“If you scream, it will be worse”: 89 French women taken to secret SS hospitals in Lyon

Claire Benoît would never have imagined that she would find the truth about her grandmother in a shoebox hidden under disjointed boards in the attic of the old house Lyon. It was May 2003, 3 weeks after the funeral and she was there only to organize things before selling the property. The house smelled of mustiness, accumulated dust and forgotten memories.

By lifting one of the floor boards to check if there were infiltrations, Claire felt something solid below. She pulled hard and the wood gave way, revealing a small rusty metal box wrapped in an old cloth and adhesive tape yellow with age. To inside there were pages handwritten in faded ink, black and white photographs of women look, audio tapes that seemed to have never been listened to and a German SS badge with the Swastika still visible next to a name that Claire had never heard mention.

But what really made her tremble was the first line written to hand by her grandmother in an old notebook. Ch. If anyone finds this after I leave, know that every word here is true. Lyon. November 1943. 89 women. None cried because we said that if we shout, it would be worse. Throughout her life, Claire had heard fragments of this story during the silent afternoons when grandmother Marguerite looked out the window and whispered things without nor head on the underground, the tables metal and women who are not never returned. The family had

always treated it like delirium of an aging mind, scars psychological aspects of the war had never been treated. Marguerite died at age 89 without never told the full story to anyone, taking with her decades of imposed silence, fear and of shame. But now, with his documents in hand, Claire understood that her grandmother was not crazy.

She was protecting a secret that The whole of France preferred to bury. A secret that involved doctors, Nazi officers, registers destroyed and a clandestine operation which never appeared in the books of official history on the occupation German. The night of November 17, 1943 was one of the coldest of this autumn in Lyon with a temperature around 0°C and dense fog covering the narrow streets of the neighborhood of the Croix-Rousse.

Marguerite Leclerc, then aged 29, worked as nursing assistant at Édouard hospital Heriot, one of the greatest of city, which at the time operated under constant German surveillance. She lived in a small apartment third floor of a stone building with a view of the Rône, sharing space with two other nurses who also worked night shifts.

This that morning, Margerite had just returned at home, after an exhausting shift of 12 p.m., caring for civilians injured during Allied bombings. She had removed his uniform, washed the face with ice water from the bowl and had just gone to bed when she heard the sound of a truck stopping in the street.

It was not unusual to hear German vehicles circulate in the occupied city, but something in that noise was different. There were a lot of trucks and it had stopped exactly in front of his building. Marguerite got up out of bed and walked towards the window, slightly moving the curtain aside to look.

Downstairs she saw soldiers of the SS go down at least four military trucks, all armed, moving with repeated precision that indicated that it was not a random operation. They wore lists. An officer was shouting names German while other soldiers entered the surrounding buildings. Marguerite’s heart began to beat faster.

She backed away from the window and looked at his roommates who had also woke up scared. He’s going up! whispered one of them, Louise, trembling voice. A few seconds more late they heard the boots go up the stairs, stopping at each floor, knock on doors. When they arrived on the third floor, suddenly the door was so strong that the wood trembled.

Marguerite opened, because she knew that resistance would be useless. Two SS soldiers entered without asking permission. One of them, a young blond with light eyes, held a briefcase with a list typists. He looked at Marguerite and said in French broken but firm, Marguerite Leclerc. She acquired. He continued. You come with us now.

Only take this that you are wearing. Marguerite tried to ask why, but the soldier interrupted her with a sentence that she would never forget. If you scream, it will be worse. Marguerite was taken to the stairs with Louise and seven others women who lived in the same building. Out on the street there was already dozens of women grouped together, all aged between 20 and 40, most nurse, caregiver or woman who worked in hospitals, clinics and dispensaries in the city.

They were placed at the rear of military trucks covered with tarpaulins, monitored by armed soldiers who do not answered no questions. The cold cut the skin. Some women were crying softly, others were in absolute shock and a lot just stared into space, trying to understand what is happening was passing.

Marguerite squeezed her hands against each other to try to warm up and looked around. She recognized several colleagues from work, women she saw all the days in the corridors of the hospital. Why only us? Louise whispered beside him. Daisy had no answer but one thing was clear. It was not a ordinary arrest. There was no accusation, no interrogation.

