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It’s a free gesture for you, but crucial for memory.  And tell me in the comments where you are watching this video from tonight, Lyon, Casablanca, Montreal or Berlin?  Knowing that we are being listened to all over the world gives us the strength to continue. Now, get ready.  Forget everything you know about military heroism, what you are about to hear, and the story of a man who was promised redemption and offered hell at your feet.  Title: Walk ahead.

Part 1. The Devil’s Pact. My name was Julien.  I was 25 years old in 194. Before the war in Paris, I was a pianist.  My hands were my life. They were long, thin, made to caress the ivory keys of Chopin and Debussi.  I lived for beauty, for music, for love.  But love, my love, was forbidden by law.

When the Germans arrived, they brought with them paragraph 175. That cursed number which made love between men a crime against the race.  I was arrested one autumn evening as I was leaving a cabaret.  Not for resistance, not for sabotage, just for holding another man’s hand in the darkness of an alley.  I was sent to Saxon Hausen.

They took my name away.  They sewed a pink triangle onto my chest.  The pink triangle was the worst brand.  In the hierarchy of hatred between the camps, we were at the very bottom, lower than the criminals, lower than the politicians.  The guards despised us.  The other prisoners avoided us for fear of being contaminated by our virus.

I survived two years, two years, carrying bags of cement until my pianist’s hands became twisted, bloody claws.  2 years of lowering one’s eyes so as not to provoke the anger of a hood.  And then one morning in February 1944, everything changed.  The morning roll call lasted longer than usual.  The icy wind of the German winter whipped our faces, turning our tears to ice.

An SS officer climbed onto the platform.  He was not like the usual guards. He was wearing a field uniform covered in dried tufts of hair.  He had the vacant stare of those returning from the front.  “Listen to me!”  he shouted, “Leich is in danger. The Bolsheviks are at the gates of Europe. Germany needs every able-bodied man, even you.

”  A murmur rippled through the ranks of the pink triangles. “From us.”  The Reich needed inverts, degenerates.  The officer continued, his voice becoming more insidious, almost seductive. Fury, in its great mercy, offers you a chance, a unique chance. You can redeem yourself for your crime.  You can restore your honor and that of your family, not by rotting here, but by fighting.

He paused, letting the words penetrate our hungry and desperate minds. Join the brigade, say the avenger. Fight for your country.  And if you survive, if you prove your worth, you will be rehabilitated.  You will be free. Your record will be erased.  The pink triangle will be torn off. Free.

That word exploded in my head like a bomb.  Free to walk in the street.  Free to revisit Paris.  free to no longer be a piece of trash but a man. It was a lie, of course.  Deep down , a little voice was screaming at me that it was a trap.  You don’t give weapons to prisoners you hate. But hope is a powerful drug, especially when you have nothing left.

And the alternative was to die here from cold or hunger in the mud of the flat shovel.  I looked at my neighbor, a young German man named Hans, who was wearing the same triangle as me.  He was 19 years old.  He was crying softly.  “I’m going to go,” he fumed.  I want to see my mother again.

“It’s a one-way trip, Hans,” I replied.  Maybe, but at least I’ll die in a uniform, not in this striped rag.  When the officer asked for volunteers, Hans stepped forward.  I hesitated for a second.  I looked at my damaged hands. I knew I would never play the piano again.  But perhaps I could still hold onto a destiny.  I also stepped forward.

There were about fifty of us that day, fifty pink triangles who agreed to sell their souls to the devil for a promise of freedom.  We were taken away that same evening.  No cattle train this time, a military truck. We were given uniforms, not the fine uniforms of the Vermarthe or the regular SS, mismatched, worn-out ones, sometimes tied with dried blood.

We were not given a rank, we were given a rifle but no ammunition. You’ll get them when we’re on site, Haricané, the sergeant who was equipping us. We don’t want you to shoot yourself in the foot before you’ve seen the enemy. The journey east took three days. 3 days traveling through a Europe in flames. We crossed Poland and then entered Belarus.

