The following days were a fog of pain and fear. Lying on the straw, I was unable to move. My skin was covered in burns. But inside me, my son continued to move. Each kick was a reason to hold on, a reason not to give up.
Every morning, soldiers came in and took away women who never returned or who returned broken. Claire Delonet, the nurse, was taken away a week after me. When she came back, she no longer spoke. Her gaze was empty. Three days later, she miscarried in the middle of the night.
Claire held the small, lifeless body for hours, rocking it and singing it a lullaby. Then she laid it in a corner and lay down beside it. It never woke up. I don’t know if it died of grief or an infection, but I know it was her choice to go.
Food was scarce. We were given a bowl of thin broth once a day. Pregnant women began to lose weight; their faces became gaunt, their arms turned into branches. Some lost their teeth. And the soldiers watched us constantly, treating us like laboratory animals.
One evening, I heard a faint voice coming from the next compartment. It was Marguerite, four months pregnant. She whispered, “Madeleine, do you think we’ll ever get out of here?” I wanted to lie to her, but I couldn’t. I simply replied, “We’ll try. As long as we’re breathing, we’ll fight.”
The weeks passed. My son was growing, but my body was weakening. I was constantly dizzy. One morning, my legs gave way. A widow named Simone helped me to my feet and said, “You don’t have much time left, my dear. Your body is failing you.”
Then, one December morning, as the snow began to fall, I felt a dull ache in my lower back. I knew immediately. Labor had begun. I was eight months pregnant. My baby was going to arrive too soon. I called for help, but no one came.
Simone and two other women gathered around me. They had no equipment, no clean scissors, no sterile linen, nothing but their hands and their courage. The labor lasted all day. The pain was unbearable. I begged her to stop, but in vain.
When he was finally born at dusk, he didn’t cry. He was so tiny, his skin was blue, and his eyes were closed. For a terrible moment, I thought he was dead. But then Simone patted him on the back, and suddenly, a little cry escaped him. He was alive.
I held him in my arms, trembling and exhausted. I named him Lucien, because it means light. He was a flickering glimmer in this hell that refused to go out. The days following his birth were the hardest. I had no milk. My body was too weak to produce it.
Lucien was getting thinner. His skin had become translucent. I knew he was going to die. One evening, an old lady I didn’t know handed me a piece of dry bread and a raw potato, whispering, “Chew this, then give it to him with your fingers. That’s all I can do.”
Thanks to her, Lucien survived that night and those that followed. One day, an officer ordered me to follow him with Lucien. He took me to a doctor in a white coat. He ordered me: “Put the child on the table.” I refused, holding him tightly to me.
Two soldiers snatched my son from my arms. They placed Lucien on the examination table, and he began to cry softly. The doctor measured his head, his chest, his limbs. He listened to his heart, took notes, and then they gave him back to me. I asked no questions; I simply left.
Winter 1943 gave way to spring 1944. News of the war began to circulate. The Allies were advancing. Hope was reborn, but fear accompanied it. We knew that if the Germans lost, they would destroy all evidence of their actions. And we were that evidence.
One morning in June, we heard explosions. The soldiers were panicking. An officer shouted, “Raus! Raus! Get out!” They were abandoning us. We walked for days without water or food. Some women collapsed and never got up again.
Finally, we arrived in a village liberated by French forces. We were free. But this freedom had a bitter taste, because so many women were not there to experience it: Hélène, Jeanne, Claire, Marguerite. All those who had been forced to choose.
I went home with Lucien, and we gradually rebuilt our lives. Lucien grew into a strong and kind boy. I never told him what had happened during those first few months. How could I have? Étienne never came back. I received a letter informing me of his death in an explosion at the factory.
For years, I remained silent. People wanted to forget, to rebuild. They didn’t want to hear about pregnant women tortured in secret camps. It was too dark. But in 2004, feeling my life slipping away, I decided to speak out.
I contacted a historian. He wept as he listened to me. He told me that no one knew of the existence of the camp in southern Vercors, that I was probably one of the last survivors. He asked me why I had waited so long. I replied, “Because no one was willing to listen to me.”
In 2010, I passed away peacefully in my sleep. Lucien was by my side. I had kept my promise. I had protected him. But I left this testimony so that the world would know, so that the names of Hélène, Jeanne, Claire, and Marguerite would not be forgotten.
Now you know. And this knowledge comes with a responsibility: the responsibility to remember. If you had been there, standing before those three doors, what would you have chosen? The cold of door 1? The heat of door 2? The gas of door 3?
How would you have experienced that choice? That is the true legacy of war. It is the survivors who bear the weight of the decisions they were forced to make. A part of me died in that corridor, but another refused to give up. That part lives on through these words.
What will you do with this story? Will you simply move on, or will you remember it? Will you speak their names aloud so they are not forgotten? War ends with the death of the last survivor, but it continues through the stories we choose to tell or keep silent.
I chose to speak out. Now, the choice is yours. This story is not fiction; it is the true story of Madeleine Fournier and thousands of other women whose names have been erased. Madeleine waited 61 years before breaking her silence. She spoke out because she knew that if she didn’t, no one else would.
This documentary was created to honor the memory of these women. Each of them deserved to live, to see her child grow up, to grow old in peace. But the war robbed them of that chance. Today, all that remains of them is our memory.