It was a systematic collection, planned as if they were merchandise. If you listen to this story and you feel a tightness in the chest, know that you are not alone. What happened that night in Lyon was one of those historical truths that have remained buried for decades, protected by the silence of those who survived and by the fear of those who preferred forget.

If this story touches you, leave a like on this video and comment from where you are looking. Each like helps keep memory alive of these four women that history official tried to erase. The trucks crossed the empty city, passing through deserted streets and German military roadblocks which simply let them pass without question.

Marguerite tried to memorize the route, but the fog and the darkness made everything confusing. After approximately 20 minutes, the vehicles stopped. The women were removed trucks and pipes inside of a building. that Marguerite not immediately recognized. It was a ancient stone construction with windows covered with wooden boards and a side entrance which led directly to a basement.

It’s only when she saw the medical symbol erased on the side wall that Marguerite understood. It was the old hospital Saint-Jean, an abandoned building since the beginning of the occupation German, officially closed by lack of resources. But now, under German control, it operated clearly. Dim lights shone in the basement windows and the smell of mixed chemical disinfectant mold invaded the air.

The women were separated into groups of 10 and taken to different rooms. Marguerite was placed in a room cold on the concrete wall lit by a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. There had aligned metal sieves, improvised surgical tables and medical instruments that she recognized his training, but who was arranged in a way that had no meaning for a hospital procedure normal.

A man in a white coat entered the room. He was German tall with framed glasses metallic and an expression completely neutral. He did not introduce himself not. He simply says in French you have been selected to participate in an essential medical study for the Reich’s war effort. Cooperate and nothing bad will happen. Resist and consequences will be serious.

Daisy felt his blood run cold. By his side, Louise began to shake so uncontrollable. The doctor continued. Of complete physical exams will be made, samples will be taken and in some cases minor surgical procedures. Everything will be documented. You don’t have the permission to talk about what is happening will pass here.

If you do so, your families will steal the price. The first woman was called. She entered a another room and the door closed. Marguerite and the others remained wait in absolute silence, hearing only the muffled sound of voices Germans and the rustling of paper. When the woman came back half an hour later she was pale, trembling, with dried tears on the face and a bandage on the left arm.

She doesn’t said nothing. She just sat in a corner and hugged his knees. It is to this that moment that Marguerite understood the seriousness of what was happening. It was not not an interrogation. It wasn’t a political arrest was something much worse and she was trapped there with 9 other French women in a clandestine hospital controlled by the SS where Nazi doctors carried out experiences that would never be officially registered in a city basement that the whole world was going to pretend it never existed.

Marguerite didn’t know that night, but what was about to happen pass in the following weeks would be so brutal that many of the 89 captured women could no longer never talk about it. Some would go crazy, others would disappear without a trace. And the few who survived like her kept the secret for decades until the truth eventually emerges.

That we do the German doctors in this basement? Why were these women chosen? And how did France managed to hide this operation during so long? The answers are found in the pages that Marguerite left behind her, and they are more disturbing than any fiction could imagine it. In the three days which will follow this night of November, Marguerite and the four eights other women were kept in the basement of the former Saint-Jean hospital under constant supervision.

There is no had no window, no clock. The time had become an abstraction measured only by light meals sown served once a day. bread hard, clear potato soup and lukewarm water in timpani dented metal. Women slept on thin mattresses scattered on the floor of a large room humid, lit only by weak bulbs that were never off.

The cold was penetrating and many of them caught rumors which quickly evolved into fever. But none received treatment. It was a cruel irony. Nurses and caregivers, trained to care for the sick, were now sick herself and abandoned in a hospital functioned as a prison. Marguerite spent the first days observe everything with attention clinic.

Trying to understand the logic behind this operation, it noticed that the German doctors who circulating in the basement were all civilians, not military. Although they are clearly under the command of the SS. He wore impeccable blouses white, held briefcases with notes in German and spoke between them in a low voice, always on a your technique devoid of any emotion.

Marguerite recognized instruments medical procedures that she had only seen in books. Large caliber syringes, x-ray equipment portable, surgical scalpels precision and glass vials containing transparent liquids that they could not identify. He there was also a separate room, locked, from which noises were coming metallic and sometimes seizures stifled.

