Why German soldiers chained three French prisoners to a frozen lake

 

 

 

I spent 64 years trying to erase memory of the feeling of icy iron, cutting into my wrists while the water rose up to my throat. This is for me never succeeded. At 85 years old I I wake up every morning with my body tight, like I’m still getting caught up in this lake.

 My skin hasn’t forgotten, my bones haven’t forgotten, and for decades I wore it silence is like a sentence. But today for the first time I’ll tell you what’s really happened that night in January 1944, when three French girls were tied together with a friend and thrown into a frozen lake in the heart of Nazi Germany. And I will also tell you what no one else never knew how I survived and why, in the end I chose to stay close with one of the men who took me there placed.

My name is Lucien Moreau. When the war took me out of my life, I was 21 year My sister Yvonne was 19. We were born and raised in Abusson, small town in the center of France, famous for its hand-made gabilns. These works of art were woven thread by thread thread in centuries-old workshops, where time, seemed to have stopped long before as the world descended into madness.

 My father was a weaver, like his father before him, and his father’s father. His hands were calloused, marked by years painstaking work. My mother lived at home repaired neighbors’ clothes, embroidered tablecloths for weddings. Life was simple, predictable, safe. I worked in a small municipal library located in a half-timbered house near the Cres River.

 to me I liked the smell of old books, soothing winter silence afternoon, feeling touching pages that are up to I was turned over by dozens of hands. Yvon helped my mother. She was softer me, more patient, more dreamy. She wanted to become teacher. She loved children and spent my Sundays talking im stories under the trees on the central area.

We had the usual simple plans: get married, have children, grow old in this mountainous region where everyone knew each other friend, where families greeted each other after the mass, where the seasons were rhythmically determined life more confidently than any watch. The war seemed distant, a matter of great cities, politicians in suits, generals around the cards.

We heard the news on the radio, we read newspapers, but it all seemed unreal, like a play played on stage, too far to reach us until it is ceased to be so until the war crossed the threshold of our house and didn’t grabbed us by the throat. It was one morning in October 1943, when everything collapsed.

 I cataloged books, sitting at his desk by the window, going out into the square when I heard as the trucks arrive. I don’t need had to look outside to understand. Sound was different, heavy, metal, threatening. It was such a sound whose blood runs cold even before how the brain will understand why. Motors they roared like mechanical beasts.

 Brakes creaked, doors slammed dry cruelty. These were German cars. They stopped in the central square. The soldiers came out of them. Their boots were knocking along the pavement. Their sharp voices cut morning silence, like a blade. They were screaming orders. The names were read aloud from list which one of them kept in hand. My name was on this list.

 Name Yvonne too. There were no official no charges, no trial, no explanations. Just an order to collect what what could fit in a small suitcase and get into the truck immediately. My mother tried to hold me back. She stretched out her hands, her face distorted with horror, which I have never seen from her. Lips trembled, unable to utter words.

The soldier roughly pushed her away. She fell on knees. My father remained motionless paralyzed, with eyes full of tears, which he did not allow himself to spill, because he was from that generation men who believed that crying – this is weakness. But I saw his chest rose too quickly. His hands were clenched into trembling fists along the body.

That was the last time I saw them. I got into the truck next to Yvonne. She trembled all over. I even if you come back, for weeks I did everything that could to remain invisible. I worked quickly, kept his head down. I didn’t talk and there she did the same. But in this a place like Ravensprück, to be invisible there was never enough.

 One on the evening of January 1944, a security guard accused Yvon of stealing a piece of bread from kitchen. This was not true. Yvon never I wouldn’t take that risk, but it’s not made no difference. The guard decided that she is guilty, and I am trying to to defend, also became guilty. Third woman, French named Marguerite, was accused along with us.

 I feel bad about her knew. She was about 30 years old. She had tired eyes and a scar crossing the left cheek. She almost never spoke. B That evening we were ordered to leave the barracks. It was snowing. The cold was brutal. Such cold that bites the skin within a few seconds Three guards made us go through the camp, then behind the barbed wire to the lake.

 When I saw black water shimmering under the moon, I realized: “Mine my heart stopped, my legs gave out move on. The guard pushed me. And Vonna was crying next to me. Margarita was silent. The look was empty, as if she already accepted what was meant to be happen. We were forced to stand on knees at the water’s edge.

 Then they took out chains. Heavy metal chains, rusty, icy. They tied mine right wrist to left wrist Yvonne, then Yvonne’s right wrist to Margarita’s left wrist. We were tied, chained to each other, not capable of disconnecting. One of the guards said something in German, what I didn’t understand. The other one laughed. Then they pushed us into the water.

