There are 48 hours left: what the German soldiers were doing to the prisoners was worse than death.

January 1943, twilight was slowly descending on a small French village lost between snowy fields and a dark forest like a wall. The smoke of the hairs rose in a thin stream before settling dissolving under the low, heavy sky. The snow crunched dully underfoot. It was the only sound that disturbed a almost peaceful silence.

almost so we forgot that beyond the forest of the river at the end of the beaten path found German garrisons, commander of police stations. Nadj Méin advanced quickly on this path, almost noiselessly, like someone accustomed to living knowing that the any unnecessary sound could be the last. She wore an old sheepskin over a man’s military jacket, a scarf placed over the forehead and recovered boots a little too big but solid.

At first glance, a simple peasant returning home after a day of work. But under her skirt, against the belly, carefully bandaged to the body, found a small metal box plate containing a note written on chemical pencil on a piece of paper packaging. The forest seemed alive. Every tree could hide an observer, each snow mote a trace.

Nadèj stopped at the edge, listened. In the distance, on the side of the road, the muffled roar of an engine. A German car drove on this roadway which during the day seemed innocuous, but the night became a border between the busy world of the villages and the freedom of the forest. She slipped into the shadow of the fir trees, turned right towards this known path only a few, leading to maqui camp.

Here the snow was marked with traces. Small prints of dogs, heavy boot marks, wide furrow left by sleds serving to carry rare loads. At the end within a few minutes the dark silhouettes of those sheltered in the earth, hidden under branches and snow. A yellowish light filtered through from one of them, an oil lamp. The air smelled of smoke and something else again.

The sour smell of wool wet, old clothes, men and women living for too long long time without hot water. “She’s back,” someone whispered. The leader of the group, a tall, stooped man with graying temples, took the box metal delicately took out the ticket. His eyebrows quivered traversing the lines. “Tomorrow night!” he said slowly.

“Another convoy again by Bobini. Nadj nodded wordlessly. She had long since stopped ask how many convoys would leave again towards Germany, towards the camps, towards the front, while they in the wood blew up a train, a bridge, one by one. The war was no longer measured in days or months. She was no longer that a series of missions to accomplish without wondering if we would see dawn.

Late at night, after the end of discussions, Nadj left. The forest breathed the cold. In the distance, a lone wolf howled, a almost reassuring noise compared to the rumble of planes which sometimes covered the night sky. She raised her eyes towards the darkness and thought of his mother, who stayed in a small house in edge of the village, to his younger sister, sent further south to relatives before the arrival of the Germans, to his brother disappeared near mess.

At that time she didn’t know although these rare hours of freedom conscious, accepted, chosen, would soon come to an end. That one another dimension of war would begin, a dimension where it would no longer have any choice or direction possible. January 18, 1943, Nadj was returning from Bobini where she had delivered a message to network members illegal from the wood factory and recover other banknotes hidden in the double bottom of a basket supposed contain potatoes.

The city was strangely silent. The German patrols were more numerous than usual. The market conversations stopped at the sight of a stranger. The air was charged with a sour tension like before the storm. He barely had a few left hundreds of meters before the forest. First the sound of the engines, then a dry cry.

Halt! Nad tried to throw himself towards a ditch, there where bushes and snowdrifts could assimilate it. But two police auxiliaries emerged from a crater on the side of the road. A shot of cross in the back, another in the back of the head. The world turned upside down, blurred, became a whirlwind of snow, of boots and voices.

When she resumed knowledge, she was in the damp brick basement of the field commander. Low ceiling, lamp under a canvas shade, a table covered with backrest and a shirt in read. The face of the officer, pale, arrogant, crossed out with a fine mustache, imprinted itself forever in his memory. The interrogations lasted for hours.

The questions kept coming back and forth. Whereis the group? Who orders? Where is the contact in town? Where are the weapons? Shot, water, sleep deprivation. But this who awaited them next would be of a other order. January 23, 1943 4:37 a.m. eastern outskirts of Bobini occupied territory of the Republic French.