No one entered this room and came out the same day. When she came back, it was on sivers, unconscious or semi-conscious, with bandages on different parts of the body and expressions of pain that none morphine didn’t seem to provide any relief. On the 4th day of captivity, Marguerite was called for the second time. She was driven by a soldier to a small, well-lit room where a doctor middle aged german haired graying and a thin scar on the front, waited seated behind a metal table.

He made a sign to her sit down. There was a medical file in front of him with his name written in letters Gothic. The doctor spoke French fluently, without accent. Daisy Leclerc, 29 years old, caregiver at the Édouard Heriot hospital, since 1939. You have training in intravenous injection administration and in post-operative care, isn’t it? not? Marguerite hesitated but gave up.

The doctor continued, noting something thing in the file. Your history medical indicates that you have had the red at 7 years old, a wrist fracture at fifteen and no surgery since. Your last menstrual period was 10 days. Is this information correct? Marguerite felt a shiver he travels through China. How did he have access to information too detailed about her? The doctor did not wait for a response.

He called a German nurse who was in the adjacent room and says: “Preparation complete, blood sample, urine, measurement of body temperature and chest x-ray. Then, isolation in room C. Marguerite was subjected to a series invasive examinations which lasted almost two hours. They took blood from two arms, collected samples urine, measured its temperature rectal, took x-rays of his thorax and abdomen and performed a gynecological examination complete without any anesthesia or emotional preparation.

She tried to keep calm but humiliation and the pain was unbearable. When she was finally released, she was taken to a different room, more small, isolated from other women. There is no had only a thin mattress on the floor, a jump for physiological needs and a dim light bulb on the ceiling. Marguerite asked the soldier that he escort why she was separated of others. He didn’t answer.

He simply locked the door and left. She remained alone in this room for two whole days, without know what was happening outside, without news of other women, without food apart from a piece of bread and water once a day. Isolation was calculated. He was part of the psychologically broken process before any physical procedure.

The sixth day, Marguerite was finally removed from the isolation room and taken to what the Germans called the room of procedure. It was a large room with four metal stretchers arranged side by side, all equipped of leather straps to attach the wrists and ankles. There was a surgical table in the center covered with sterilized instruments and a large surgical reflector suspended from ceiling.

Three German doctors were present, all wearing surgical masks and gloves rubber. One of them, the same one who had examined Marguerite a few days before, pointed towards one of the sivières. Lie down. Marguerite obeyed because she knew that resisting would be useless. They attached her wrists and ankles with the leather straps, tightening them until that she can no longer move.

The doctor approached, holding a large syringe filled with clear liquid. “This is an experimental compound,” he said with the same neutral voice and technique than before. We test its effectiveness in suppressing reactions inflammatory in human tissues after surgical trauma. You might feel warmth intense, nausea and temporary disorientation. It’s normal.

Marguerite tried to ask what they injected exactly, but before that she could not speak, she felt the needle pierces the skin of his arm left and the icy liquid enter its blood circulation. The reaction was almost immediate. Marguerite felt a unbearable heat wave rise along his arm, spreading into his chest and invade his entire body.

Sound heart accelerated violently as if it was about to explode. She started to sweat cold. Its breathing became short and rapid and his vision began to blur. She tried to scream but her throat was too dry. Doctors observed carefully, writing down everything on their briefcase, measuring its frequency cardiac, checking the dilation of his pupils, timing the time what was necessary for the symptoms to reach their peak.

One of them murmured something in German and a another nodded, writing quickly. Marguerite lost track of time. She didn’t know if minutes or hours had passed. When she finally regained consciousness, she was back in the common room, lying on a mattress with others women around her. Louise held her hand, face marked by tears.

“You were unconscious for almost six hours,” Louise whispered. We thought you weren’t going to wake up. Marguerite discovered in the weeks that followed that she was not the only one to undergo her procedures experimental. Of the 89 women captured this that night, at least 60 were subjected to different types of medical tests, including injection of substances unknown, controlled exposure to chemical agents, surgeries exploratory without adequate anesthesia and in some cases sterilization forced. German doctors

conducted a series of experiments linked to research on resistance human, the effectiveness of new medicines and techniques surgical procedures which could be applied to wounded German soldiers on the forehead. French women were treated like human cobail, disposable, without rights, without means. Some of them developed serious infections after surgeries.