The landscape was changing.  The cities gave way to immense, dark, swampy forests. Forests that seemed to swallow the light.  The atmosphere in the truck was strange.  We were no longer prisoners, but we were not soldiers.  We were something in between , armed ghosts.  When we arrived at the brigade’s camp , I realized we had made a fatal mistake.

It was not a military unit, it was a savage horde.  The brigade headed by the vangueur was not composed of soldiers.  It was a collection of criminals released from German prisons.  Poachers, murderers, psychopathic rapists. Men sentenced to death or life imprisonment who had been given the right to kill legally in the east.

Their commander, Oscar Dir the Vanquisher, was a dark legend.   He was said to be too cruel, even for the SS, an alcoholic, a sadist, a convicted pedophile before the war.  And we, the pink triangles, had just been thrown into the lion’s den.  As soon as we got out of the truck, the looks on people’s faces changed.

The poachers, the green and black triangles, have surrounded us.  They were dirty, bearded, and covered in stolen weapons.  They looked at us with gleeful contempt. Look what Berlin is sending us! A giant with a scar across his face roared.  The brigade is defiant.  They’re going to give us manicures!  He launched another one.

The laughter was loud and violent.  They jostled us.  They spat on us. Even here, in the middle of hell, we were still outcasts.  An officer arrived.  He was wearing the skull and crossbones insignia .  He brought the pack to its knees with a single gesture.  He approached us.  He inspected us like one inspects cattle before the slaughterhouse.

“You are here to redeem your guilt with blood,” he said coldly.  Don’t think that you are our egos.  You are not comrades, you are tools.  He emphasized the word “tool”.  The Reich needs to clear its forests.  The partisans mined the roads, the fields, the paths.  They hide like rats.  And you, you’re going to help us find them.  I didn’t understand right away.

Hans next to me was trembling.  How are we going to find them?   ” Awful fury,” he dared to say. “We do n’t have a detector?” The officer smiled. A smile that only showed his teeth, not his eyes. He took out a cigarette and lit it slowly. “My soldier!”  “You have detectors.” He pointed at Hans’s feet.

Two detectors each. He burst out laughing and went back to his tent. Night fell on the camp. We were herded off to the side without tents, sleeping on the frozen ground. The real soldiers of the brigade drank vodka and sang obscene songs around the fires. We were in the shadows, huddled together to keep from freezing to death.

I looked at the starry Russian sky. It was immense, indifferent. I thought of my piano. I thought of the major key, clear, pure. Here, there was no major key. There was only the dissonance of death. I looked at my boots. Boots that were too big, made of stiff leather, two detectors each. The officer’s words kept going through my head.

I didn’t want to understand. I refused to understand. But the next morning at dawn, when we were woken with rifle butts,  I knew, he hadn’t given us any ammunition. They lined us up in front of a vast field, covered with a thin layer of innocent white snow. On the other side of the field, 500 meters away, was the edge of the forest where the partisans were hiding.

Between us and the forest lay invisible death. The officer returned. He was holding his pistol. “The road must be cleared for the tanks,” he said simply. He turned toward us, the 50 pink triangles. “Form a line.”  “Hold hands.” Hold hands. The irony was horrific. We had been put in camp for holding a man’s hand, and now we were being ordered to do it to die.

“Advance!” the officer yelled, firing a shot into the air. “March ahead !”  I took Hans’ hand; it was icy cold and clammy.  I looked at the white field in front of us.  He was so handsome, so calm.  I took the first step.  One step. The snow crunched under my boot.  A tiny, dry sound, like a bone breaking.

My heart stopped beating for a second.  I waited for the lightning.  I waited until my legs were torn off.  Nothing.  The mine was n’t there.  Or perhaps it was old, frozen, defective.  I exhaled a cloud of white vapor.  “Two steps,” yelled the officer behind us.  The faster we got, the more we formed a human chain. Fifty men holding hands, advancing in a straight line towards the Black Forest.

