The inhumane fate of newborns when a French female prisoner gave birth under the Nazis

I spent sixty years trying to erase the sound of this cry. I’m not there never arrived. I wake up again, sometimes with the sensation of icy metal against my back. I feel the cold go up along my spine vertebral. I feel the weight of my belly going down. I feel his hands him without a glove, without hesitation, pushing my son outside of me as we withdraw something indie of a mechanism defective.

My name is Hélène Fournier. I had years old when they took me away. I was 8 months pregnant. My husband Henry had been shot 3 weeks earlier for having hidden a Jewish family in the cellar of our house in Lyon. I knew that he would come and pick me up. I knew there would be no trial. Only one transport, only one destination, only a number.

When the truck stopped at the entrance to the camp in January 194, the cold cut the skin. We women pregnant, were removed before the others. It was not explained to us why. We were simply separated. There were seven of us in this group. All skinny, all exhausted, all carrying lives of which we did not know if they will see the world or if the world would like receive them.

We were not placed with the other prisoners. We have driving to an isolated barracks near of the medical block. The smell was there different. It was not only the dirt, hunger or disease. It was something chemical, something clinic, something that tried to disguise death as a procedure. Nobody called us by our name. No one asked when it would take place childbirth.

Nobody touched with caution. We were observed as defective objects. useful only until we cessations of being, until the pregnancy ends, until the logistical problem is resolved. In the barracks, the silence was oppressive. There was no constant screaming like in the other blocks. Only the wait. Waiting for childbirth, waiting of what would come next.

None of us received an explanation. only short orders in German given by guards who avoided our looks as if we were looking back to recognize something inappropriate, something human. I discovered the truth at dawn on the 14th February 1944. If you’re listening to me right now, if you follow this story, I ask you to leave a sign that you were there, a like, a comment saying “From where Are you listening to me?” Because every testimony that survives time does not remain alive only as long as someone listens to it.

And I need you to listen until the end because what happened passed in this room has not yet been said completely. Contractions started at three morning hours. I didn’t scream. I didn’t call anyone. I simply waited, lying on the pallet of wood, feeling my body tearing apart slowly. At 5 a.m., a babysitter is entered, looked at me expressionlessly and said something in German that I didn’t understand. They took me away.

I have walked alone, escorted by two soldiers to a side room of the block medical. The door was ajar. To inside there was a table of metal, nothing else, no sheet, no visible instruments, no chair for an accompanying person, only the table and a German soldier in uniform impeccable who was waiting standing next to of her.

He didn’t show up. He doesn’t have asked my name. He didn’t take my tension, did not examine my condition. He has just pointed at the table and said in hesitant French lie down. I lay down. The metal was so cold that it burned my skin. I felt my whole body shaking. not only of cold, but of fear. Fear of childbirth, fear of pain, fear of what would come next.

Because there, in this windowless room, without witness, without a register, I understood that birth did not mean life. For many newborns, it meant a sentence. The soldier does not did not wear gloves. He didn’t give me anesthesia. He didn’t talk to me during the whole process. He has just pressed my stomach forcefully. checks the dilation without precaution and he waited.

He waited like we waits for the end of an unpleasant task. I knew what happened to some people babies. I knew it from the whispers in the barracks, by the empty looks of the women who returned without their children, by heavy silences which followed certain childbirth. There was a method, a quick gesture, an averted glance, a baby who cried then who didn’t cry more.

Some newborns were taken away, others not. But some thing happened that day. Some something that never appeared in the official reports, archives medical or death counts. My son was born at 7:26 in the morning. He has cried. A sharp, desperate cry, which reasoned in the cold room. I stretched out my arms instinctively, but the soldier had already seized it.

He held him by the chest like one holds a wet object. He looked at the face of baby, then he looked at me. And he has hesitated. It wasn’t pity. This was not kindness. I don’t know what it was. Maybe fatigue, maybe something in him who had not yet been completely destroyed by the war. He stood still for three, maybe four seconds.