Others lost temporary vision due to adverse reactions to injections. He there were cases of internal bleeding, convulsion and cardiac arrest. At less than seven women died during this period and their bodies were removed during the night without ceremony, without recording. It was as if she had never existed.

Marguerite, despite the pain and trauma, started to do something that no one no other woman there had the courage to do. She began to memorize everything. She memorized the names of doctors Germans, mentally noted the schedules of procedures, observed the instruments used, vials of medications, the conversations she heard between the SS soldiers.

She knew that if she survived, this information could be used day. Louise noticed what Marguerite did and whispered to him one evening. Why are you doing this? They will kill us anyway. Marguerite looked at her with cold determination and replied: “If I die here, whether knowing that I tried to preserve the truth, but If I get out alive, someone has to know what they did to us.

” End December 1943, after almost 6 weeks captivity, something unexpected happened. The clandestine operation in the hospital underground Saint-Jean began to be compromised. The French resistance, which monitored already the suspicious movements of the SS Lyon had received denunciations from families and missing women who reported seeing trucks German soldiers travel at unusual hours around the old hospital.

A group of resistance fighters led by a former professor of medicine named Henry Gaston decided to investigate. They began to observe the building distance, using binoculars and noting the movement patterns of the German soldiers. Henry noticed that every night, between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. morning, two military trucks were leaving from the hospital basement, carrying sealed wooden boxes, escorted by armed soldiers.

He suspected that these crates contained evidence of something illegal, maybe medical documents or even bodies. Henry shared his observations with other members of the resistance including an intelligence agent named Simon Fournier who had connections with British SOE agents, Special Operations Executive. Simon succeeds in send a coded message to London, reporting the situation and requesting guidelines.

The response came from weeks later. confirm the nature of the operation, document if possible, avoid any direct confrontation. The resistance needed proof concrete before acting. He could not not just invade a building controlled by the SS without being certain of what was happening there. It was then that Henry had a risky idea.

He needed someone from the inside, someone who could provide information first hand and the only way to to achieve would be to infiltrate someone in the hospital or to establish contact with one of the prisoners. The opportunity presented itself unexpected. One of the nurses German women who worked in the hospital basement, a woman year Greta Müller, had started to show signs of moral discomfort faced with what she saw.

Greta was not not a member of LAAS. She was a civilian nurse recruited by the army German to work in military hospitals and she had no never imagined that she would be placed in an operation of this type. She saw women suffering, screaming, dying and doctors treated all this with a clinical coldness that disgusted her. One evening, while she was bringing food for the prisoners, Greta met Marguerite’s gaze.

It was a brief moment, but enough for Marguerite perceives something different in this woman. Daisy took a risk. She waited for Greta passed by her again and whispered in German, a language she had learned superficially during hospital training. Help us, if please you. You are not like them. Greta froze.

She looked around of her, checking if anyone had heard. Then, without saying anything, she quickly left the room. Daisy thought she had made a mistake fatal, but three days later, Greta returned. This time, by the way near Marguerite, she left discreetly fall a small piece of folded paper on the floor. Daisy waited until she was alone to pick up the paper and read it.

It was written in French in trembling handwriting: “I want to help, but I don’t know how. What do you need?” Daisy felt a mixture of hope and terror. It was luck that she was waiting, but it was also extremely dangerous. If they were discovered, both would be executed immediately. Daisy wrote a short reply on the back of the paper, using a small piece of coal that she had kept.

Name of doctors, documents, anything that proves what is happening here. She returned the paper to Greta in the same way, the dropping to the ground when food distribution the next day. Greta began to help discreetly. She managed to copy some documents medical documents which were archived in a locked room, including index cards of patients with notes on procedures carried out, dosages of experimental drugs and autopsy reports of deceased women during testing.

She hid her papers in his uniform and delivered to Marguerite as soon as possible. Marguerite, for her part, hid the documents inside the mattress where she slept, wrapping them in pieces of fabric to protect them from humidity. It was an operation incredibly risky, but it was only way to guarantee that if if something happened, there would be a trace of what was happening there.

Greta also provides information crucial to the structure of command of the operation. She revealed that the chief physician responsible for experiences was a man named doctor Klaus Reinart, a specialist in pharmacology who had worked previously in Berlin and who responded directly to an SS officer called Strumban Fur Liber.

