Punished on their knees for 48 hours: the cruel act that French female prisoners never forget

I was 22 years old when I learned that the human body can withstand far more pain than the mind can accept.  And I learned it on my knees on sharp stones with an iron mask strapped to my face in a windowless cellar where no one could hear me scream.  Not because I wasn’t trying, but because they took away my voice before they even touched my dignity.  My name is Jeanne Delmas.

I was born in Lyon in 1920. I was a seamstress, I was a girl, I was engaged and for 48 hours, I was nothing but a kneeling body waiting not to die before dawn.  I spent 63 years without telling this story to anyone, neither to my husband nor to my children.  I kept everything inside, like hiding a wound that will never heal.

It bleeds just inside, silently, constantly. It was only at 18, when my knees no longer bent without creaking, when my hands trembled when holding a cup, that I agreed to speak.  A team of historians came to my house.  I sat down in front of an old camera. I drank a glass of water and began. Not because I wanted to relive all of that, but because I realized that if I didn’t speak up, these women would die twice.

Once in the cellar, another time in oblivion.  What I am about to tell you is not in any history book, does not appear in any museum, has no commemorative plaque because what happened to me and dozens of other French women between 1942 and 1944 has been erased from official records.  Not by accident, but for convenience.  There were things that no one wanted to remember after the war .

And we, the survivors, have learned that some truths are too heavy to be spoken aloud.  But I will say it because now at 85, with death knocking at the door, I have discovered that I am less afraid of it than of silence. It was October 1942. Lyon had been under German occupation for more than two years.  The streets smelled of coal smoke and fear.

I worked in a small tailoring shop on Rue de la République, sewing uniforms for German officers.  Not because I wanted to, but because it was that or starve to death.  My father had been arrested the previous year for distributing resistance leaflets. My mother died of tuberculosis 3 months later.  I was alone and alone.  You quickly learn that survival is a dirty art.

That morning, I was sewing a grey coat when I heard the shop door burst open.  Three German soldiers entered.  One of them, tall, blond, with eyes as cold as ice, pointed at me and simply said: “You, come here.”  He didn’t ask my name, didn’t explain the reason, he simply gave an order.  And I obeyed because at that time obeying was the only way to keep breathing.

If you listen to this story, you may be wondering how such a thing could have happened.  How did so many women disappear without a trace?  How is it that official history has never recorded its cellars, its masks, its stones?  The truth is that the most effective terror is the kind no one sees. And Jeanne Delmas was about to discover that silence can be the cruellest weapon of all.

What happened to him in the following hours changed his life forever.  And what she is about to reveal is something that few have had the courage to document. This is not just the story of one woman, it is the testimony of a hidden chapter of the Second World War and you must listen to it until the end.  They drove me into a gray, windowless military van that smelled of motor oil and sweat.

I was sitting on a wooden bench, my hands tied in front of me with a rough rope that burned my skin.  There were three other women in front of me. None of them spoke, none of them looked at me.  Their eyes were empty, as if they had already understood something I didn’t yet know.  The journey lasted maybe 20 minutes, maybe an hour, I don’t know .

Time in that van no longer existed.  All I could feel was the cold metal under my thighs and the dull thud on the uneven cobblestones of Lyon. Every sudden disturbance made me jump. Each sharp turn threw me against the metal wall.  And all this time, the three women in front of me remained motionless.

Their gaze was fixed, like wax mannequins.  I tried to catch the eye of one of them.  An older woman, perhaps 40 years old, with chestnut hair pulled back in a tight bun.  But she immediately looked away as if looking at me might get her into trouble.  Or perhaps she simply didn’t want to see her own reflection in my eyes.

Fear, confusion, total incomprehension of what was happening to us.  When the van stopped, we were made to get out.  I looked up.  We were standing in front of a grey building, without a sign, without a number, perhaps an old factory, or a disused warehouse.  The windows were boarded up with planks nailed in a cross shape. The door was made of solid iron, rusted in places, with a black metal handle .

And around it, there was nobody, no neighbors, no witnesses, just a vacant lot dotted with weeds and brick debris.  The neighborhood itself seemed abandoned. Further on, I could make out the chimneys of another factory, but it was no longer there.  Everything was silent. Even the birds seemed to have deserted this place.  It was as if this building was a black hole in the city, a place that even Lyon had forgotten.