Hans, to my right, was crushing my fingers.  His hand was trembling so much that the vibration traveled up my arm.  “Julien!”  he cried softly.  “I don’t want to die. I don’t . Look at the horizon, Hans.” She whispered without turning her head. “Don’t look at your feet. Just keep walking. Take three steps. Four steps.” Silence reigned in the field.

Even the birds had fallen silent. There was only the sound of 100 boots crushing the snow and the short, panicked breaths of 50 chests. And then, to my left, 20 meters away, the world ripped apart. It wasn’t like in the movies. There was no giant fireball. Just a dull, brutal thud, followed by a gezzer of black and red snow.

The chain snapped. Three men vanished in the blast. I saw bits of striped cloth and flesh fly through the air. I saw a single boot fall a dozen meters away. Panic was instantaneous. Animal instinct took over. The line broke apart. The men screamed.  Some tried to turn back , to run towards the trucks, towards safety.

It was a fatal mistake. Behind us, the MG42 machine guns of the Levangueur Infantry Brigade spat out. Tat taat tatat. Bullets mowed down those who retreated. “Advance!” roared the officer. ” Anyone who retreats is a traitor. Advance or we’ll kill you all.” We were caught in a vice.

In front of the mines, behind the machine guns. The choice wasn’t to live or to die. The choice was to die torn apart by a mine or riddled with bullets from a German bullet. “Advance, Hans!” he shouted, pulling at his hand. “Advance, for God’s sake!” We started marching again. This time, it wasn’t a march. It was a grotesque, jerky dance.

We lifted our knees too high. We placed our feet with absurd delicacy, as if lightness could prevent the detonator from  It clicked. Boom! A second explosion. Closer this time. A man was thrown forward. He landed on his back. He had no legs from the knees down. He was screaming. He was trying to put his guts back inside his ripped- open stomach.

“Mom! Mom, behind us,” I heard laughter. I dared a glance back. The men, the vanquishers said, sitting on the hoods of the trucks, were drinking beer. They were betting. “Tell Marx about the tall one on the left. No, the short, fat one will go first.” To them, we weren’t soldiers. We were racehorses on a minefield. It was a spectacle, entertainment for bored sadists. Hatred consumed me.

A pure, cold hatred, stronger than fear. I wanted to survive not to see Paris again, but to kill them all. “We’re almost there, Hans,” I lied. “Look, the forest is there.” We were halfway there. The  The pristine snow behind us was now stained with black craters and red patches. Twenty men had already fallen.

Hans sniffled. He had frozen snot on his face. He wasn’t looking at anything anymore. He was walking like an automaton. “I ‘m going to play the snare when I get back,” he mumbled deliriously. The prelude in C major, “My mother likes the prelude,” he took a step.  I felt the pressure of his hand suddenly harden.

He stepped on the plaque.  I heard the click.  He looked at me.  Her blue eyes widened.  He understood.  He didn’t shout.  He did the bravest thing I have ever seen.  He let go of my hand.  He pushed me.  Fort Julien?  No !  The explosion lifted me off the ground.  The blast hit me like a brick wall.  I stole.

I fell heavily back into the snow, dazed, my ears ringing with a high-pitched whistling sound.  I tasted blood in my mouth.  I got up, staggering.  Ha! There was no more Hans.  Where he had been standing a second before, there was a smoking hole.  I saw his helmet, I saw a piece of his jacket, that’s all.  He had vanished.

He saved me by pushing me, taking the entire impact for himself.  He would never play the prelude again.  I vomited, I vomited yellow bile onto the white snow.  “Come on, pedal, move your ass,” shouted a voice through a megaphone behind me.  Do you think it’s nap time?  I wiped my mouth.

I looked at the forest in front of me .  She was still 200m away.  I was alone now.  The chain was broken. The survivors wandered like lost souls, bewildered, deaf, covered in the blood of their friends.  I looked at my hands, my pianist’s hands.  They were black with earth and red with Panz’s blood.  Something died inside me at that moment.