The documents that Greta copied revealed the extent horrifying about what was happening in the underground. There were files detailing substance injections toxic substances tested on healthy women health to measure their resistance physiological. Other reports described forced sterilization procedures carried out without consent, using experimental techniques that caused massive hemorrhages and fatal infections.

There was also notes on tests cold endurance where some prisoners were exposed to freezing temperatures for hours to observe the effects of hypothermia on the human body. Each document that Marguerite received filled her with cold rage and determined. She knew now with certainty that what she was experiencing was not not just war brutality but systematic medical crimes who violated all the laws of humanity.

Meanwhile, at the outside, Henry and the resistance continued to monitor the hospital. They had managed to bribe a driver German who made deliveries medical supplies to the building and this driver confirmed that there were French prisoners kept in the basement. The information was sufficient to justify action more direct.

Henry planned a rescue operation to begin January 1944 which would involve a coordinated attack on the hospital. during the change of custody German soldiers, when surveillance was weaker, Simon Fournier also obtains the agreement of London to provide logistical support limited, including weapons and explosives which would be parachuted into a secure area outside the city.

The resistance knew that it would only have one chance. If the operation failed, not only resistance fighters would be captured or killed, but the female prisoners would be probably executed immediately by the Germans to eliminate all proof. But before they can execute the plan, something terrible thing happened. Greta was discovery.

One of the German doctors noticed that documents were missing in the archives and ordered a search complete affairs of all hospital employees. When they opened Greta’s locker, they found copies of files medical supplies hidden in his bag. She was arrested immediately and taken for interrogation. Marguerite learned Greta’s arrest when she lives SS soldiers who entered the basement with tense expressions and I started searching all the women and all mattresses.

She only had a few seconds to decide what do. If the soldiers found the documents hidden in her mattress, she would be executed immediately. Daisy acts quickly. She took the papers, tore them into small pieces and hid in his clothes, distributing the fragments on different parts of his body. When the soldiers arrived up to her, they searched the mattress but found nothing.

They did not no body search at this time at that time, only a search visual. Marguerite was spared, but Greta was not so lucky. Greta was taken to a separate room and In the hours that followed, the women heard screams coming from this direction. Greta was tortured for reveal if there were any accomplices among the prisoners.

She never denounced Marguerite. Three days later, Greta Müller was executed by a bullet in the neck in the inner courtyard of the hospital. His body was cremated and his ashes were thrown into the throne. The resistance only discovered his death weeks later when an informant German transmitted the information. Henry and Simon were devastated by the news.

Greta had become, without namely, a martyr of the resistance French, a German woman who had chose humanity over blind obedience to a diet criminal. Greta’s execution shook deeply Marguerite. She realized that this woman, a German, had sacrificed his own life to try to help French prisoners that she didn’t even know. It was an act of moral courage that transcended nationality, war and politics.

Marguerite swore to herself that if she survived, she would tell Greta’s story to the world. But to survive became more and more improbable. After the discovery of infiltration, surveillance in the basement was intensified. The doctors Germans became more brutal, the more frequent procedure and more painful. Marguerite was subjected to three more tests in January, including exploratory abdominal surgery without adequate anesthesia, which left a deep scar and pain chronicle that she would carry for the rest of his life.

She was losing weight quickly, his health deteriorated and many other women were in a even worse condition. The basement of Saint-Jean hospital was transformed into a slow death chamber and it seemed that no one would come to save them toant. Louise, who had been the best friend of Marguerite since the beginning of their captivity, began to show signs of total despair.

She refused to eat, remained curled up in a corner, whispering prayers and crying silently. Marguerite tried to comfort her, but she knew that the words were no longer enough. The reality brutality of their situation was developing to psychologically break all the women one by one. Some were starting to lose their minds, talking to invisible people, laughing without reason or remaining completely catatonic.

German doctors observed these mental breakdowns with the same clinical detachment as they applied to physical experiments, simply noting in their report topic number 47, deterioration advanced psychology. Topic number 52. Acute psychosis. For them, women were not human beings. They were data, statistics, variables in an equation scientist devoid of morality.

But Marguerite refused to give up. Every night, lying on her mattress in the icy darkness of the basement, she mentally repeated the names of the doctors, dates of procedures, details of every torture she had suffered or seen. She transformed his memory into a living register. It’s a testimony that no one could erase as long as she remained alive.