 There was water so cold that in the first seconds I I didn’t feel anything, just shock. Emptiness, as if my body had stopped exist. Then came pain, unusual pain. pain, which burned from the inside, as if every every cell in my body screamed at the same time. My lungs constricted. My heart was beating so fast that I thought it would explode.

And Vonna screamed. Margarita was out of breath. We fought but the chains were pulling us down. The water was rising first to the waist, then to the shoulders, then to the chin. We raised our heads as high as we could desperately trying to keep our mouths and noses above surface. Our feet slid on the rocks at the bottom.

Our bodies shook so hard that the chains rang in the dark. The guards remained on the shore. They were smoking cigarettes. They laughed. They talked to each other as if we were it was as if we were nothing. From time to time one of them shouted: “Insult or did obscene gesture.” But mostly they we were ignored.

 We were just entertainment, punishment among many others. He knew what the cold did. He knew how long does it take for the body to start fade away. They’ve done this before, a lot times. I don’t know how long we’ve been stayed in this water. An hour maybe two. Time no longer existed. Was only cold.

 The cold that gnawed at my bones. The cold that devastated my thoughts. The cold that turned my body into something alien, heavy, useless. And the first one began to lose consciousness. Her head bowed, eyes closed. I shouted her name. I pulled the chains to lift it, but my own body no longer obeyed. Margaret too I tried, but she was weaker than me.

 We slowly drowned together, chained chains. At that moment I heard a voice eyes, no shout, no order. Calm, an almost soft voice that spoke in German. I looked up. The soldier stood on the shore. He was young, maybe 25 years old, with short-cropped blond hair and serious face. He wore a standard Wehrmacht uniform.

 He talked to others security guards. They answered by shaking shoulders and laughing. But he didn’t laugh, he insisted. His voice became firmer. The rest, eventually they fell silent. One of them spat on the ground, then walked away. Two others followed him. Soldier went down into the water. He didn’t look at us eyes. He didn’t talk to us.

 He’s just grabbed the chains and began to pull us towards shore. My feet no longer touched the bottom. I was too weak to walk. Margaret collapsed as soon as we left the water, and she could barely breathe. The soldier dragged us to small wooden shelter by the lake. He opened the door and let us in. Inside there was a blanket, only one.

 He left her at us without a single word. Then he left. I I heard his footsteps moving away snow. We were left there, trembling, half dead, incapable talk. That night Margarita died. She never woke up. Her body is just went out like a candle. Yvonne and I survived, but there was something in us broken. The next morning the same soldier returned. He looked at us silently.

Then he said in broken French: “You don’t have to say anything.” I nodded. And she was too weak to move. He took us back to camp. Nobody asked questions, nobody didn’t care what happened. In this place like Ravens Bruck, death and survival was just a matter of chance. But this soldier, this man who could would leave us to die, made a choice, and this choice changed everything.

 I didn’t even know his name. For weeks after that night I only saw it from afar, always in shape, always surrounded other soldiers. He was patrolling in camp, like the rest. He gave orders. He wore the same gray-green the same shape as those who threw us into ice water. But every time our glances crossed, even fleetingly, even for a split second, there was something.

 Not pity. Pity would be insulting and no guilt. There would be a feeling of guilt too simple, too superficial. It was something quieter, more deep, like mutual recognition, like as if he saw in me what I saw in him. Human being stuck in a nightmare he didn’t choose trying to save what’s left of his humanity together, created for its methodical destruction.

 And out it took weeks to recover. She developed severe a lung infection that caused her I coughed day and night. hoarse and a rending cough that made you tremble her whole body. She spat blood at the rag that I hid so that the guards did not see, knowing that any visible weakness was mortal sentence in this place. At night I held her close to me so that share what was left of the warmth in our bodies.

 hard eyes and exhausted body. I begged her to hold on don’t give up, keep breathing, even when every breath felt like a blow from the inside. I promised her that one day all this it will end that we will return to Abuçon, that we will again see the mountains, the river, the paved the streets of our childhood. I didn’t know if I believed in my own words, but that was all I could suggest.

 Comforting lies whispered in the icy darkness of a barracks where there are 200 women died slowly. One February evening when I was returning from the factory with a group exhausted prisoners walking into a silent column through the dirty snow, the soldier signaled for me to follow him. My heart stopped. Cold, excellent from the winter, pierced me.