The Julien who played Busy, the Julien who believed in beauty, the Julien who was afraid.  He died in that crater with Hans.  What emerged was no longer a man, it was a survival machine.  I started walking again.  I was no longer paying attention to where I was putting my feet.  If I were to die, I would die.  I walked straight ahead, my eyes fixed on the trees.

I was walking on the corpses of those who had come before me .  I stepped on an arm, I stepped on a face.  I didn’t feel anything.  A mine exploded 10m away .  A splinter cut my cheek.  I didn’t tressayi.  I was walking towards the forest like a sleepwalker, guided by a single thought.

If I cross the finish line, I promise you I will become your worst nightmare.  Finally, the shadow of the trees covered me.  I touched the rough crust of a loaf of bread.  I had arrived.  I looked back.  The field was a charnel house.  Of the five men who had left, we were at the edge.  Of 12 trembling specters.

The German armored vehicles started their engines behind us.  The tiger tanks began to advance, crushing the snow, following the path of blood we had traced for them.  They drove over the remains of our friends without slowing down.  The officer arrived beside me in his command vehicle.  He slowed down, he looked at me, he smiled.

“Not bad for girls,” he said.  He threw a pack of cigarettes at my feet.  Here, for your nerves, we’ll start again tomorrow.  There is another field beyond the river.  He accelerated.  I looked at the pack of cigarettes in the mud.  I looked at my 11 surviving comrades.  Their eyes were vacant, they were broken.  But I, I felt a new fire burning in my chest.

I picked up the cigarettes, not to smoke, but because I needed a fire and I knew exactly what I was going to burn.  We entered the forest as one enters a dark cathedral.  The trees, some centuries old and 30 meters tall, blocked the daylight.  The air was different here.  It smelled of resin, mold, and that indefinable metallic odor that heralds danger.

There were more than 12 of us. 12 surviving pink triangles , exhausted, deaf, their faces smeared on them.  Behind us, the column of armored vehicles had stopped.  The Tiger tanks could not maneuver between the closely packed trees.  It was the territory of the infantry and it was the territory of the brigade, said the vanquisher.

The officer barked a new order. Protective training.  The rubbish in front.  They changed their tactics.  They no longer made us march in a line to clear mines.  They used us as living shields.  An SS soldier positioned himself right behind me.  He placed the cold barrel of his submachine gun on my shoulder, using it as a stable mount.

“Move the pedal forward,” he whispered against my ear.  If you stumble, I’ll shoot you in the spine.  And if an Ivan shoots, you’re the one who takes the bullet.  I had become a human ball vest.  We were moving slowly.  The ground was covered with frozen thorns and ferns .  Each cracking of a branch sounded like a gunshot.  The men, said the arrogant vanquisher in the open field, were now nervous.

They knew that in this forest, they were not the hunters, they were the game.  The Soviet partisans were there, invisible, silent.  Suddenly, a hiss, not an explosion, just a quick zip through the air.  The man to my left, a former literature professor named Marc, stopped dead in his tracks .  He put his hand to her throat.

A rough wooden arrow fletched with crow feathers pierced his neck. He gurgled and fell to his knees, then face down on the ground.  There was no explosion.  The shooter used a bow or crossbow to avoid being spotted.  “Contact on the right!”  “A!” the officer yelled.  The SS officer behind me opened fire blindly.

Ratatatata!  The burning casings from his submachine gun fell into my neck, burning my skin, but I didn’t dare move.  I served as a bulwark.  I can’t see anything!  shouted the SS officer.  Where are they?  A second arrow struck a tree trunk right next to my head, vibrating with a low sound. Panic gripped the brigade.

These criminals were brave enough to torture civilians or rape women.  But when faced with an invisible enemy, they became cowards again.  Fire at will, they watered the forks.  They fire thousands of bullets at the trees.  They tore the bark apart, they massacred the bushes.  But the forest did not respond.

The partisans had fired twice, killed one man, and disappeared. It was psychological warfare.  He wanted to drive us crazy before he killed us.  Night fell very quickly.  A night at anchor.  The officer ordered a halt.  We’re camping here.  Defensive perimeter. The SS lit fires.  It was a stupid tactical error, but they were cold and they were afraid of the dark.