The sound of German boots reasoned in the casmat corridor wet as a funeral drum. Melin didn’t look up, not out of fear but because the floor was the only place that she could still choose to look. His wrists were tied with a thread of rusty iron so tight that the skin does not bled more. She was burning. Next to her, six other women advanced in narrow column in silence.

Nobody cried, nobody did not bend. In the cellars of the Commander Tur and the Guestapo, they had already understood. The tears were only a stimulus for those who asked the questions. What Nadj didn’t know, what no one of them knew, it was that the worse had not yet begun. They were not taken to prison ordinary, nor to an official camp.

We led them to a place absent of any German map. A secret annex of the security police hidden 3 km from the town in a former artillery depot of an abandoned factory. Officially, the site did not exist. In the reports, it was listed as a warehouse for wood. Nothing on the cards. But for French women, classified as a particularly dangerous, liaison officers of the resistance, maqui nurse, peasants suspected of having hidden wounded or just wives and daughters of those already executed, this building was the last line of their biography.

A soldier, a young non-commissioned officer of the Glass Marte named Becker, pushed a heavy metal door. The squeak was long, piercing, like the cry of a injured animal. Nadje January 12, 1943. Twilight was slowly descending on a small French village lost between snowy fields and a dark forest like a wall.

The smoke of the hairs rose in a thin stream before settling dissolving under the low, heavy sky. The snow was melting dully under the not. It was the only sound that disturbed an almost peaceful silence. Almost so we forgot that beyond the forest of the river, at the end of the beaten path, found German garrisons, commander of Turine, posts of font.

Nadège Mélin moved quickly on this path, almost noiselessly, like someone used to living knowing that the slightest unnecessary sound could be the last. She wore an old sheepskin over a man’s military jacket, a scarf placed over the forehead and recovered boots, a little too big but solid. At first glance, a simple peasant returning home after a day of work.

But under her skirt, against the belly, carefully bandaged to the body, found a small metal box plate containing a note written on chemical pencil on a piece of paper packaging. The forest seemed alive. Every tree could hide an observer, each snow mote a trace. Nadj stopped at the edge, listened. In the distance, on the side of the road, the muffled roar of an engine.

A German car drove on this roadway which during the day seemed innocuous, but the night became a border between the busy world of the villages and the freedom of the forest. She slipped into the shadow of the fir trees, turned right towards this known path only a few, leading to maqui camp. Here the snow was marked with traces.

Small prints of dogs, heavy boot marks, wide furrow left by sleds serving to carry rare loads. At the end within a few minutes the dark silhouettes of those sheltered in the earth, hidden under branches and snow. A yellowish light filtered through from one of them, an oil lamp. The air smelled of smoke and something else again.

The sour smell of wool wet, old clothes, men and women living for too long long time without hot water. “She’s back,” someone whispered. The leader of the group, a tall, stooped man with graying temples, took the box metal delicately took out the ticket. His eyebrows quivered traversing the lines. “Tomorrow night!” he said slowly.

“Another convoy again by Bobini. Nadj nodded wordlessly. She had long since stopped ask how many convoys would leave again towards Germany, towards the camps, towards the front, while they in the wood blew up a train, a bridge, one by one. The war was no longer measured in days or months. She was no longer that a series of missions to accomplish without wondering if we would see dawn.

Late at night, after the end of discussions, Nadj left. The forest breathed the cold. In the distance, a lone wolf howled, aalmost reassuring noise compared to the rumble of planes which sometimes covered the night sky. She raised her eyes towards the darkness and thought of his mother, who stayed in a small house in edge of the village, to his younger sister, sent further south to relatives before the arrival of the Germans, to his brother disappeared near mess.

At that time she didn’t know although these rare hours of freedom conscious, accepted, chosen, would soon come to an end. That one another dimension of war would begin, a dimension where it would no longer have any choice or direction possible. January 18, 1943, Nadj was returning from Bobini where she had delivered a message to network members illegal from the wood factory and recover other banknotes hidden in the double bottom of a basket supposed contain potatoes.