 I thought that he’s going to give me away, what is he is going to punish me that our a brief moment of shared humanity lake was just an illusion, and that now he will make me pay for what I do survived. Other prisoners looked at me empty, doomed eyes, accustomed see their girlfriends disappear without explanations.

 But the soldier took me to empty administrative building, far from prying eyes, into a cold room, smelling of musty paper and ink. He closed the door behind us. Then, without saying not a word, he took a piece out of his pocket bread, real bread. Unrotten crumbs infested with weevils that They gave it to us at the camp. almost fresh white bread, from which still came faint smell of yeast.

 I looked at bread. Then I looked at him. He avoided my gaze, staring at the invisible point over my shoulder, as if he it was a shame. Then he said on this clumsy, hesitant French, with thick German accent, which distorted the words: “Eat.” One single word, an order that sounded almost like a plea. I didn’t know that do. My mind was fighting with itself.

Accepting food from the enemy – that was a betrayal of everything I believed in. It was a collaboration. It was submission. But I was so hungry. And out I was so hungry. My hands were shaking, my my stomach was screaming. And at this moment, frozen between pride and survival, I made a choice. I took the bread.

 He nodded briefly and sharply, then left without saying another word, closing the door behind him with an unexpected softness. This was just the beginning. B the next months he continued to tell me help. Always unnoticed, always dangerous. He slipped me food when no one else looked hidden in folded newspapers or wrapped in a rag, several potatoes, a piece of sausage, sometimes just a handful sugar stolen from officers’ kitchens.

He distracted the attention of other guards, when Ivona was too weak to work, coming up with excuses, creating a distraction. One day he faked medical report so she won’t be sent to the infirmary. This is the white building where almost no one returned. He crossed out her number from the lists, replacing her name is in the name of a now deceased prisoner.

I didn’t understand why he went to such lengths risk why he put his life danger for the sake of two French women, which were officially just numbers in registry One day when we were alone in the dark corridor of the main building between two patrols, I asked him the question directly. My voice was barely audible.

Why? He hesitated for a long time. His eyes searched empty corridor, checking that no one is might hear us. Then he told me almost in a whisper: “I have a sister, she your age.” That was all. no additional explanations, no moral justifications, no talk about good and evil. Just these few words.

 And in some way I mean, that was enough. It was even more powerful than any big there could be a speech because I understood he saw his sister in me, and saving maybe he was trying to save something in yourself, something that the war is not yet completely destroyed, but help prisoner or fruit of the hours of mystery preparation.

 Then he looked straight at me into his eyes, and I saw something in him broke. Humility, acceptance. He said, “Broken voice.” There’s nothing more I can do. Go away now. I didn’t have time to thank him. I didn’t cry. I just woke Yvonne up put a dress on her, and we went to cold night, having overcome a section of prickly wire, which he had previously cut and left it open for us.

The last thing I saw was him motionless figure in the dark, looking, as we disappear into the forest. We walked for 3 days, hiding in ditches, avoiding main roads. We stole food from abandoned farms. We drank water from streams. And she could barely stand, but she walked, because she knew that if stops, we both die.

 April 30 In 1945, part of the Red Army found us. They took us to a refugee camp. They gave us food, a blanket, medical help. We were free, but freedom was not had the taste that I imagined represented. She tasted of emptiness loss, absence. We returned to France 2 months later. Oyuson no longer existed as he was I remembered him. Our house was requisitioned.

Our parents were dead. My father from a heart attack, my the mother is out of grief, according to neighbors. Yvon and I tried to restore something, but she never recovered. She died in 1952 at the age of 27 from pneumonia. Doctors they said her lungs never recovered from the cold. I survived, I wore take the lake with you every day, every night.

In 1947 I received a letter. It was from Germany. It was him, the soldier. He survived the war. He lived in a small town, not far from Munich. He wrote to tell me that he often thinks about to me that he hopes that I have everything it’s good that he regrets everything that happened.

 I didn’t answer right away, but I I saved the letter. He continued to me write: “Once a year it’s always the same: news about his life, questions about mine.” No apologies, no excuses only words. In 1950 I replied: “I don’t know why. Maybe because that I was alone. Maybe because he was the only person in the world who understood what I was going through.

” We started corresponding. Then in 1953 he came to France. We met in cafe in Paris. It was strange, painful, but also strangely familiar. He was no longer soldier I was no longer a prisoner. We were just two broken people trying to figure out how to continue living. I returned with him to Germany. We married in 1954 year. Many people judged me.

 Mine my own family rejected me. Friends turned away from me. They called me traitor, collaborator. But they didn’t know. They weren’t in this lake. They didn’t see what he did. They don’t understood that sometimes survival and love are born in the darkest places. We lived together for 46 years. He died in 2000 year.