The light from the fire reassured them, even though it made two of them perfect targets.  They brought out the vodka.  They started drinking to forget the arrows.  We, the 11 survivors, were tied to trees on the outskirts of the camp.  They tied our hands behind our backs, sat us in the snow, facing the darkness of the forest.  We were expendable sentinels.

“If you see anything, shout!”  said a guard, laughing .  “If you don’t scream, we’ll know you’ve been slaughtered.”  I was tied to a loaf of bread ten meters from the nearest fire.  The cold penetrated my eyes. I hadn’t eaten for two days. I stared into the darkness before me.  I wasn’t thinking about H anymore.

I wasn’t thinking about music anymore, I was thinking about hate.  I watched the SS men drink, laugh, and keep warm.  I saw the officer cleaning his nails with a dagger.  I wanted him to die.  I wanted the fans to come back.  And they came back .  Around 3 a.m., as the camp was sinking into an alcoholic sleep, I heard a noise, not a creak, just a rustling like fabric against bark.

It was right in front of me, 2 meters away.  A shadow emerged from the shadow. I held my breath.  A face appeared, floating in the night.  A face smeared with black, clear, hard eyes, a partisan.  He was holding a long knife in his hand.  He saw me.  He saw my German uniform.  He raised his knife to slit my throat.  I didn’t shout.

I didn’t call the guards.  I did the only thing that could save me.  I shook my head frantically and whispered in German.  The only likely common language .  Nine Nazis.  Kefangener.  Not a Nazi prisoner.  The partisan’s hand stopped 1 cm from my carotid artery.  He raised his eyebrows.  He looked at my links.

He saw that I was tied to the tree, unlike the soldiers who were sleeping near the fire.  He brought his face close to mine.  It smelled of garlic and earth.  Verbisdou, who are you?  He whispered in broken German.  I twisted my torso as much as I could. I exposed my chest to the dim moonlight.  The pink triangle was there, sewn onto the dirty jacket.

He narrowed his eyes.  He may not have known what pink meant, but he knew how to recognize the triangle of camps.   ” Concentration la guer,” he asked. Yes, Saxonhausen, he’s forcing us.  The mines.  He looked over my shoulder towards the sleeping SS.  He weighed the situation.  He could kill me.  It was simpler.  One less witness.  But he saw my eyes.

He saw that I wasn’t afraid of him.  He saw that I was looking at the Germans with the same murderous intent as he was.  How much ?   he asked, pointing to the encampment.  60 heavy machine guns near the truck.  The officer sleeps in the tent in the center.  I was giving him the coordinates of death.

I was betraying that which had enslaved me.  It was the sweetest moment of my life.  The supporter smiled.  He put away his knife.  He went around the tree.  I felt the blade sitting there and the rope that held my hands.  “Free,” I breathed incredulously.  He came back in front of me.  He was waiting for me with the knife.  Not yet.

If you want to live, you have to prove yourself.  He pointed at the guard who was snoring while sitting against a tree stump 5 meters away.  His submachine gun was resting on his lap.  He remained silent.  He was asking me to kill.  Me, the pianist.  I, who was afraid of spiders, I, who cried when I was arrested.  He gave me a weapon and a target.

That was the test.  If I didn’t do it , he would kill me.  I took the knife.  The handle was warm from his hand.  I looked at my hands, the hands that had played Chopin.  They were no longer trembling.  I got up.  My legs were numb, but I didn’t make a sound.  I had learned to walk on landmines.

I knew how to walk without weighing myself.  I approached the guard.  He was a young man, barely older than Hans.  His mouth was open.  I thought of Hans exploding in the snow.  I thought of the officer who was laughing. I placed my left hand over her mouth. I planted the blade.  It wasn’t heroic.  It was dirty, difficult.

The body experienced spasms.  Warm blood spurted onto my face.  I held on until he stopped moving.  I let go of the body.  He slid gently through the snow.  I turned back to the supporter.  I had blood up to my elbow.  He nodded.  A sign of respect, or at least acceptance. “Now, let’s go,” he said.  The others are waiting.

