HT20. What the Nazis did to pregnant French prisoners in the camps.

My name is Elise Morau.  I was 85 years old when I decided to speak out.  For over 60 years, I remained silent. A silence as heavy as a stone on the chest.  Today, I’m going to tell you what was done to pregnant women in these Trinasie centers. It wasn’t a maternity ward, it was n’t a hospital, it was a place where the word procedure meant something no woman should ever have to experience.  I was one of them.

I carried a child.  I gave birth to him and I never held him in my arms.  I was born in 1918 in a small pre-Pineapple village in eastern France.  I grew up among the vineyards and wheat fields.  My mother baked bread every morning.  My father repaired clocks. It was a simple life, simple plans.

I married Henry at 22 , a calm, gentle man.  We wanted a bigger house, children, an ordinary life.  And then the war came.  Everything changed.  In May the Germans entered our village.  One foggy morning, they took Henry away.  He turned around before getting into the truck.  He looked at me, he didn’t say anything, but I knew.

It was a goodbye.  Three weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant.  Four months have passed.  My stomach was growing.  I was hiding.  I avoided the village square. I wanted to be invisible.  But in an occupied village, no one remains invisible for long.  One afternoon in September, I heard boots in the street, running at the door.

I opened three soldiers.  The older one looked at my stomach.  He smiled.  A smile that was anything but human.  He gestured for me to follow him.  I tried to back away.  He grabbed my arm.  I still remember the pressure of his fingers.  They put me in a truck with six other women, all pregnant.  Some were crying, others were mute.

I watched my village disappear through the trees.  I remember the smell of diesel, the sweat, the fear.  I remember thinking, “My baby is going to be born.”  But where would I be alive to see it, and would I even be there?  The truck stopped after hours of driving. We were made to get off the train.  It was night.

A biting cold.  The air smelled of bread and smoke.  In front of us, a complex surrounded by barbed wire.  Spotlights swept across the courtyard, long, low wooden barracks, watchtowers at the corner.  It wasn’t a big camp like the ones we’d heard about.  It was smaller, more discreet.  It was called a sorting center.

But sorting of what?  I didn’t know that yet.  We were pushed inside.  We were stripped naked .  They shaved our heads. We were tattooed with a number on our forearm.  Mine was, I still look at it sometimes.  He is pale now, but he is there.  We were given a grey shirt, nothing else. No shoes, no coat.  We were led into a long barracks with  wooden bunk beds.

A suffocating smell, mold, urine, cheap disinfectant.  There were already other women, all pregnant, some barely visible, others almost at term.  None of them spoke loudly.  People were whispering.  We looked at each other, we knew we shared the same fate.  I didn’t sleep that first night .  I could feel the baby’s kicks, tiny, fragile movements.

I placed my hand on my stomach.  I whispered, “Hang in there, we’ll get through this.” But deep down, I was afraid.  The next morning, roll call, we were lined up in the courtyard in minus 10 degrees in our shirts.  The guards were shouting, women in grey uniforms, harsh, cold.  She counted, she took notes.

Then we were sent back to the barracks.  No forced labor like in other camps.  Just wait.  Wait for the exams.  Wait for the birth.  The first exam went quickly.  3 days after my arrival. A guard called out my name.  I got up .  My legs were trembling.  She led me through a narrow corridor lit by dim light bulbs.

The smell of disinfectant was getting stronger.  A metal door.  She opened it there. Inside, a metal table. Blinding white lights, instruments on a tray, a man in a white coat, two guards.  He ordered me to lie down and remove my clothes from the waist down.  I obeyed .  The table was icy cold.  I closed my eyes.

He placed his hands on my stomach.  Cold, mechanical.  He pressed on. Palpite was measuring.  Then he picked up a long, metallic instrument.  Cold.  He introduced it.  The pain was immediate and sharp.  I bit my lip to keep from screaming.  He was taking notes.  He spoke in German.  Numbers, medical terms.  I wasn’t a woman, I was a case.

When he finished, he told me to get dressed again.  Without looking at me, I staggered back to the barracks .  The others saw me, she knew.  Marguerite, the woman next to me, took my hand.  She said nothing.  She just squeezed.  That was the beginning.  The examinations would become regular, more frequent as the term approached, and I would gradually understand what this center really was , a place where they decided who deserved to be born and who deserved to keep their child.

The days turned into weeks.  As the weeks went by , my belly grew bigger.  The baby’s movements were becoming stronger and more frequent.  Each kick was a reminder.  We were both alive.  But the fear grew with him.  The examinations had become regular, twice a week.  Then three, still the same room in the basement, still the icy table, still the blinding white lights .

The doctor, if you can call him that, was always the same. A man in his forties, blond hair, blue eyes, cold.  He never looked me in the eyes.  He was looking at my stomach.  How do we look at merchandise?  He felt, measured, and took notes.  He was speaking in German, using numbers and terms I didn’t understand.

One day, he said something the attendant translated : “Narrow pelvis, risk of complications.” I felt my senses go cold another day. “Medium-sized fetuses , French origin, expected light brown hair, likely to be born.” He described my baby to me like a farm animal. I gradually understood what this center was. It wasn’t a place to save lives; it was a place to sort them.

They applied their racial theory. Even to us, even to our unborn babies. Some women received more food, vitamins, gentler examinations. These were the ones who fit their idea of ​​a superior race: blond, blue-eyed, Nordic origin. The others, like me, received the bare minimum, more brutal examinations, contemptuous stares.

I was in the second group. Marguerite explained it to me one night in a low voice. He decides who deserves to live, who deserves to be raised in a German family. The others disappear. I asked. How? She  looked away. Killed at birth or given to experiments or simply forgotten. I felt nausea rising. A woman named Helen was almost due.