And she carefully kept the fragments of sewn Greta documents now in the lining of his clothing, protected against any new excavation. These pieces of paper torn were more than evidence. They were the last testimony of a courageous woman who dared to defy the system and Marguerite was determined to ensure that Greta’s sacrifice don’t be vain.

On January 23, 1944, 4 a.m., the French resistance finally launched the attack against Saint-Jean Hospital. Henry Gaston led a group of fifteen armed men who infiltrated the building through a sewer tunnel connecting the basement of the hospital has an underground network of ancient passages dating from the Middle Ages. They blew down the back door giving access to the basement, exchanged shooting with German soldiers guard and managed to reach the area where the prisoners were held.

The operation lasted only minutes, but it was chaotic and bloody. Three German soldiers were killed, two members of the resistance were injured and Doctor Klaus Reinart was captured alive while he tried to destroy documents in an archive room. The 82 women still alive in the basement from which Marguerite was evacuated in emergency and taken to shelters secrets controlled by the resistance in different areas of the city.

Marguerite was so weak that she could barely walk alone. Louise and another woman carried her across the dark and damp tunnels until that they arrive at a safe house in the old Lyon district where French resistance doctors began to treat the wounds, infections and trauma to survivors.

But the physical treatment was just the beginning. The trauma psychological was deep and for many of these irreversible women. Some could no longer speak. Others woke up screaming at middle of the night, reliving the horrors from the basement. Marguerite passed tro weeks in convalescence, but even after having found part of his physical strength, she knew she could not would never be the same again.

Torture medical treatment she had undergone left permanent after-effects, chronic pain, scars deep and a constant fear of doctors and hospitals who would accompany him for the rest of his life. But she also knew that she possessed something that Germans did not want to see it exist. Memory and evidence.

The documents that Greta had copied and that Marguerite had preserved in fragments in his clothes during the rescue were given to Henry Gaston. Him, with Simone Fournier, compiled all the papers, gathered the testimonies of survivors and sent the complete file to the British SOE agents who transmitted to the Allied authorities.

The file contained evidence irrefutable facts of the operation clandestine SS in Lyon. Name of German doctors, description detailed experiences, sheets prisoners’ medical conditions and even photographs taken by Greta before her dead. It was an explosive document. But to everyone’s disappointment, the response from the Allied authorities was frustrating.

In full of war, with millions of people dying in the fighting and concentration camps discovered throughout Europe, the case of 89 women of Lyon was considered secondary and archived for later investigation. The war ended in May file remained buried in archives military for decades. Marguerite tried, in the years which followed by publicly denouncing this that had happened.

She contacted journalists, lawyers, authorities French. But every time she was trying to tell her story, she was silenced. Some said that she was exaggerating, that there was did not have enough evidence, that he was impossible for something like that to happen passed through Lyon without anyone know it.

Others, more directly said that this kind of denunciation could harm the image of France in the post-war period and that it would be better to leave the past in the past. Marguerite realized that she was fighting against an invisible wall of institutional silence. France, like many other countries Europeans, were more interested in rebuild its national identity than confront the horrors that had happened produced on its own territory.

The victims of the German occupation were only celebrated when they corresponded to the official story of heroism and resistance. women like Marguerite who had been tortured in operations obscure clandestines did not correspond simply not to this speech. She abandoned the public denunciation in 1952 after being threatened by agents of the French government who made it clear that if she continued to insist, his family would suffer the consequences.

Marguerite married, had two children, worked in silence as a seamstress and did not mention never again the subject outside of home her. But she didn’t forget. She kept all the documents she had been able to save, collected notes personal, recorded tapes audio describing his memories and put everything in a box that she hid in the attic of his house.

She knew that one day someone would find this box and that when this happens, the The truth would eventually come out. She died in 2003, at the age of 89, without having never seen justice. But his little girl, Claire, found the box three weeks after the funeral. And it was clear who in 2005 handed over all the equipment to historians specializing in crimes of war which finally validated the authenticity of the documents and confirmed that the story of Marguerite was real.

In 2008, the French government recognized officially the existence of the clandestine operation of the SS Saint-Jean hospital in Lyon. Of formal apologies were offered to survivors and families of victims. Of the 89 women captured that night in November 1943, only 34 survived until the end of the war. Among them, only 12 were still alive in 2008 to bear witness to the official recognition.