He gestured towards the deep forest.  Other shadows have emerged.  There were dozens of them. I watched my 10 comrades tied to the trees.  They were sleeping, exhausted.  And what about them?  I asked.  The supporter shook his head.  Too much noise.  Too weak.  You alone.  It was the cruellest choice.

Save my skin or die with them. But if I stayed, we would all die in the morning on the next minefield. If I left, maybe I could come back with them.  I picked up the dead guard’s submachine gun.  It was heavy.  I took one last look at the German encampment.  “We’ll be back,” I asked the supporter.  He spat on the ground.

Before sunrise, we’re going to slit their throats.  I followed the shadow into the forest.  I was no longer a pink triangle.  I was no longer a victim.  I had become a hunter.  The return to the German camp was not done on foot.  It was achieved by crawling.  We were about twenty shadows gliding on the snow, invisible, silent. The Soviet partisans did not wear uniforms; they wore stolen coats, felt boots, and fur chapass.

They smelled of gun grease and raw hatred.  I was crawling next to their leader, a man named Nikolai.  He had not given me back my freedom.  He had lent me a life for the duration of the attack.  At four o’clock in the morning, we were in position.  In front of us.  The SS campfires were now nothing more than glowing embers.

The sentries, drunk on vodka and false security, slept standing up or talked in hushed tones, their backs turned to the forest. I could see my 10 comrades, the last pink triangles, still tied to the trees.  They were shivering.  They had lost hope.  They waited for the sunrise as one waits for the executioner. Nicolas raised his hand.

He was holding a German stick grenade, a stolen hand grate.  He unscrewed the cap, he pulled the cord.  The small click of the detonator sounded like a thunderclap in the silence.  He launched it.  The grenade traced a perfect arc in the night and landed in the middle of the circle of sleeping officers.  Baou! The explosion blew out the command tent.

Pieces of canvas and bodies flew through the air.  That was the signal.  The forest caught fire.  The partisans opened fire simultaneously.  Ratat!  The PPD submachine guns and the Mousin Nagan rifles spat out death.  The camp had transformed into a panicked anthill. Direvanger’s men, his child killers, those ruthless rapists, were now running like trapped rats, in their underwear, screaming, searching for their weapons in the mud.

I got up .  I didn’t pull on the sledgehammer.  I had a mission.  I ran towards the trees where my friends were tied up.  An SS officer suddenly appeared in front of me, looking dazed, holding a pistol.  He saw me.  He saw my German uniform.  He thought I was an ally.  “Where do they come from?”   he yelled .

“How many are there?”  I raised my submachine gun.  I didn’t answer him.  I pulled the trigger.  The gust of wind cut him in two.  He fell, his eyes wide, not understanding why his own soldier had shot him.  “I stepped over his body. I reached the first tree. It was Marc, the teacher. He was alive but terrified.

”  “Julien, is that you?”  I took out the knife that the partisan had given me.  I cut the ropes.  Take his weapon!  And I shouted, pointing at the dead SS officer.  Take it and shoot.  I released the second one.  The third one.  It’s us.   ” It’s our turn,” I yelled.  Some were too weak to move.  But others, galvanized by adrenaline, picked up rifles, knives, and stones.

The brigade of wimps was waking up and they were hungry for more .  There was total chaos.  The tents were burning.  The smell of burnt flesh mingled with that of gunpowder. In the center of the camp, I saw the officer, the one who had made us march, the one who had nothing, Hans had exploded.  He was not dead.

He was wounded in the leg, but he was trying to rally his men.  He was leaning against the track of a tiger tank, firing his gun at the shadows in the forest.  He was shouting orders that no one was listening to. Hold the position.  Coward !  Fight! I walked towards him.  I walked straight ahead, unconcerned by the bullets whizzing around me.