Then he turned around and walked out of the room with my son in my arms. I stayed alone, bleeding, trembling, without knowing if my son was still breathing. I come to give birth on a metal table without anesthesia, without comfort, without certainty. My son was taken away by a soldier German and I didn’t know if he was still alive.

What happened to this new nose? What happened to the others babies born in captivity? And why Were some soldiers hesitant? While than others right? Stay with me until the end. The truth is more disturbing as all you can imagine. I stayed on this table for more than an hour. Nobody is came to clean me up. Nobody checked if I bled too much.

Nobody has me asked if I was in pain. I was alone. The broken body, empty arms, incapable to move, unable to cry, unable to think of anything other than this cry. This sharp cry from my son who had reasoned in the room before disappear with him. I didn’t know if I would see him again. I didn’t know if he was still alive. Right now, a guard came in.

She looked at me with indifference, ordered me to get up and escorted me to the barracks. I walked to barely, my legs were shaking. Each not tearing me apart from the inside. But I had no right to stop, no right to collapse, no right to ask where my child. When I returned to the barracks for pregnant women, others looked at me.

They have nothing said. They already knew, they had seen other women come back like this. The empty stomach, empty arms, the look empty. Some had given birth during the week previous. Some were still waiting their turn. None talked about their children because that talking about them was admitting that they had existed. And admit that they had existed, it was accepted that perhaps they had ceased to exist.

I lay down on my chali. I have closed your eyes. I tried to sleep but I couldn’t because every every time I closed my eyes, I I saw this soldier again. I saw his again hesitation. I saw again his hands holding my son. And I wondered why Did he hesitate? What is this meant ? Three days later, I understood.

A woman from the barracks, Marguerite, her name was, entered in work. She was ten years old. She came from Brittany. She didn’t speak almost never. That morning she was taken like me to the same room, towards the same metal table. She is returned six hours later without her baby. She didn’t cry, she didn’t speak not.

She just stared at the ceiling, eyes wide open as if she saw nothing anymore, as if something in her had died out. That night, she got up. She came out of barracks without a sound. Nobody stopped him. Nobody followed him. The next morning we were told that she had thrown herself against the barbelets electrified. She had chosen. Some women chose, others survived, but none returned intact.

I still didn’t know if my son was alive. During days I waited. I scrutinized each soldier who passed in front of the barracks. I listened to every noise coming from the medical room. I searched for clues, tears, screams, whatever what can tell me that he was breathing again. Nothing. Then one morning, some something unexpected happened.

The same soldier returned. He entered the barracks alone and headed towards me. He didn’t speak to me. He told me simply motioned to follow him. My heart stopped. I thought, it’s finished. He’s going to tell me he’s dead or worse. He’s going to take me somewhere from which I will not return. But he told me taken elsewhere to a small room the back of the medical block.

A piece that I had never seen. Inside he there were six wooden cradles rudimentary, dirty, but there was cradles. And in one of them I saw my son. He was sleeping alive. I I’m devastated. No relief, no of joy, just a total collapse. My legs gave way. I cried silently, my hands trembling, unable to understand what that was happening.

Why was he still there? Why were they letting me see him? The soldier looked at me then said approximate French. You have 2 minutes. 2 minutes to hold my son. 2 minutes to check that he was breathing. 2 minutes to engrave his face in my memory in case I never see him again. I took him in my arms. It was hot, light, fragile. His eyelids trembled during his sleep.

Her little stitches tightened. and loosened. I hugged him against me. I felt his breath against my neck and I understood that even if everything collapsed around for me, this moment existed. He existed. My son existed. The soldier said nothing during these two minutes. He remained standing near the door, arms crossed, look like if he didn’t want to see, as if he didn’t didn’t want to witness this moment.

When the time was up, he approached and held out his arms. I had to return my son. I had to put it back in this dirty cradle. I had to leave him without to know if I would see him again. Before leaving, I whispered: “How is his name?” The soldier looked at me for a long time, then he replied: “He didn’t [music] no name.

None of them a. I returned to the barracks silence. The other women saw my face. They understood that I had seen my living son. But they also have understood that it meant nothing because in this camp, life was temporary, granted then withdrawn according to logics that we did not understand not. That night I didn’t sleep.