A soldier pushed me in the back, not violently, but with a firmness that left no room for hesitation.  I went through the door. Inside, it smelled of damp earth, the month, and something else I could n’t identify.  Something organic, rotten, like forgotten meat or soaked clothes left too long in the dark. The corridor was long, narrow, lit by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling at the end of a frayed electrical wire .

The light was yellowish, weak, creating more shadow than it dispelled.  Our footsteps echoed on the cracked cement floor.  In front of me, one of the women stumbled.  The soldier who was following her grabbed her arm and helped her to her feet without a word.  She continued walking, her head down.  I noticed the walls.  They were covered in dark stains, probably from moisture, but in that light, it looked like dried blood.

Electrical wires were hanging here and there.  Pieces of plaster had broken away, revealing the red brick underneath.  It was a place that had been abandoned for a long time and then reused for something that no one was supposed to see.  And then at the end of the corridor, there was a staircase, a wooden staircase that descended into absolute darkness.

The steps were worn, some creaked under the weight of the soldiers who preceded us. An even stronger smell was rising from the basement.  Dirt, mold, and that indefinable stench that caught in your throat.  I remember thinking, “If I go down these steps, I’ll never come back up.”  It was a clear, distinct thought, like a certainty that imposed itself upon me.

But I had no choice.  The soldier was pushing me and I was going down  step by step towards the basement, towards something my mind still refused to imagine.   There were 16 steps, I counted them.  16 steps that separated the world of the living from this subterranean hell.  Halfway there, I felt the air change.

It was becoming colder, heavier, and laden with moisture. My breathing became visible in the dim light.  small white clouds were escaping from my mouth.  When I got downstairs, I saw there was a large rectangular room, maybe 15 meters long by 10 meters wide, lit by two oil lamps placed on wooden crates.  The light was trembling, casting dancing shadows on the rough stone walls .

The ceiling was low, supported by wooden beams blackened by age and humidity.  Drops of water were seeping out in places, forming small puddles on the ground.  And this ground, this ground was covered with stones, not smooth stones, no, sharp, irregular stones like those found in rivers or quarries.  Some had sharp edges, others were rounded but had abrupt angles.

They had been placed there intentionally, I could see that clearly, not thrown randomly, but arranged to cover the entire surface of the room like a torture mat.  And in the middle of this room, there were already about ten women, all kneeling, all motionless and all wearing the same thing on their faces, an iron mask.

It was a simple but terrible device, a metal frame that surrounded the entire head with a plate in front of the mouth held in place by thick leather straps.  The plate was perforated with small holes, just enough to breathe, but not enough to speak, not enough to shout.  The metal was dark, probably cast iron or raw steel.

The straps were tightened behind the neck and at the top of the skull.  When you wore that mask, you became mute.  And in that basement, silence was the absolute rule.  The kneeling women did not move. Some had their hands placed on their thighs, others kept them joined in front of them as if in prayer. Their clothes were dirty and wrinkled.

Some had tears in their dresses.  One of them had dried blood on her leg.  I didn’t know how long they had been there.  For hours, for days, their bodies were stiff, frozen in a position that seemed unnatural.  A German officer, I still remember his square, hard face, with a scar that ran down from his right temple to his jaw, approached me.

He was wearing a pristine grey uniform with decorations on the chest that I could not identify.  He held a mask in his black leather-gloved hands.  He placed it on my face without a word, with mechanical precision, as if he had done this gesture hundreds of times. I felt the cold metal against my skin, cold as ice.

It startled me , but I didn’t dare move.  The straps tightened behind my head.  I heard the sound of the leather sliding through the metal buckles.  Click click.  Tight, even tighter.  The plate pressed against my mouth and chin.  And suddenly, I couldn’t open my mouth anymore.  I couldn’t speak anymore.  All I could do was breathe through the small holes.

And breathing was already painful.  Air entered with difficulty, as if I had to force my lungs to work. Then he led me to the center of the room.  He gestured towards the stones and spoke in French with a thick but perfectly understandable accent. You remain here on your knees until you are told to stand up.