The city was strangely Meanwhile Stalingrad, German units found themselves surrounded. In the radio bulletins that the resistance captured clandestinely in the forests, the turning mountains returned counter offensive. But at the heart of the Occupied France, between the marshes, the drowned woods and burned villages, the war remained a war without witnesses.

When a week earlier, on the 18th January, the convoy carrying this when special jeens had stopped on a siding, no one had explained to women why they were not sent to the same camp than the other prisoners. The wagons full of captured soldiers continued their journey towards Germany, towards Poland, towards camps whose names began only to circulate.

Ravensbrook, Maidaneek, Hoschwitz. Here, near Bobini, the Germans conducted their own experiment. This barracks was not a prison classical sense. There was little questions. Almost none were written there minutes. The essential thing is not took place not on paper, but in the human mind. SD officers passed through Poland and Ukraine understood one thing: killing is freed from fear.

The real power consisted of making one desire death, forcing victims to beg for the final blow. The French women brought here represented precisely what the German machine feared the most. Nadje, current liaison officer between resistance groups with messages. Marie, mother of two sons, one in the Free French Army, the other in the maqui.

Valentine, young nurse of a clandestine hospital hidden in the woods. Anne, peasant where we discovered a injured lieutenant. They were what German documents called F Clinton Viber, woman with rifle. Even if in their hands there was never only had a bandage or a pot, here she was no longer people, but a raw material for experimentation.

Time inside the barracks followed other laws. The hours and days mixed together, collapsing into a single interminable interval between two door creaks. Nadj regained consciousness or rather came back from an abyss without knowing if he had slept or lost consciousness. His arms refused to obey, his fingers were foreign, numb.

Her legs trembled with an absurd shiver and uncontrollable. Next to her, Marie was breathing heavily, as if every breath lifted a slab of stone placed on his chest. His face was gray, waxy. On the other side of the barracks, a young brunette, a former caregiver named Lidy sobbed profusely without tears.

His body didn’t produce any more. The door opened. Three men entered. One carried a tray metal with dry bread and a single cup of water. He placed the tray exactly in the center, calculating the distance so that none of the women, even by contortioning himself, cannot reach it. “Who’s hungry?” he asked in German with a southern accent.

He you have to ask politely or wait tomorrow. Silence ! Marie gave up first. His voice was nothing more than one breath. Water, please. The soldier approached, took the cup to his cracked lips. She swallowed two quick sips. He removed the cup and after a short pause poured slowly the rest of the water on the concrete where it disappeared immediately.

someone else want to ask? Nadèj gritted his teeth until he felt his temples pulsing. She wouldn’t ask. She doesn’t would not deliver this victory. But the body ignored the oaths. Thirst throat burned, hunger twisted stomach and every hour made more obvious the real purpose of this place. Transform the one who was still yesterday attacked or fed the resistance be ready to call back for a sip of water and to thank for a slap.

The night did not bring sleep but the next stage of the experiment. Two other soldiers returned, without food, without water, with tools,hammer, pliers, metal wrenches. He doesn’t he didn’t hit, he didn’t shout, he worked. He tightened the chains, changed the angles, looked for a new pain, forcing the body to unconsciously searching for a position bearable and never find it.

The older gray-haired one spoke approximate French. Do you know why you are here? Not because we hate you, not because anger. You chose to be dangerous. You have chosen to help enemies of the Reich. You have chosen to be an example. He tightened the Lidy chain bolt. She moans without shouting.

His voice did not obey him more. Now you will be another kind of example. Everyone will see this what happens to French women when they forget their place. Nadj felt a burn rising inside her but kills himself. She now knew that every word was a weapon against yourself. There were a few hours left before the announced deadline. The barracks sank into silence thick.

Marie had stopped breathing for several hours when someone noticed it. The body suspended was hardly distinguishable from others who were still trembling. A soldier took the louse, shrugged his shoulders, noted something on his tablet. Stop heart due to stress. He looked at the others. This hour again. Let’s see how many will hold.