I have stared at the ceiling of the barracks, listening the heavy breathing of others women and I tried to understand why did they keep some babies in life, why did they separate them from their mother? What were they waiting for? Questions swirled through my head like trapped birds. I I saw those six wooden cradles again.

Dirty, rudimentary but busy. Six new noses that were breathing in a cold room. without their mother, guarded by men uniform. Why this staging? Why this semblance of care? Two days later, another woman gave birth. Her name was Simone. She was 28 years old. She came from Paris. Sound baby was born in the same room as the mine, on the same metal table with the same soldier.

But this time, something Something different happened. The Simone’s baby didn’t cry, not one sound. When she returned to barracks, she didn’t say anything. She lay down on her chali and stared the wall. I approached her. I have placed my hand on his shoulder. She has turned my head towards me and I saw in his eyes something that I will never forget.

Emptiness, emptiness total. She whispered. He doesn’t have breathed. I didn’t answer anything because that there was nothing to say. Because we knew all that meant. Some babies were born, others were not were not really born. They passed from one nothingness to another without ever having existed in the eyes of the world. Simon didn’t speak again after that day.

She barely ate, she didn’t sleep more. She remained sitting on her chali, knees drawn up to his chest, staring into space. Three weeks later she died. Officially, it was dissent. But we all knew it was something else. You can die of grief. We can die from the absence of something something we never really had time to know.

The weeks have past, other women have given birth. Some babies survived, others no. But those who survived were all taken to this same room the back of the medical block. In these nameless cradles, I began to notice details, patterns. The babies who cried loudly were taken away quickly. Those who seemed weak, fragile, disappeared without explanation.

There was a selection, a cold and methodical logic that I I didn’t fully understand yet. One day, I dared to ask a guardian why they will guard our children. She looked at me as if I asked the stupidest question of the world. Then she responded by German with indifference terrifying because they are useful. Useful.

This word haunted me for years days. How could a new nose be useful? What was it for? Why did he separate them from us? What use could a baby have? a few days in a camp concentration? I ended up understanding thanks to another prisoner, an older woman who sometimes worked in the medical block to clean floors. Her name was [music] Agnè. She was 52 years old.

She had lost his entire family. She doesn’t hardly ever spoke. But one evening, while we were alone near the latrines, she spoke to me in a low voice. He uses them for experiments, she said, not all, only those who are strong enough, those who survive on the first day. My frozen sense. What kind of experience? She shook the head.

I don’t know exactly, but I saw doctors enter this room. men in white coats. I saw syringes, vials, notebooks full of notes. They measure, they weigh, they inject things, she was silent. Then she added, almost in one breath, some babies don’t never come out of this room. I I remained frozen, unable to breathe. Agnè’s words reasoned in my head like hammer blows, experiments, injections, notebooks.

My son was in this room. My son may have been serve as cobail. Agnès placed her hand on my arm. I’m sorry, she whispered, but you had to know, this That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. I have imagined all the possible horrors. I imagined needles stuck in in my son’s body. I imagined gloved hands handling it like a object of study.

I imagined her crying ignored, their needs unmet, her fragile body subjected to tests which I didn’t even know nature. And the worst was impotence. Total helplessness. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t protect him. I couldn’t even to know if he was still alive. The following days I observed. I have scrutinized every movement around the block medical.

I listened to every conversation guards. I looked for clues, fragments of information that could tell me what was happening really behind these walls. One morning I saw a truck stop in front of the medical block. Two men in came down. They wore different uniforms, not soldiers ordinary, medical officers maybe. They were transporting metal crates, equipment.

They stayed inside for more than 3 hours. When they are came out, one of them was holding a notebook. He spoke animatedly to his colleague. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I saw his face. He smiled like someone who has just succeeded something. I understood this time since my son had survived that because it was deemed usable, not out of compassion, not out of humanity, but because his body, his life could to be used for something, for tests, for research, the advancement of a twisted science which did not see in him

a human being, but an opportunity. And that thought was worse than anything because it meant that every moment, he could cease to be useful and cease to exist. During the weeks that followed, I tried to see him again. I begged him soldier who granted me these two minutes. I tried to be useful by working harder, by obeying without resistance, hoping that someone would reward with a few moments near my son. Nothing.