 I didn’t cry because I forgot what he represented, but because he became something else. To those who me I saw who saved me, who chose humanity, although I could choose obedience. Today at the age of 85 I I know that my life will never be understood. Some will say that I betrayed mine homeland. It’s others who will say that I’m just survived.

 I say I did everything I could with what I was given and that forgiveness sometimes it doesn’t come from outside, it comes from the inside. The lake is still there. I’m back in Ravensbrück once in 1998. The camp became a memorial. The lake is quiet and calm. But when I approached the water, I felt how the cold returns. My hands shook my heart sank and I realized that I would never I won’t get rid of this.

 Not really, because some things are not are cured. They just become part of who you are. 5 years after this interview with Lyusina Maura died in her sleep. She was 90 years old. She never regretted her choices and I never forgot the lake. >> The story of Lucenna Mora does not appear in any one school textbook. Her name appears on no monument to the dead.

For 64 years she wore this silence like a wound that never healed, until I finally found the courage speak. 5 years later after that interview she died peacefully in her sleep, taking with him the last echoes of that January night 1944. But her the testimony continues to sound, reminding us that behind every number, behind every military statistic hides whole life.

 Woman who was 21 year, sister, daughter, person who deserved to live. What Lucienne experienced in this frozen lake, goes beyond understanding. But perhaps even more alarming is the choice she did after the war. Marry the man who wore her uniform torturers. live with him, build a life next to him. Many condemned her, many condemned, not knowing the hunger that devours from the inside.

 The cold that is the soul, the horror that paralyzes every thought. Lucien didn’t ask for she was understood. She just asked to admit that she survived the only way way and that sometimes in absolute darkness humanity is found where there is none you are waiting. Her story compels us ask questions we prefer would be avoided.

 Could we forgive someone who hurt us, if in the decisive moment he chose to save us? Where is the border? Between betrayal and survival between cooperation and compassion, between revenge and redemption? Lyusin I’ve been wondering the same thing for decades questions and until the last breath and not I found a definitive answer.

 Only confidence that she did what what should I have done to continue to live to honor the memory his sister. and won, so as not let the lake completely absorb her. >> This documentary exists for so that stories like Lyusin’s don’t disappeared into oblivion so that future generations knew what was really happened in these camps, far from official speeches and simplified stories, every testimony of survivors is an irreplaceable treasure, discovered window into an era we’ve never seen must forget. But these voices fade away

one by one. Every year we lose dozens of direct witnesses of this period. Soon only documents will remain, photographs, recordings. Therefore it is important continue to tell, save, transmit. If this story touched you, if it made you wonder if she awakened something in you that you had forgotten or ignored, we invite you support this conservation work memory.

 Subscribe to this channel to learn about other equally powerful and little-known evidence of how Ulyuenny. Turn on notifications so you don’t miss nothing new documentary film. Each subscription every view, every spread allows you to finance research, interview other survivors while it wasn’t too late. Give give the voice of those whom the official history I forgot.

 Your support is not easy symbolic gesture. It’s an act resistance to accusation. Leave comment saying where you are watching from this documentary. Share with your thoughts. Tell us if this history responds to something you experienced, heard or felt. Comments create community a space where stories are heard continue to live and cause the necessary conversations.

 Some of you are writing from France, others from Algeria, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland or from around the world, that we could never imagine. Every message is important. Each testimony enriches our collective understanding of what it means to be a person in front of inhuman. Ask yourself this question before leaving: what if it were you? A if you were Lucien, chained in this lake, feeling like your body goes numb seeing your sister faints next to you, so that you did if the enemy extended his hand to you in the dark? If only you had enough strength

forgive, courage to choose life instead hatred? Lucienne lived with these questions for 64 years. Now >> they belong to you because, facing these impossible moral dilemmas, we really Let’s learn what it means to be human. AND listening to stories like this, we remember why we never, never must allow history to repeat itself.

Thank you for listening to the end. >>Thank you for your support Lucien Mora respect and attention, which she deserved during her life, but which she I never received it completely. Her story probably won’t leave you anytime soon time. It’s normal, it’s even because that the stories that haunt us are those that change us.

 Subscribe, comment, share. And, most importantly, never forget, the lake is still there. Barbed wire and still a pair of trousers stands, turned into a memorial. But for now we tell these stories while we we refuse to look away, those who suffered, never die for real. They live in our memory and this is our sacred duty.

 Store them there alive.