If you move, you will be punished.  If you fall, you will be dragged outside.  Understood ?  I didn’t reply.  I couldn’t.  The mask prevented me from doing so.  But I nodded .  A small movement, just enough to show that I understood. I looked at the other women.  They were as motionless as stone statues. Some had their eyes closed, others kept them open, staring into the void in front of them as if they had disconnected from reality.

And I, slowly, bent my knees.  I knelt down .  At first, it didn’t hurt that much .  The stones were cold, hard but bearable.  I told myself, “I’m going to hold out. It’s only a matter of time. They’ll get tired of it. They’ll let us go.” But time in that basement was not my friend.  After 10 minutes, I felt the first pains, tingling in my knees like needles starting to pierce.

After thirty minutes, it felt as if blades were piercing my skin. The pressure from the stones was concentrated on specific points, the kneecaps, the tendons.  After an hour, I couldn’t feel my legs anymore, only the pain. A sharp, constant pain that rose up my thighs, my back, my neck.  And I couldn’t move because if we moved, he would hit us .

I saw a soldier hit a woman in the ribs with a stick after she tried to change position. She fell on her side.  The mask hit the ground with a dull metallic sound .  She didn’t scream.  She couldn’t. But I heard his panicked breathing through the holes in the mask.  A rapid, desperate whistle. The soldier waited.

He watched him struggle to get back on his feet.  It took her almost a minute.  Her hands were trembling.  Her legs refused to support her .  But finally, she got back on her knees and didn’t move again. That day I understood what it was like to be reduced to a body.  Not a person, not a name, just a body that suffers, obeys, waits.

And in that nameless basement, I began to lose my sense of who I was.  After 6 hours on my knees, the world around me began to change.  The oil lamps cast long, flickering shadows on the walls.  The faces of the other women became blurry.  My vision was narrowing.  All I could see was the ground, the stones, my hands resting on my thighs, my nails digging into my skin to try and distract my brain from the pain in my knees.  But it didn’t work.

The pain was everywhere.  It radiated, it pulsed.  Each beat of my heart sent a new wave of pain through my legs.  I felt as if the stones were piercing me, as if my bones were going to break, as if my skin were going to tear, and yet I could do nothing, just stay there on my knees in silence. The silence itself had become a physical presence, not simply the absence of noise, but something heavy, oppressive that weighed on my shoulders like a wet blanket.

Sometimes I would hear a muffled moan from one of the women, a barely audible sound that escaped despite the mask, but it was immediately followed by a blow from a stick.  Then, absolute, total silence returned.  There were two soldiers who went on guard duty.  They stood near the stairs, smoking cigarettes, talking to each other in hushed voices in German.  Sometimes he laughed.

A low, guttural laugh.  I wondered what he was laughing at.  Maybe from us, maybe from a stupid joke, maybe from nothing at all.  Perhaps for them, we were no longer even human beings, just objects, things to be punished because they had the power to do so. One of them was young, no more than 20 years old.

He had a cherubic face, red cheeks, and very short blond hair.  He could have been someone’s son, someone’s brother, but when he looked at us, his eyes were empty as if something essential had been taken from him. The other was older, perhaps 40 years old, with a grey mustache and deep wrinkles around his eyes.  He chewed tobacco and spat on the ground from time to time.

The sound of his saliva hitting the cement echoed in the cellar like a whip crack.  I tried to count the hours, but in this basement there was no clock, no window, no daylight, no landmark, just time stretching out, infinite, crushing. The oil lamps burned with a constant flame, never faltering, as if they were fueled by our suffering itself.

I tried to think of my mother, her gentle face, her hands that smelled of lavender, her voice that lulled me to sleep when I was little.  I tried to think of my father, his salt and pepper beard, the way he used to lift me up in his arms and twirl me around the garden. I tried to think about my life before, the sewing workshop, the dresses I used to make, the conversations with customers, Sundays, the market.

But these memories seemed to belong to someone else, to another Jeanne. A Jeanne who had never known this basement.  A Joan who didn’t know what it was like to have her knees torn apart by sharp stones.  A Joan who could still breathe freely, speak freely, exist freely.  That Jean-Ela was dead and the one who remained kneeling on that ground was just an empty shell, a body that was still standing by sheer obstinacy.