Most, of which Louise had already died without having never received any form of repair or recognition. Ence, a plate memorial was installed at the location of the old hospital Saint John. Today, a building residential renovated with the names of four women engraved in bronze. The inscription reads: “In memory of French women who suffered and resisted in the underground of this place between November 1943 and January 1944, may their stories never be forgotten.

” Claire Benoît, who is now years old, transformed his grandmother’s story in a book published in 2012 entitled Le silence of Marguerite, who became a bestseller in France and was translated into 12 languages. She dedicates the book to everyone the women whose voices have been silenced, whose pain have been ignored and whose stories were buried for convenience politics.

Claire also founded a non-profit organization. who works to identify and document cases of medical abuse during wars, particularly those involving women and who have been systematically ignored by official history. She says that by telling the story of her grandmother, she does not honor only the memory of Marguerite, but also guarantees that the next generations, know that the truth, also painful as it is, always deserves to be told.

The story of the 89 women of Lyon is a stark reminder that war not only creates victims on the battlefields, but also in the underground silent where crimes are committed far from the eyes of the world. It’s a story about courage, about women who resisted in ways that will never be completely understood and on the extremely high price that many of them paid for to have simply existed at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

But it is also a story about strength of memory, on how a single box hidden in an attic can defy decades of silence institutional and bring out truths that the powerful have attempted to erase. Marguerite Leclerc did not never considered a heroine. She saw herself simply as a survivor.

But while retaining its documents, preserving this memory, she guaranteed that the 89 women of Lyon would never be forgotten and that the phrase “If you shout, it will be worse” which was once used to reduce them to silence today serves as a cry collective that reasons through the story. Never again. This story is not fiction.

It’s not a scenario invented to shock or move. This is the raw truth of this which happened in Lyon in November. in the underground of a hospital that the everyone preferred to forget, quatrevintes French women were torn from their house in the middle of the night, tortured name of science, silenced by fear, and their stories were buried for 60 years by a system who found it more convenient to ignore their pain than recognizing the truth.

Marguerite Leclerc and the others survivors carried this burden into the silence, waiting for one day someone have the courage to tell what they lived. Today, listening to this history, you are one of those who refuse to allow these women to be forgotten. You become a guardian of their memory. Every time we choose to remember, every time we refuse to let official history be erased the invisible victims, we make justice to those who were never able speak.

These women had no voice for decades. But now, thanks to you who listened until At the end, their story continues to live on. And that’s exactly what they would have wanted. May the truth never be forgotten, no matter how long it necessary for it to emerge. If this story touched you, if it touched you reflects on the importance of preserve the memory of the injustices of past, take a moment to leave a like on this video.

This simple gesture helps ensure that this story reaches other people who, like you believe that every victim deserves to be heard. Subscribe to this channel to discover other stories true, powerful and often forgotten which deserve to be told. Activate the notification bell to not miss any of these stories that changes the way we see history.

And above all, leave a comment, tell us where you are watching this from video. Tell us what this story is has awakened in you. Have you ever heard about what happened Lyon in 1943? Do you know any others stories of women whose suffering has been erased from the history books? Your words have power.

Every comment is a statement that these women realize that their pain was not vain and that we refuse to let the silence prevail. Your voice added to that of the thousands of others who listen this story becomes a heart that reasons through time. History of Marguerite and the 88 other women remind us that courage cannot be not always found on the fields of battle or in heroic acts visible.

Sometimes courage is found in the simple fact of surviving, of remember and keep the truth. Waiting for someone please listen to it, Marguerite has hid this box in his attic. in knowing that she might not see never justice during his lifetime. But she had faith in the future. She believed that a one day someone would find his documents, would believe his story and share it with the world.

Today you are this person. You are the one which gives meaning to his sacrifice. So don’t let this story stop here. Share this video with your loved ones, your friends, your family. Make the story of four women from Lyon continue to propagate, that they cross the borders, generations and that it serve as a constant reminder that truth, however painful it may be, must always be told.

Because so much that there will be people like you to listen, to remember and to refuse silence, these women will not be never really forgotten. Their memory lives in you and together we let us ensure that never again such horrors will not be buried in the shadow. Thanks for listening, thanks for you remember and thank you for being part of those who refuse to let history erase the invisible ones.