I didn’t see him again for two months, two months of wondering if he was breathing again. Two months of imagining her tears, her face, her little hands. Two months to live in a state of suspension permanent between hope and despair. Every morning I woke up feeling saying maybe today, maybe that today they will let me see him.

Maybe today I will have a sign. But nothing came. The others women from the barracks continued to give birth. Some lost their baby immediately. Others, like me, didn’t know. We formed a silent community of mothers without children, women emptied of their substances, waiting for answers that never came. A woman named Claire gave birth in March. Her baby survived.

He was taken to the room to the crib. Two weeks later, Claire managed to bribe a babysitter with a piece of bread she had saved. The guardian told him that his son was again, that he was in good health, [music] that it was useful for something important. Claire told me this with eyes shining with hope and mixed terror.

“At least he’s alive,” she said. “Is that all that matters?” “No ?” I nodded, but I didn’t didn’t really think because survive under these conditions, for these reasons, it wasn’t really living. It was existed in a purgatory from which we knew neither the rules nor the duration. Then one morning in April 194, everything changed.

Trucks arrived, orders were shouted in German. Soldiers are rushed into the barracks. They ordered us to assemble in the central courtyard. Quickly, without question, we obeyed. Standing in the cold, we waited. Some women cried, others stayed motionless, staring. Me, I was looking for. I was looking for the soldier.

I I was looking for the medical unit. I was looking for my son. Then an officer came forward. He spoke in German then in French. The children in the medical block will be transferred. You won’t see them again. My heart stopped. Transferred to where ? For what ? What is this meant ? I wanted to scream. I have wanted to run towards the medical block.

I have wanted to beg, scream, beat me. But I stayed still because moving meant to die and to die meant abandon all hope of seeing my son one day. So I stood silent. The stitches squeeze so tight that my nails cut my palms. I looked at the soldiers entering the medical block. I looked at the doors open up.

I watched the cradles be loaded into trucks. I didn’t see my son. I only saw blankets dirty, swathed forms, tiny silhouettes disappearing the rear of vehicles. Trucks left with our children to inside without a goodbye, without a name, without a trace. And we stayed there in the yard watching the dust settle lift on the path where they had disappeared. Nobody cried.

Nobody shouted. We were just empty, completely empty. The war ended a year later. The camps were liberated, the survivors were counted, the dead were buried. The testimonies were collected, the trials began. But no one was talking about babies. No one asked questions about the pregnant women, on births in the camps, about what had happened to the newborn.

It was as if this part of the story didn’t exist, as if we mothers had no never existed. When allies are arrived in May 1945, I was still camp. I had survived. I weighed 38 kg. I couldn’t have any more children. My body had been too damaged by the malnutrition, costs, diseases. But I was alive. The first days of liberation were strange.

We gave us food, blankets, medical care. Of American and British soldiers looked with a pity that I couldn’t stand it. He took pictures, he wrote down our names, he asked us to tell what had happened. But when I told them about my son, when I told them he was born here, that he had been taken away, they nodded headed politely and moved on to the next person as if my story was less important than the others.

As if a missing baby didn’t deserve the same attention as a shot husband or than a gassed sister. I insisted. I have repeated my story to everyone who wanted to listen. I gave the date of birth of my son. I have described the soldier who took him away. I spoke of the play at the cradle of transfer in April 1944.

I was told that we were going to look, that we was going to investigate, that I would be contacted again. No one ever contacted me again. After the liberation, I was repatriated in France. I returned to Lyon. Our house had been requisitioned then abandoned. The walls were riddled with bullets, windows broken.

Por Henry had hidden the family Jewish was empty, filled with debris and of dust. I had nowhere go. No family, all dead or missing, no money, no job. I lived for months in shelters for refugees, centers reception for survivors. I filled forms, I contacted organizations, I wrote letters to the Red Cross, to the authorities military, associations of search for missing persons.