I felt invulnerable.  I was protected by Hans’ ghost.  A Russian partisan tried to shoot the officer.  I hit the barrel of his rifle.  No!  I shouted.  Mine’s mine!  The Russian looked at me, saw the madness in my eyes, and let me pass.  I arrived within 5 meters of the officer.  He saw me.  He pointed his gun at me.  Empty click.

He threw down the weapon in a rage and searched for another weapon in his belt.  I didn’t fire. I left my submachine gun hanging at my side.  So, Astorm fury, I said in French, my voice piercing the din? We lost his detectors, he froze.  He recognized me.  The pianist, the pink triangle that had survived the field.

He gave a nervous, incredulous laugh.  You, you little French [ __ ], you think you can kill me ?  I am a Vaffen officer. He tried to straighten up, leaning on the cold metal of the tank.  He was trying to regain his former swagger, his arrogance.  “You do n’t have the courage,” he spat.  You are weak.  It’s in your nature.

You are meant to be dominated.  He reached into his boot and pulled out a knife.  I didn’t move.  I took out of my pocket the pack of cigarettes he had thrown at me the day before.  The package is crumpled and stained while standing upright.  I threw it at his feet. He looked at the package.  He didn’t understand.

You said there was another minefield after the river.  And I say softly.  I raised my submachine gun.  You’re right.  But we’re not the ones who are going to walk on it .  I aimed.  Not the head, not the heart.  I aimed for his knees.  Bang!  He screamed.  His kneecap exploded.  He fell into the mud, writhing in pain, howling like the port he was.

“Standing !”  A-jord ordered.  He was crying, he was drooling.  “Please, get up! You must walk in front.”  The other survivors, my liberated comrades, had approached.  They formed a circle around him.  They had faces of stone.  He saw the man who had sent them to their deaths.  Marc, the professor, picked up a bayonet from the ground.

He approached the officer who was crawling.  “As for Hans,” he said, “I won’t recount what happened next.” Cruelty begets cruelty.  That evening, we gave the vanquisher brigade a taste of their own medicine.  We were no longer civilized men.  We had become what they had made us into, wild beasts.  When the sun rose, the camp was nothing but a pile of smoldering ashes.

There were no German survivors, not a single one.  The partisans looted the bodies, recovering boots, watches, and weapons. We, the surviving pink trumpets, sat near the flickering fire. The adrenaline had worn off, the cold and the horror returned.  I looked at my hands.  They were covered in dried blood.

I knew I would never be able to wash them.  Nicola, the leader of the partisans, approached me.  He wiped his knife on his sleeve.  He looked at me for a long time.  He looked at my pink triangle, then he looked at the unrecognizable corpse of the SS officer. “Good,” he said in Russian. “You know, you are,” he held out his hand.

I thought he was going to shake my hand, but he snapped his fingers. “The gun. Give me what? Give me the gun and the jacket. I stepped back. We fought with you, we won. “You fought for yourself,” Nicolas said deceitfully.  But you’ll always be German to us.  You wear their uniform, you speak their language, and he pointed at my triangle with contempt.

And we don’t like people like you here. Stalin doesn’t like homosexuals.  My comrades were being disarmed around me.  They were taking away the rifles we had used to free ourselves. We had been used.  Again. The Germans had used us for the mines.  The Russians had used us for the attack.  We were the eternal tools, the eternal disposables.

“You have the French option,” said Nicolai, lighting a cigarette.  “You can stay here and freeze, or you can walk west. If you’re lucky, you’ll cross the lines.”  He laughed.  But be careful.  There are mines everywhere.  He turned on his heel.  The partisans disappeared into the forest carrying everything, leaving us alone and unarmed amidst the corpses of our executioners in the endless Russian winter.

The return journey was not a walk.  It was a slow, drawn-out agony over 2000 km.   There were 11 of us when we left the forest.   There were only three of us who saw the kidney. The others died along the way.  No bullets, no mines, just the cold, the hunger, the typhus.  They were left in anonymous ditches in Poland, covered with a few shovelfuls of frozen earth without prayer, without crosses, just pink triangles erased by the snow.

