if you have listened to my story to the end, thank you. Thank you for not diverting the eyes. Thank you for accepting the complexity. Thank you for recognizing that even in absolute darkness, love can exist. Imperfect, forbidden, dangerous, but real.
I’m not asking for your sorry. I am not asking for your understanding. I just ask that you remember. That you remember us, all of us these women who suffered, from all these soldiers who doubted, of all these children born in the impossible. We existed. We still exist in the memories of what remains. And now I can leave. I can finally find Carl wherever he is.
If he exists something afterwards, I’ll go to him say what I could never say to him. I love you. THANKS. Pardon. Bye. 77 years is a long time to wait for these words, but maybe some expectations are worth it. Maybe certain loves cross time, death, oblivion. Maybe somewhere in a world that I don’t understand yet, he waiting for me with hot bread and a sad smile like this first night, like all the nights when we We stole a few hours from hell.
And maybe this time no one will come knocking at the door. This story you just heard is not not a fiction. This is Elise’s life Morau, a woman who survived the unthinkable and which carried a secret for years. A woman who loved the most forbidden place in the world. A woman who gave birth to a child in the ruins of war.
A woman who, until his last breath never forgot the German soldier who saved at the risk of his own life. Sound story does not appear in any book of history. She was never taught in schools, but it exists and it deserves to be heard. How many women like Élise are died in silence carrying their secret in the grave? How many stories of impossible love, of survival, of courage and sacrifice were buried under shame and judgment? How much children like Thomas grew up without find out who their father really was, carrying the weight of a lie
necessary? These stories exist. They have always existed but no one doesn’t want to talk about them because they are too complex, too gray, too human. If this story touched you, if it made you think, if it made you think reminded that history is never in black and white, then she accomplished her goal.
Élise left in 2022, but these words remain. These words are a testimony, a cry, a reminder. that behind each number, each war statistics, a lifetime ago, a real life with dreams, fears, loves, regrets and that these lives deserve to be honored even when they disturb our simplified vision of the story. This documentary exists thanks to to your support.
If you want these stories forgotten continue to be told, if you want other testimonials like that of Élise are preserved and shared, subscribe to this channel. Activate the notification bell. Share this video with those who have need to hear it because every view, every share, every comment is an act of memory.
It’s a way to say “I remember, you existed. Your story matters and now take a moment. Think about what you’re coming from to hear. What would you have done Elise’s place? Instead of Carl? Is it possible to love the enemy? Is it possible to find humanity in inhumanity? Leave a comment below. Tell us where from you watch this story.
Tell us how she made you feel. Tell us if you’ve ever heard of similar stories in your own family. Because these conversations are important, they prevent us to forget. They prevent us from repeat the mistakes of the past. Elise Morau is no longer here to tell his story, but you are here for listen to it.
And listening to it until end, by sharing it, by talking about it, you do something extraordinary. You give a forgotten woman a voice eternal. You prove that even the stories the most forbidden, the most painful, the most complex deserve to be heard. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Please do not not having looked away and above all thank you for remembering because so much that anyone remembers, they are not not really dead.
merci de vous souvenir parce que tant que quelqu’un se souvient, ils ne sont pas vraiment morts.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