I have searched for my son for years. In 1946, I received a first response. An official, cold letter, administrative. I was informed that none birth register had not been found for a child born on the date I had indicated. in the camp that I had mentioned. It was suggested to me that perhaps I got the date wrong or the child did not survive.

I reread this letter ten times, then I torn. I was not mistaken date. I remembered every detail. On February 14, 1944, 7:26 a.m. The cry of my son, the soldier’s hands, the cold metal. Everything was engraved in my memory with a precision that burned me. In 1948, I contacted a Jewish organization that helped find hidden children during the war.

They listened to me with more attention. They took notes. They promised to search their archives. They called me back 6 months later to tell me that he had not nothing found, only the camp files were incomplete, that many documents had been destroyed by Nazis before liberation. But there must be something, I insisted, witnesses, others women, other mothers who have given birth there.

The man on the line sighed. Ms. Fournier, many women have gave birth in the camps. Lots of babies were born, very few survived. And those who survived, we often don’t know what they are become. There was in his voice a weariness that broke me, as if it had this conversation hundreds of times, as if my son was just one name among thousands others in an endless list of disappeared.

In 1950 I met other women, survivors like me, women who had given birth in the camps. We are found in a small café in Paris organized by a memory association. We were 12. sweet women who had brought children to hell. Some had seen their babies die immediately. Others, like me, didn’t know. A woman named Rachelle told me that she had given birth to Ravensbruck.

His son had been taken a few hours after birth. [music] She never saw him again. She had searched for 5 years. In vain. At one point, she told me, he you have to accept yourself, you have to continue to live. But how to accept? How continue to live with this emptiness? With this absence which has neither coffin nor grave, nor certainty.

In 1952, I received a letter from a survivor support organization. He informed me that according to their research, the most children transferred from the camps in April 1944 had been sent to medical centers in Germany. Some had survived, others don’t. But the files had were destroyed at the end of the war. There was nothing more he could do.

I read this letter sitting at the table from my little kitchen. I was 31 years old. I felt like I was 60. I cried for days. Then I stopped crying because crying doesn’t didn’t change anything, because my son was somewhere or nowhere and I don’t would never know. I tried to rebuild my life. In 1953, I remarried.

A man OK, be patient. who knew what I had lived. He never asked me to forget. He just helped me carry this weight. We had two children together. Two girls. I have them loved with all my heart. But every time as I held them in my arms, I thought of him, of this first son that I never really cared for this baby that had been torn from me before I can engrave his face in my memory.

I worked, I grew old, I was a grandmother, I lived a life apparently normal, but I don’t have never forgotten. I never forgot this cry. I never forgot this table of metal. I never forgot this soldier who hesitated. During decades, I kept silent because that no one wanted to hear. Because what telling this story meant relive every detail.

Because the people preferred the stories of heroic resistance to mothers’ stories powerless. Because in the books of history, in films, in commemorations, we talked about fighters, heroes, martyrs, but rarely pregnant women, rarely babies, rarely of this intimate violence which did not leave visible traces.

My husband died in 1998. My daughters grew up, killed their own family. I stayed alone in our house in Lyon, surrounded photos of my grandchildren, memories of a life that I had built despite everything. But at night I still dreamed of this cold room, of these wooden cradles, of this truck which walked away in the dust. In 2006, at the age of 85, I took a decision.

A team of documentarians was looking testimonies from female survivors. They want to talk specifically about maternity during choa. A subject that no one had really explored, a story that no one told. I have agreed to speak. They came to me with their cameras, their microphone, their notebooks.

They sat in my living room. They asked me questions. I told everything. the camp, the pregnancy, childbirth, cradles, transfer, research, silence. They listened without interrupting me. In the end, one of them, a young man about thirty years old, asked me “Do you think your son has survived?” I thought long before to respond.

Then I said, “I don’t know not, but what I know is that he has existed and that its existence deserved to be told, [music] even if no one wants to hear it, even if it doesn’t change anything. He existed and I am his mother. The interview lasted 4 hours. When they left, I felt empty, but also strangely relieved.

