My childhood passed between undulating vineyards and vast wheat fields, dotted with the simple joy of Sunday gatherings and the rhythm of the coral masses. My mother baked fresh bread every morning, filling our home with warmth, while my father meticulously repaired clocks in his small workshop. My older sisters, Aurore and Séverine, embodied everything I understood out of unconditional love. Aurore was nineteen years old and harbored the silent ambition to become a teacher in a local school. Séverine, twenty-one, spent the afternoons embroidering elegant white dresses for ceremonies she would never attend.
In those days of peace, he wanted nothing but time to stop, in the hope that the international conflict that plagued the continent would not affect our quiet valley. But the reality of the occupation finally hit us in June 1942. They came to arrest us without warning. We were not political dissidents or had committed any administrative infringement; we were simply young citizens who lived in the wrong place during an incredibly turbulent period of history. A uniformed regional officer aggressively knocked on our wooden door at dawn.
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My mother fell to her knees, desperately, as my father tried in vain to talk to the staff, but they violently pushed him against the plaster wall. Three soldiers dragged my sisters and me outside, just as the morning sun rose above the fields, fields we would never see again in the same way. They threw us abruptly into the back of a truck, covered with a worn-out and grease-stained tarp. Several women in the neighborhood were already in the vehicle; they were all young and paralyzed by fear. Nobody said a word.
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The descent to the installation without signaling.
The only sound during that first journey was the collective and drowned howl of the prisoners. I held Aurore’s hand so tightly that I felt the rapid heartbeat against my palm, while Séverine murmured a prayer. Transportation gave violently sung on rural roads without paving, while the oppressive smells of fear, rancid sweat and exhaust gases filled the enclosed space. We didn’t know where we were going, or if we’d ever go back to the valley. The only thing we knew with absolute certainty was that a fundamental chapter of our lives had shattered that morning, a chapter that would never come back.
The facility was under the direct and absolute authority of a high-ranking regional military commander, Colonel Friedrich Von Steiner. He was forty-two, gray hair carefully combed back, a rigid posture and an always calm voice. He never raised his voice in anger, nor did he resort to physical violence. He gave his daily instructions with a courteous and leisurely tone, as if it were a simple social request.
That absolute lack of emotion was the scariest aspect of his behavior. Von Steiner led the field of work with the cold efficiency of a private company.
The facilities operated according to strict internal hierarchies and severe disciplinary measures that required no verbal explanation; each prisoner understood the implicit consequences of disobeying an order. He himself assigned specific tasks to each newcomer and chose who would work in the kitchens, who would be in charge of the maintenance of the accommodations of the officers, who would repair the military clothes and who would be reserved for private administrative functions.
The weight of absolute control.
No official ever explained the exact nature of those private assignments, but an underlying sense of fear was hovering over the barracks. For the first few weeks, my sisters and I tried to go unnoticed. We performed our physical tasks in complete silence, kept our gaze fixed on the ground and actively avoided meeting the staff of the field. However, Von Steiner remained constantly present and observing. He would regularly pass by the ranks of workers during the mandatory morning list pass, deliberately stopping his gaze on specific people. It was not a look of common human emotion; it was a look of total and unwavering possession.
One afternoon, the reality of our vulnerability became painfully evident. Two guards showed up at the entrance of our wooden barracks and called Séverine. He rose from his wooden bed with great slowness, with his limbs visibly trembling, and gave us a last penetrating look at Aurore and me before crossing the threshold. I will never forget the expression of his eyes: a silent farewell, a deep supplication of strength and an expression of sheer fear. He returned to his room at dawn, in complete silence. He refused to talk about the encounter, simply lay on the bare wooden boards and turned his back on the room. When Aurore tried to comfort her, Séverine instinctively backed down, as if waiting for a blow. I sat on the cold soil of earth and felt as an essential part of my youth crumbled.
Three weeks later, the guards returned for Aurore, and finally called me. I prefer not to describe the explicit details of those nighttime encounters, not out of a deep sense of shame, but because certain violations are so serious that, even decades later, they are no longer easy to describe. Suffice it to say that Von Steiner did not need to resort to manifest physical coercion; absolute and asymmetrical power relations within the institution were more than sufficient to impose obedience.
When the winter cold came to the camp, I found out that I was pregnant. The malnutrition had left me very thin and my hair was rapidly weakening, but my body was changing unmistakably. Soon, the terrifying reality hit me: Aurore and Séverine were going through exactly the same thing. Three sisters, three simultaneous pregnancies, all begotten by the same figure of authority.
The atmosphere in the field was plunged into a sepulchral silence when the news spread through the barracks. The other prisoners looked at us with a mixture of deep compassion, latent horror and relief for having escaped our fate. Even the normally strict guards seemed visibly uncomfortable in our presence and avoided direct eye contact during their daily tasks. Von Steiner, however, remained unmoved by the situation. He summoned the three of us to his headquarters on a cold afternoon in February. We stood in front of his polished wooden desk while he reviewed and methodically signed official documents, without initially realizing our presence.
Finally, he looked up and spoke fluently in French.
“You will remain in this center to give birth,” he said calmly. “The child shall be officially registered as a minor under the guardianship of the State and immediately transferred to designated families within the country. You will return to your assigned functions as soon as you are considered physically capable.”