Around what must have been the hour, maybe earlier, maybe earlier, I no longer knew, one of the women collapsed.  She fell forward, her face against the stones.  The mask hit the floor with a dull metallic sound that echoed throughout the cellar. She wasn’t moving anymore.  His body was inert, slumped like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

One of the soldiers approached, the oldest one, the one with the grey moustache.  He turned it over roughly with the tip of his boot, like turning over a sack of grain to check if it’s still good.  She was still breathing faintly.  I could see her chest rise and fall irregularly, but she did not regain consciousness.

He gestured to the other soldier.  Together, they dragged him out of the room by his arms like a sack. Her feet scraped the ground, her head hung back.  The mask was still attached to his face.  I never saw him again .  I don’t know if she ‘s dead.  I don’t know if she survived.  I don’t even know her name.  And I stayed on my knees because I didn’t want to be the next one to fall.

because I didn’t want to be dragged outside. Because somewhere deep inside me, there was still a little voice saying “Hold on, hold on, hold on”.  But holding on is easier said than done.  After 24 hours, my body was nothing but a mass of pain.  My knees were on fire.  My thighs were trembling uncontrollably.

My back was so stiff that I couldn’t straighten it anymore. Every time I tried to move, even a millimeter, a jolt of pain shot up my spine to the back of my neck.  My mouth was dry.  My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth.  I was thirsty, terribly thirsty, unbearably so.  My lips were covered under the mask.  I could taste the blood in my mouth.

But he didn’t give us any water.  He gave us nothing.  No water, no food, nothing to remind us that we were still alive.  The other women around me seemed to be in the same state. Some of them were slightly as if they were about to fall at any moment.  Others remained perfectly still, but I could see their hands trembling. A young woman to my left, perhaps ten years old, with black hair falling over her shoulders, was crying.

I couldn’t see her tears because of the mask, but I could hear her ragged breathing, the small stifled sobs that escaped despite the metal.  I would have liked to talk to him, to tell him that everything would be alright, to tell him to hang in there, but I couldn’t .  The mask prevented me from doing so. All I could do was stay there next to her.

sharing the same hell in silence.  Around what must have been the third hour, I started to hallucinate.  I saw shapes in the shadows, faces appearing and disappearing, hands reaching out towards me. I could hear voices, but not those of soldiers.  Other distant voices, like whispers coming from very far away on the other side of a long tunnel.

I saw my mother.  She stood in front of me, dressed in her blue Sunday dress, the one she wore to go to church.  She smiled at me, she reached out her hand towards me.  I wanted to take it. I tried to move my arm, but it was as heavy as lead.  And when I blinked, she was gone.  There was nothing left but stones, shadows, and silence.

I saw my father; he was standing at the back of the cellar, near the stairs.  He was looking at me sadly.  Her eyes seemed to say, “Forgive me, forgive me for leaving you alone.”  I wanted to shout at him that it wasn’t his fault, that none of this was his fault, but no sound came out.

The mask was swallowing my voice and when I looked again, it was gone.  I wondered if I was dying, if my brain was shutting down, if this was the end.  A slow slide into madness, into hallucinations, into oblivion. If that’s how it ended, not in a great, gradual explosion of reality. But no, it wasn’t the end because after 36 hours, an officer came down, not the same one who had put the mask on me.

Another one, younger, perhaps 30 years old, with brown hair combed back and metal-framed glasses.  He wore an impeccable uniform with polished boots that shone in the flickering lamplight.  He walked around the room slowly, methodically. He stopped in front of each woman.  He looked at us not with pity, not with hatred, with indifference, perhaps with curiosity, like a scientist observing specimens in a laboratory, like one looks at animals in a cage in water.

He took a small notebook out of his pocket.  He noted something down, probably some numbers . How many of us were there?  How many were still conscious?  How many had already given up?  He closed the notebook, nodded to the soldier and went back upstairs .  His footsteps echoed on the wooden steps and then nothing more.

And we remained kneeling on the stones in silence as if we did not exist, as if we had never existed.   that’s what they made us endure for two whole days without water, without food, without sleep, just the pain, just the silence, just the fear of never getting out.  The fear that this basement will become our tomb, that our bodies will remain there on their knees for eternity.

And when they finally ordered us to stand up , I understood that I couldn’t . My legs stopped responding.  My knees were frozen in a position they could no longer leave.  I tried to straighten up .  I placed my hands on the ground for support.  But as soon as I tried to move, I felt something crack in my left knee.