At this moment, something broke in Adege. Not the will, she still held on. Not faith, she hasn’t fed any since long time. It was the interior framework which allowed us to believe that all this had a logic, even perverse. These men were not looking for information or confession. They destroyed it because they could.

And that’s when the iron reached its limit. The chain holding Nadège’s left wrist had rusty mom of months and months impregnated of sweat and breast. The metal gave way barely, a tiny crack but sufficient to offer one cm of freedom. The soldiers left. She only had 15 minutes the usual time before a new check. She moved slowly fingers.

The pain came back up to the shoulder. But with it arises something she no longer had felt for a long time, the possibility. His fingers did the split link. She pulled again. The Joints seemed to dislocate. Then a discreet click. His wrist was free. The body still hung, held by the chains of the waist and legs.

With gritted teeth, she held out hand towards the belt hook, the metal was slippery with sweat. Click! The chain fell to the ground. Lydia opened the eyes. For the first time in hours, something like a question appeared there. “What are you doing ?” Ralaadège, “I live.” What she did not yet know, it was only by releasing on the icy concrete of this warehouse, it would become one of the rare testimonies allowing decades later to speak no only camps and fronts, but also from its nameless barracks, where death was not the goal.

The goal was worse. The rest took place at the border of dream and action. Nadj called back towards Lidi. The fingers refused to obey, but the bolts gave way. They were not designed to be sabotaged from the inside. With Eliane, a woman stocky with short hair, old accountant before the war, freed the one after the other, not all.

Two remained suspended, motionless, their eyes closed, barely breathing. “We cannot not wear them,” says Elian. “We don’t won’t come out alive if we try. This was not cruelty, but the dry arithmetic of war.” Nadj knelt in front of the youngest a blonde almost childish. His face was humified. “Forgive us”, she whispered.

“Forgive us for leave.” She stood up, the world pitching like a ship’s deck. The door to his amazement was not locked, as if outside too someone had made a decision irreversible. The cold whipped her face like a blow. The night air near Bobini was sharp, saturated followed and burned. The snow was shining a dull blue reflecting the lightning far from the explosions.

The trons blacks of bread and jobs erected their silhouettes like charred columns of a destroyed temple. Nadj saw a dark band in the distance, the road, a cut in the field white. She remembered the words of bcker about the truck. This way, she whispered in a hoarse voice. They advanced or rather fell every step. then got up.

The legs were sinking into the snow. Below, there were ruts, ice, debris. One of the women collapsed and did not get up. Nadiej turned around, saw his face turn towards the sky and remained frozen for a second. “Here we go ?” pulled Ian grabbing him by the arm. “If we stop now, we stay with her.

” The road was good for two meters. On the lower side stood agray truck. ordinary covered. Two Germans were smoking nearby. Their cigarettes glowed in the dark like little incandescent points. They talked among themselves, sometimes laughing. Bobini’s night belonged to them again. Then everything happened in fits and starts. A running towards the checkouts, pressed himself to the ground behind her.

Breathing too much loud, like a thunderclap, a cracking branch, the head abrupt turn of a soldier. Did you hear? One of them approached to check. When he made a not towards the cash registers, Nadj and Iane were already ready. They didn’t leave neither back nor towards the forest, but forward, straight towards the side of the truck.

screams, flashes of gunfire, the smell of powder, a bullet that brushed the shoulder of Nadège in a blazing burn, the high side of the truck, suddenly a impassable wall, hands that were pushing from below, bags and boxes in which they collapsed all over, then slippage. The truck started rolling not because that someone had taken the wheel, but because the road went down slightly.

The heavy mass, barely moved, first began to move forward slowly, then faster and faster, gaining momentum. The soldiers were running behind, shouted, fired, but darkness, smoke and snow were on the side of the fugitives. After a few tens of meters, the cries faded. After a hundred, they drowned in the great general of the war.

For Nadj, this movement was the first real sensation that space could lead somewhere other than a cell. a barracks or a ditch.