I, Julien, was walking.  I couldn’t feel my feet anymore.  I could no longer feel my soul.  I was nothing but raw will moving westward.  I wanted to see Paris again.  I wanted to see the scene again.  I wanted to know if music still existed.  We crossed American lines in May 1945. When we saw the first Stars and Stripes, we fell to our knees.

We cried.  We thought, “It’s over. We’re human again.”  We were taken to a transit camp. We were given soup, white bread, and coffee.  Then came the interrogation. An American officer sat behind a desk and wrote down our names.  “Registration number 1895,” I replied.  Reason for deportation? I hesitated. I looked at my two surviving comrades.  They lowered their heads.

Paragraph: whispered. The officer stopped writing.  He looked up .  His gaze has changed. Compassion has disappeared.  Replaced by a cold, bureaucratic atmosphere tinged with disgust. Ah!  Homosexuals. He closed the case.  You know that this crime is always punishable by law, don’t you ?  Even here, even in France.  He called a guard.

Keep them away.  Not with political prisoners, not with heroes.  We have not been freed.  We have been transferred.  While the other deportees returned home to flowers and applause, we entered through the service door. In Germany, many of my brothers from the triangle were sent directly back to prison to serve the remainder of their sentences.

The Allies kept the Nazi laws against us.  I was lucky.  I was French.  I was allowed to leave, but with a warning. Make yourself scarce.  I returned to Paris one evening in June.  The city was beautiful.  She was celebrating the victory.  People were dancing in the streets, kissing each other. I walked alone with my cardboard suitcase and my destroyed hands.

No one asked me my story.  When I said “I was in a camp”, people asked me if I was a resistance fighter?  I answered “No”.  They asked if I was Jewish, and I answered “No.”  Then there was an awkward silence and we changed the subject.  I went back to my old apartment.  It was occupied by a family who didn’t know me.

My piano had disappeared.  I was told it had been used as firewood during the winter of ’44. I laughed.  A dry laugh.  My piano was burned like Hans’s.  I found a job in a library.  I was putting away books.  The silence suited me.  I never touched a keyboard again.  My fingers were stiff, fused together by the cold and the scars.

In any case, the music had stopped playing in me the day I stepped on the first body. I lived alone.  I never loved again .  Love had become synonymous with death.  If I held a man’s hand, I felt Hans’s ghost pushing me to save me.  I could smell the gunpowder.  Years have passed, the world has changed.

We started talking about the Holocaust.  They made films, they created museums, but we, the pink triangles, remained the forgotten ones.  They erased us from war memorials.  It was said that our suffering was justified by the law of the time.  Today, I am 93 years old.  I am at the end of my journey.  Soon, I will cross the last border, the one that doesn’t require any paperwork.

I don’t have a medal, I don’t have a statue, but I have a victory.  I am alive.  They wanted to kill me with work.  I survived. They wanted to kill me with mines. I walked.  They wanted to kill me with silence. I speak.  Yesterday, I went to a music store.  There was a shiny black grand piano.  The salesman gave me a strange look.

Me, the old man, with my cane.  I sat down .  I placed my deformed hands on the keys.  I couldn’t play the baccalaureate prelude, but I pressed a key, a major back, a clear, long note that vibrated in the air.  I closed my eyes and saw Hans again.  He was no longer crying, he was smiling, he was whole.

Can you hear Hans?  Am I whispering?  We crossed the forest. This story is my testament.  To all those who are persecuted for who they are, for whom they love, walk. Never bow your head, even if the field is mined, even if the whole world is against you.  Walk ahead because in the end, you’re the one who will be left standing. This was the story of Julien and the pink Triambles.

If you believe that love should never be a crime, if you want to honor the memory of Hans and the thousands of anonymous people sent to their deaths for being different, make a simple gesture.  Write the word triangle in the comments to show that we haven’t forgotten them.  To show that their story matters, subscribe to the Guerr Secret Interdit channel and activate the bell.

We will continue to unearth the truth mine by mine.  Thank you for listening and above all, remain free.