The Barracks Without a Name: Élise Duret’s Forbidden Testimony

 

 

 

My name is Élise Duret. January 23 1943 at dawn east of Tonville in Moselle occupied. I understood that he there are places where one does not enter for to be questioned but to be erased. The corridor was bare concrete, damp, frozen. The sound of hobnailed boots hit the slab. No footsteps, no hammer blows.

 I kept my eyes fixed to the ground. not out of fear, but because that it was the last place I could still choose to watch. My wrists were tied with wire oxidized, tight to the bone. The skin does not was bleeding even more. She was burning simply with a constancy which made every second seem endless. Next to me, six other women were advancing in single file.

 Silence ! None cried, none begged. In the Guestapo cellars, we we learned that tears only nourish the pleasure of the interrogators. We were classified as dangerous, nurse hiding Jewish children, messengers of resistance, peasants keeping weapons, mothers refusing to deliver their son to esto me, I had the smell of the hospital on the hands and lie in the throat.

 We were taken to a place that did not exist on no map. 3 km from the town, a former ammunition depot, desert in appearance living in the shadows. A young sergeant, Becker, pushed a heavy iron door. The squeak was long, sharp, like a wounded animal. I looked up. My stomach is returned. The interior was freezing, lit by dim bulbs.

 Of chains hung from the beams. At the end open manacles were waiting on the walls of dried traces and the smell rust urine sweat and something deeper. An embedded fear that leaves the place no more. Becker walked to the center. Eyes clear, childish, a metallic voice without emotion. You have silence. Marguerite, the oldest, dared to ask why.

 Becker responded with a smile technique as if he were describing a machine. Without another word, the soldiers started to tie us up. The icy metal squeezed my wrists, my waist, my ankles. The chains forced the body into a position impossible, neither standing nor sitting. Suspended, muscles in tension constant. When the door closed, the shock sounded like a gunshot and me, who had survived three interrogations, who had seen my sister shot in front of our house, I felt bring back something that I believed bury, absolute fear.

 I don’t know not how long I was hanging. Time was swallowed up by the pain. My shoulders were screaming, my arms became two torches and each heartbeat sent news wave of fire right into my fingers numb. They didn’t give us anything, not no water, no food, nothing except one tray placed in the center of the barracks, deliberately too far, like a joke to break the spirit.

 He was there to be seen, not to be reached. Thirst made the mouth pasty, heavy tongue and the cold air cut the breathing. Around me, other women held on to the strength of the ners. Simon murmured prayers, not to be saved, but to remain human. Helene stared at an invisible point as if she clung to an image that we wanted steal from him.

 Marguerite, she was breathing wrong, getting shorter and shorter with this discreet whistle which announces the fall long before she arrived. Becker came back sometimes. He didn’t hit not always. He was observing. He noted a notebook in hand, calm, methodical, like a doctor facing an experiment. And when he spoke, these words made more damage than blows because that they were pronounced without hatred, without anger, only with precision of a protocol.

“You still have three hours.” Then he looked at Marguerite as one looks a worthy candle. The night has eaten his strengths. In the morning, Marguerite was still hanging, eyes open, fixed towards nowhere. Nobody has it understood immediately. A soldier is came in, put two fingers on his neck, shook his head and wrote on a press paper: “Cardiac collapse due to extreme stress, recording validated.

a paper, a sentence, an erased life. Then the same voice, the same coldness, this time again. Let’s see how much comes to the end. At this moment, something Something broke inside me. Not the will, no, but the illusion that we were still people in their own eyes. We were numbers, durations, results. I felt the rage rising, a rage black, heavy, and I kept it inside like a blade.

 I got myself forced to look differently. Schedules soldiers, their hesitations, their look towards the door. They were nervous. There was tension in the air, a fear that they were trying to simulate. And very far, almost at the beginning imaginary, I heard explosions dull, regular. The ground vibrated pain, but my heart understood him.

 The allies were approaching. I didn’t say anything. Giving hope here could kill. Yet, deep inside me, a spark lit up, tiny, forbidden, but alive. If they were afraid, then we still had a chance. The explosions were getting closer. This time, it was no longer a doubt or a illusion born of suffering. The ground shook slightly beneath me.

bare feet. A deep vibration that went up through the chains into my waters. The soldiers entered and came out faster. Their voices were more acute, cut, full of emergency that he no longer controlled. In their sudden gestures, I read the panic. Simon had stopped praying. She she also listened with widened eyes by a new light.

Even the one that already seemed lost sometimes raised his head, attracted by this distant rumbling that smelled of the end of something. Becker returned with four soldiers. His face was pale, beaded with sweat despite the cold. He announced with a dry voice order for immediate evacuation. All appendices drink be destroyed.

 No witness should survive. The words fell like stones. I felt my heart contract violently. It was no longer a threat abstract, it was a sentence. Around me, a woman left let out a muffled moan. A another closed his eyes as if to already withdraw from the world. I refused to die in silence. A strength that I didn’t know me through my chest.