As if by speaking, I had finally gave a voice to this missing son. As if by testifying, I had rendered a form of existence. The documentary was released in 2007. It was broadcast on a public channel French. A few thousand people saw it. I received a few letters, words of support, thanks, similar stories, but no news from my son. I died in 2013, 7 years after recorded this interview.

7 years later having broken the silence. I was 92 years old. I was surrounded by my daughters, of my grandchildren. I am left peacefully in my sleep, but my words remained. I am dead in 2013, 7 years after recording this interview, seven years after having broke the silence. But my words are remained.

They have been archived, transcribed, shared, distributed. And slowly, very slowly, others women began to speak. women who had given birth in the camps, women who had lost their children, women whose stories had no never been listened to. In 2015, a French historian published a study on births in concentration camps. He discovered that thousands of pregnant women had been interned, that hundreds babies were held, that most didn’t survive, but some did.

In 2017, a 73-year-old man living in Germany contacted the organization which had recorded my testimony. He was adopted after the war. He doesn’t did not know its origins, but after DNA testing and research, it had discovered something. He was born in a camp in February 1944. His mother biological was called Hélène Fournier.

My son had survived. He had been transferred to a medical center in Bavaria, then adopted by a family German after the war. He had grew up without knowing where he came from, without knowing what had happened, without knowing that his mother had been looking for him for decades. When he learned my story, he cried.

No joy, no of relief, but because he finally understood why he had always felt that a part of him missing. His name is Thomas today. He lives near Munique. He has children, grandchildren. A life he should never have had according to the logics of this camp. But he got it. And I, even dead, now know that it existed, that it still exists, that my cry on this metal table February 1944 was heard, not by those who should have heard it at the time, but by those who are listening today.

That’s why I spoke. not for justice, not for revenge, not even for memory, but so that you know, so that you understood that behind each number, every statistic, every dusty archive of this war, it there were bodies, bellies, new noses, seas and some truths are not found in history books. They are found in the voices of those who survived long enough to tell them.

Hélène Fournier spent sixty years years of carrying the weight of a question without response. She never knew of his alive if his son had survived. She never knew this cry which had reasoned in the cold room on February 14, 1944 had been the first and last sound that he had issued or if somewhere far away he had grown up living, breathing.

She died without this certainty, but her words have survived, and it is through them that the memory of his son and so many other babies born in horror continues to exist. This story is not not only that of Hélène, it is that of the thousands of women who have given birth in inhumane conditions, who held their children during a few seconds before seeing them disappear forever.

This is that of babies who didn’t have names, who didn’t have who had no grave, who had no place in the history books. It’s that of a truth that has been suppressed for decades, not through forgetting, but because she was too painful to be heard. Because than recognize one’s mothers, one’s new ones born, meant facing cruelty if intimate, so brutal, that it was more easy to look away.

But to look away is to allow silence to prevail. And the silence throughout history has always been complicit in injustice. Each testimony that is not heard, each life that is not remembered, every story that is not told is a victory for those who tried to erase the humanity of these people. Hélène chose to speak.

She chose to resist the silence and now it is up to us to choose to listen. If This story touched you, if it made you think, if it made you think makes you feel something that you don’t unable to name, then leave a sign that you were there. Leave a like on this video, subscribe to the channel for more stories like this one continues to be told.

Share it with someone who needs to hear it because every view, every comment, every sharing is an act of resistance against oblivion. It’s a way of saying “These lives mattered. These voices deserve to be heard.” In the comments, we want to know what did you feel while listening to the testimony from Hélène? What is did this story awaken in you? Hence are you looking at us? Which part do you made the most profound impression? Don’t have not afraid to share your thoughts because it is through dialogue, shared memory, empathy collective that we prevent

stories like this be deleted again. Each comment is a way to keep the flame alive of memory. Helene never got all the answers she was looking for, but she left us something much more precious, the truth. A raw truth, painful but necessary. A truth that forces us to face what humanity is capable of and at the same time challenges us to be best, to remember, to honor, to never allow horror to happen repeat.

Thanks for staying until end. Thanks for listening. Thank you for be part of this act of memory because as long as there is someone willing to listen, the voices of Hélène and of so many others will never be truly silenced. Mr.