A searing pain shot through me as if a white-hot knife were being driven into my joint. But I didn’t scream because I was still wearing the mask and in that basement, no one could hear me.  They led us out of the basement one by one.  The soldiers were supporting us by the arms because none of us could walk alone.

My legs were stiff and heavy, as if they no longer belonged to my body.  Each step sent a jolt of pain through my knees, but I kept moving forward because getting out of that basement meant surviving, and surviving was all I had left.  When I reached the top of the stairs, they removed the mask. I felt the cool air on my face.

I opened my mouth.  I took a deep breath and realized that I had forgotten what it was like to breathe normally. For 48 hours, I had been breathing through holes.  Now, breathing without the mask almost hurt, as if my lungs didn’t know what to do with all that air.  They put us in the same grey van.   There were seven of us.

The others, those who had collapsed, those who hadn’t held on.  I don’t know what became of them. Perhaps they are dead.  Perhaps they were taken somewhere else.  Perhaps they simply disappeared like so many others during this war.  The van took us back to the center of Lyon.  They dropped us off on an empty street near Perche station.

Not a word, not an explanation.  They left and we stood there on the sidewalk, trembling, stunned, trying to understand what had just happened to us.  One of the women, she must have been 40 years old, with grey hair and a weathered face, turned to me and said, “Don’t ever tell anyone about this .”  I watched it.

I saw something in her eyes that I could never forget.  Fear, not fear of the Germans, but fear that no one would believe us.  The fear that if we spoke out, we would be taken for crazy people or worse, that we would be punished again .  So, I said nothing.  I went home and locked the door.  I sat on the edge of my bed and cried.

For the first time in months, I cried not because I was in pain, but because I had just realized that my life would never be the same again. For years after the war, I tried to carry on.  I’ve gone back to work at the workshop.  I met a man, Jacques, who was a schoolteacher. We got married in 1947. I had two children, a daughter, Marie, and a son, Pierre.

I taught them how to sew.  I read them stories.  I prepared meals for them.  I did everything a mother should do.  But every night, in my dreams, I returned to that basement.  I could see the stones, I could feel the mask, I could hear the silence. And I would wake up in a sweat, my hands clenched on the sheets, my heart beating so hard I was afraid it would explode.

Jacques asked me what was wrong.  I told him it was nothing, just a bad dream.  But it was n’t a dream, it was a memory.  A memory I couldn’t erase. Over time, I learned to live with it. I learned to bury the pain, to hide it under everyday gestures, to smile when I should smile, to speak when I should speak.

But deep down inside , there was always that basement, that room, those stones and that silence.  My knees, however, never let me forget.  From my thirties onwards, I started to experience chronic pain.  Osteoarthritis, the doctors said, cartilage wear, premature aging. He prescribed anti-inflammatories and ointments, but nothing really worked because it wasn’t just wear and tear.

It was an injury. A wound that will not heal. In 2005, 63 years after that October day, a team of historians working on clandestine detention centers from the Second World War knocked on my door.  They had found traces, fragmentary testimonies, and partially destroyed German documents .

They were looking for survivors.  They asked me if I would agree to testify.  I hesitated. For decades, I had remained silent.  Why speak now? What difference would that make?  And then I thought of the other women, those who were with me in that basement, those who never came out again, those whose names no one knows. And I thought to myself that if I didn’t speak up , she would die twice.

So, I accepted.  They came to my house with a camera.  I drank a glass of water. I took a deep breath and began to tell the story.  Not to seek revenge, not to hate.  Just to bear witness, to say “It existed, we existed.”  I died in 2017, I was 97 years old.  My children were at my bedside, my grandchildren too.

I passed away peacefully in my sleep, as they say.  But before leaving, I said something.  One last sentence. Marie told me about it later when she listened to the recording of my testimony. She said my last words were, ” I can still feel the stones.”  Because it’s true, even at 9 years old, even after all these years, even after living a whole life, marriage, children, grandchildren, joys, sorrows, I have never stopped feeling those stones under my knees.

It’s like an imprint, an invisible scar, something that remains engraved in the body, even when the body ages, even when it weakens, even when it dies. What I want you to understand is that this basement, this place without a name, without an address, without a plaque, was not unique.