 I raised my head and spoken. My voice was harsh, unrecognizable, but firm. Kill us now, but know that you will carry this until the last day of your lives. Every face here will follow you. Silence invaded the barracks. Becker looked at me for a long time. In his clear eyes, I saw a crack open up. No fear for himself, but a doubt, a hesitation almost painful.

Behind him, the soldiers waited orders. The explosions rang out closer, making the light bulbs vibrate suspended. Finally, Becker turned to his men. Come out, wait outside. They have hesitated, surprised then obeyed. The door closed. We were left alone with him. He approached slowly. Each step reasoned like a countdown countdown.

 From his pocket he took out a small key. His hand was trembling. He has whispered more for him than for me. I I’m not a monster, but I have been learned to obey. His fingers found the lock of my chains. The click resonated in everything my body. The metal fell to the ground with a liberating crash. The blood came back in my grips like a tide burning.

 I was brave but I held on standing. without looking at me he said “You have five minutes, take the ones that can walk. 200 m down the road main, a supply truck. Hide if you can.” I have managed to say a word. For what ? He froze with his hand on the door. because that I have a sister, she would have your age.

 And he walked out, leaving me with five minutes and the crushing weight of a choice between life and abandonment. 5 minutes. The word echoed in my head like a cruel metronome. Every second fell with physical weight. I am thrown towards Simone, my fingers still numb, looking for the lock rusty. The key resisted then gave way in a dry crack. The chain fell and Simon collapsed on her knees, sucking in air like if she came back from very far away.

 “Standing !” I whispered, “Now, Helen had already understood. Freed in turn, she joined me to untie the others. Our movements were quick, disordered, guided by the fear of seeing the door opens again. Two women were able to get up, trembling but conscious. The last two hung inert, their heads tilted the side.

 I approached the closest young, a blonde with a sunken face. Its breathing was so weak that she already seemed to belong to someone else world. Helene whispered behind me. We can’t wear them. These words were a cold blade but true. Time was strangling us. I am kneeling. I placed my hand on the cold cheek of the young woman. Forgive me and I whispered.

Abandoning someone like this something in me. But stay meant dying all together. There were four of us when we opened the door. The cold of the night hit us like a slap in the face. Snow fell from the street. The wind howled between buildings. In the distance, the explosions illuminated the sky with orange lights.

We ran or rather stumbled in the dark. Every step was a torture. Our muscles were screaming, our lungs were burning. Simone fell first time, then a second. Helene lifted her up without a word. Behind us, one of the women stopped, unable to go further. She stayed at knees in the snow. We don’t we’re not going back.

 If we had it fact, we would never have succeeded in leave. The road appeared before us and with she the massive supply truck, motionless. Two soldiers are smoking nearby, their silhouettes cut out in the night. We fell behind crates, the heart beating so hard that I was sure he could hear it. One of them turned his head, you heard? The other grabbed his rifle.

 The world shrank to this movement. Then suddenly the truck’s engine sputtered and launched. The vehicle began to riding alone, sliding down the slope. Without thinking, we jumped. My hands grabbed the metal edge. My arms screamed in pain as they hoisted me up at the back. Gunshots burst.

 The air whistled past my shoulder. A bullet hit me but we were in it. The truck rolled down the road in a crazy race. Hooked on the walls, we cried and laughed. For the first time in hours, a clear thought crossed my mind. We were still alive. The truck drove at full speed through the night, shaken by every stone in the road. We were crowded in the back, clinging to the walls as if our lives depended on the strength of our fingers.

Nobody spoke. Our breaths altantes filled the space. Proof fragile that we still exist. Then a brutal shock tore the silence. The truck hit a fallen tree across the road. We have been projected forward. My head hit the metal. A white pain broke out behind my eyes. Simon groaned. During one second, everything turned.

 Helene noted first. Get out. We have jumped into the deep snow which went up to the knee. The cold bit skin like teeth. Around us, the forest breathed in the darkness. And suddenly, paths sprang up between the trees, not German, French. Armed figures emerged, cautious, tense, resistant. A man with gray beard approached.

When he saw us, his face changed decomposed. My god, where are you from? I wanted to answer, but no sound didn’t come out. My throat closed up. Everything I had remembered for years hours, months perhaps, fell on me. My legs gave way. I am fell to his knees and the world ended. When I looked back, I was lying in a warm, lit room by a soft lamp.

 The smell of bread fresh air hung in the air. A woman dabbed the forehead with a cloth damp. His hands were slow, reassuring. “You are safe,” she said. whispered. The Germans fled. Allies are there. The words sank in slowly if they had to cross layers of fear before it reaches my mind. I have turned his head. Simon was on a neighboring bench, Hélène too.

 The The woman was breathing weakly, but she lived. At this moment, something something cracked inside me. Tears flowed silently, uncontrollably. No sobs, only a flow hot which carried away part of the night we had just gone through. We were four survivors on a farm isolated, protected by strangers who risked their lives for ours.

 But deep inside me, a heavy truth remained motionless. Two women were remained suspended in this barracks unnamed. Their absence weighed more than our survival. We remained hidden on this farm for weeks. The resistance fighters kept watch armed, silent like shadows protective. We were washed, fed, neat.