There were others, all over France, all over Europe, places where women were punished.  Not because they had done something, but because they were there, because they were vulnerable, because we could.  The historians who interviewed me found traces of similar devices in several occupied cities in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, everywhere the same system, a basement, stones, masks and silence.

Always silence because silence is what allows forgetting, and forgetting is what allows it to start again.  But I haven’t forgotten, and I didn’t want you to forget either .  That’s why I spoke up.   That’s why I accepted this camera, this microphone, these questions.  Not to elicit pity, but to leave a record so that in 100 years, in 200 years, someone can listen to my voice and say, “This really happened. It wasn’t a myth.

It wasn’t an exaggeration, it was real.” Today, this recording is preserved in the French National Archives in Pierrefit. It’s part of a collection of testimonies from survivors of clandestine detention centers. There are about twenty testimonies like mine, twenty voices, twenty women who had the courage to speak, twenty fragments of a story no one wanted to hear.

But these twenty voices represent only a tiny part of the reality. How many women passed through these basements? How many never came out? How many died without being able to testify? We will never know because these places weren’t recorded. Because these practices weren’t official, because after the war, no one wanted to talk about it.

Me,  I survived, but I never truly left that basement. It followed me my whole life, through my nightmares, my pain, my silences. And even now, after my death, it’s still there. Engraved in my voice, in this testimony, in these words you are listening to. So, I ask you a question. Not to make you feel guilty, not to accuse you, just to make you think: how many basements like that still exist today? Not necessarily with stones and masks, but places where people are broken, silenced, their dignity erased, and how many voices will never be heard. I was lucky enough

to speak, but so many others never will . So, if you listen to this story, if you share it, if you talk about it with those around you, you are doing something important: preventing oblivion, giving a voice to those who no longer have one. You are saying to the world, “We will not forget.”  That’s all I ask.

Don’t forget me, don’t forget them. Don’t forget us. Because we existed, we suffered, we survived. And even if our bodies are no longer here, our paths remain forever etched in history like stones. You have just heard the story of Jeanne Delmas, one woman among thousands, one voice among millions of silences. She was 22 when they broke her.

She was 85 when she found the courage to speak. And between those two moments, there was a whole life carried on knees that never healed. Jeanne didn’t tell this story to shock. She told it to bear witness, to tell those who would come after her, this existed, we existed, and you must remember because forgetting is the second death, the one that erases not only bodies, but also memory, the one that allows history to repeat itself again and again in other basements, other  Cellars, other nameless places.

Today, by listening to these words, you become guardians of this memory. You are the ones who can prevent Jeanne and all the women like her from disappearing forever. Every listen, every share, every comment is an act of resistance against oblivion. It’s a way of saying, “I heard you, I will not forget you.” If this story has touched you, if it has awakened something within you—anger, sadness, incomprehension, or simply humanity—then leave a trace of your presence.

Write from where you are listening to this testimony. Tell us what you feel. Share your thoughts because every comment is a stone we lay together to build a monument of memory. A monument that no one can destroy. Subscribe to this channel if you believe these stories must continue to be told. That the voices of the forgotten deserve to be amplified.

That the truth, however harsh, must always have a place. Your support helps preserve these Testimonies, to make them accessible, to pass them on to future generations who may not believe that such a thing could have happened. Like this video if you think Jeanne deserved to be heard, if you think her courage, after 63 years of silence, deserves to be honored.

A simple gesture, but one that says, “Your story matters, your pain was not in vain.”  We are here and we are listening.  Share this documentary with those who still believe in the power of memory.  With those who understand that knowing the past is not about dwelling on the pain, but about preventing it from happening again .

With those who know that the stones on which John knelt are not only in a lion’s basement in 1942, they exist everywhere human dignity is broken.  And now, take a moment, close your eyes.  Imagine those 48 hours.  Imagine the stones beneath your knees, the mask on your face, the silence suffocating you.  And ask yourself, would I have held on? Would I have had that strength?  And most importantly, what can I do today to ensure that no one anywhere ever has to go through this again?  Jeanne Delmas died in 2017, but her voice is immortal because

you listened to it, because you remember it, and because now you will pass it on.  Thank you for being there, thank you for listening, and above all, thank you for never forgetting.