 The heat was slowly returning in our bodies, but inside, the cold persisted. Every night I woke up start, convinced of feeling again the chains bite my wrists. Simon sometimes cried in his sleep. Hélène stayed awake for long hours, sitting by the window, watching the darkness as if the past could come back by walking. Then liberation came like a sound distant which suddenly becomes real.

 The bells rang in the villages. The German soldiers were retreating. One morning, the resistance told us: “You can go home.” I am returned to Tionville with a heart too heavy on my body. Ma was always standing. The door creaked as before. To inside, the emptiness hit me more louder than any scream. My sister had been shot the previous year.

My parents had disappeared without a trace. I stood in the middle of the room, unable to move, surrounded objects that belonged to a life that no longer existed. The following days, I cleaned with persistence almost violent. I was washing the windows, I swept the dust as if put things in order around me could fix what was broken inside. Nothing changed.

 I worked where I could, sewing, cleaning and people looked at me with a pity. gentle. He said: “Poor Élise, he knew nothing about the barracks, chains, women suspended between life and death. Even with Simone and Hélène, when we met, we let’s not talk. We would be there hand, we looked into each other’s eyes and that was enough.

 The silence was become our armor. The years have past. I met a man, a former prisoner of war. He was limping lightly and never posed unnecessary questions. He understood the silences. We got married, we we had two children. I learned to smile on the surface, to be a mother, a wife, neighbor. But every night the barracks returned, the light bulbs weak, the smell of rust, the face motionless of Marguerite and always there same promise beat in my chest.

One day, I will speak for those who remained there. The years have slipped like a long silent winter. I saw my children grow up, running around the garden, laughing without knowing the weight that I was wearing. I taught them to to read, to respect others, to believe in the goodness of the world, but I have no never told about the barracks.

When he asked me for war, I I only replied: “It was hard, but it’s over. It was never over.” At night, I woke up soaked in sweat, wrists burning as if the chains had not returned. My husband took me in his arms without asking questions. He stayed there until my breathing calms down. He knew that he there was a closed room inside me that should not force.

In 1987, the illness took him away. He held me hand all the way and whispered: “You have been stronger than anything. Rest now. But I couldn’t rest. After his departure, the house is become too big, too silent. I gardened, I read, I knitted and yet the barracks remained intact in my memory like a frozen place outside time.

 In 1995, Simone is dead. Helene too, some years later. They left without having spoken. Their silence deepened mine until it make it unbearable. Then in 2005, a young historian knocked on my door. She was working on clandestine places of detention near from Tionville. She found my name in an old Johnny register.

 She told me asked if I would agree to testify. I refused several times. I had more 80 years old. What’s the point of reopening injuries? But she came back with a stubborn sweetness. One day she told me “If you don’t speak, this place will disappear with you and those who are dead will be forgotten twice.” These words hit home.

 I understood that my silence still protected the barracks more than the women who had destroyed it. So I said yes. We installed a recorder in my living room near the window. When I started to speak, my voice was trembling. Then the memories flowed, precise, sharp, the chains, the hunger, fear and the trembling key of Becker.

 These simple words, because there has a sister. I was crying. The historian cried too, but for the first once the pain found a way the exterior. She ceased to be only mine. The documentary is released in 2008. It was called The unnamed barracks. When I saw him for the first time sitting in a small dark room surrounded strangers, I had the impression of watch the life of another woman.

Yet each image beat in my chest like a second heart. After the diffusion, letters arrived by hundreds. Families of the missing, former resistance fighters, young people who discovered this story for first time. Some wrote “Ma grandmother was there. She never spoken. Now I understand. Others simply said “Please don’t having forgotten”.

 I responded to as many letters that my tired hands tell me allowed. I was invited to schools, high schools, universities. I spoke in front of young faces and silent. I showed them photos. I told them about the cold, the chains, the decision of a man in the middle of the inhuman. One day a boy asked me “You Have you forgiven Becker?” I thought long before responding.

 Forgive? No, but understand a little. He did a human gesture in a place that wasn’t and that matters. The years following were calm. I lived surrounded by my children and my grandchildren in my little house of Alsace. When the end drew near, they were all there, their hands shaking mine. Before closing my eyes, I saw the damp corridor again, the noise of boots, the still face of Marguerite, the prayers of Simone, the Helene’s strength and the trembling key in Becker’s hand.

 I thought about both women left hanging in the shadows and I felt a fragile peace. We had survived and above all we had spoken. To you who now wear this story, I leave this. The war takes almost everything, dignity, freedom, what we love. But she doesn’t can’t take the memory if we we refuse to let her die. Speak, it is to resist.

 Silence protects executioners, the word protects the victims. Remember that at the very heart of hell, a human being can still choose. When will it be your turn to choose between blind obedience and your conscience, choose it consciousness. This is where our humanity. I am Élise Duret. I survived the unnamed barracks.

 I survived thanks to with a key and thanks to memory. Yeah.