She came back one day without her pregnant belly. She no longer spoke. She cradled a rag rolled into a ball like a baby. She sang lullabies softly. The guards beat her. They continued. I asked her one evening, “Where is your baby?” She looked at me. Her eyes were empty. They took him. They said he was sick, that he needed to be treated elsewhere.

His voice broke, but I know he’s lying. She died a few days later. Hemorrhage! The guards say. But we knew, she died of grief. I observed everything. I counted the women who disappeared, those who came back empty. I saw the pattern. Women close to their due date were taken more often to another wing, when they came back, if they  They came back, changed, broken, some without a baby, others with a baby who didn’t cry like theirs.

I didn’t understand everything, but I understood enough to be afraid, afraid for my child. I promised myself I would pretend to be indifferent, not show my love because love was a weakness here. If I cried, if I begged, he would take him from me. Just to break myself more, I started practicing, imagining the birth, telling myself, “Don’t cry , don’t reach out, look away.

” It was hard, it was unnatural, but it was my only weapon, my only way to protect him. Maybe. My sixth month arrived. My belly was enormous, my legs swollen, my back ached with every movement. But the fear was worse than the pain. I knew that labor was approaching and with it, the final judgment. The examinations had become almost daily.

Always the same room, always the same cold hands. The doctor was taking more measurements.  He noted everything. The baby’s position, my heart rate, the width of my pelvis. He talked with the others. In German, I understood words like risk, viable, transfer. One day, he said, “This one is worthless, but the fetus could be viable.

”  “We’ll see at birth.” Those words pierced me. “This one is worthless.” As if my life had no importance, as if I were just a container, a temporary container.  I returned to the barracks that evening with an icy certainty.  He would take my baby from me, no matter what I did.  My child was already their property.  In their twisted minds.

Marguerite saw me.  She sat down next to me.  Elise, I know how you feel, but listen to me.  There is one thing you can do, only one.  I looked up .  When you give birth, show no emotion.  Don’t cry.  Don’t smile.  Don’t stretch out your arms.  Act like you don’t care.  I shuddered because if he sees that you love him, they’ll take him from you just to break you even more.

Those words chilled me to the bone, but I knew she was right.  Love was a weakness here.  Attachment, a weapon against us.  The women who begged, who cried out, who stretched out their arms, were the ones who were punished the most. Beaten, humiliated, sometimes killed.  I trained.  In my head, I kept repeating myself.

When he is born, I will look the other way.  I will not cry.  I will be made of stone.  It was unnatural. It was inhumane, but it was my only chance.  Maybe.  That’s when I noticed the young soldier.  He was still there, near the door.  During the exams, barely 20 years old, he never spoke.  He looked away. At first, I thought it was contempt, but no, it was embarrassment, shame.

One day, on my way back from the gym, he slipped me a piece of bread. Discreetly, our eyes met .  I saw something human. A breach?  He said nothing.  He left quickly.  But that bread was a gesture, a small gesture in that hell.   It was huge.  I ate it in secret.  I thought about him.  Perhaps there was still some humanity left, even among them, even in a soldier.

This opening gave me a little hope, not much, but enough to continue, enough to wait for the birth.  Without completely sinking, February 1941. The contractions began on a freezing night.  The snow was falling outside, thick and silent.  I woke up in a sweat.  An intense pain gripped my stomach.  I couldn’t breathe anymore.  I called the caretaker.

She came .  She looked at me with winks.  It’s time.  Take her with you.  Two female guards grabbed my arms. They dragged me out of the barracks. The cold of the night hit me like a blow.  I was only wearing my thin shirt.  My bare feet touch the snow. But they didn’t give me time to suffer from the cold.

They dragged me to the main building.  Then down to that room that I knew all too well.  When the door opened, I saw what awaited me.  The metal table in the center, the blinding white lights, the instruments lined up, two doctors, three nurses.  And him, the young soldier, immobilized in a corner .  Our eyes met for a fraction of a second.

I saw pity in her eyes.  They threw me onto the table.  The cold metal against my bare skin.  A nurse strapped my legs down .  Another one, my arms. I was immobilized, unable to move, unable to defend myself.  The contractions were unbearable.  I gritted my teeth.  I refused to scream, but the pain was too intense.  I screamed.

The doctors spoke to each other coldly, technically, full dilation, prepare the instruments.  I didn’t understand everything, but I understood the tone. Indifference.  To them, I wasn’t a woman giving birth.  I was a case.  Hours have passed, or perhaps minutes.  I no longer knew .  The pain made me lose track of time.

I felt something tear apart .  A cry escaped my throat, a cry that went wrong.  And then I heard my baby cry.  My heart stopped.  It was him or her alive.  That small, fragile cry, that blood which signified that life had triumphed.  Despite everything, I wanted to see it.  I stretched my hands out as far as the straps allowed.  My baby.

I want my baby.  But no one responded.  A doctor took the child.  I only saw his back.  He took him to a corner.  I tried to turn my head. A nurse held me down.  Stay calm or you’ll never see him again. I obeyed.  I listened to voices, whispers, instruments.  The baby’s cry was fading.  Then silence.

A silence that chilled me to the bone.  The doctor returned.  He was holding a card.  He looked at the young soldier.  Then he said to me in a neutral voice, “The baby is healthy, but doesn’t meet the criteria. It will be transferred.” Those words echoed in my mind. Doesn’t meet the criteria. My baby wasn’t blond enough, not perfect enough for their monstrous vision.

Transferred where? I screamed. No one answered. They wrapped my baby in a dirty cloth. I didn’t see it. Not its face, not its eyes, not its tiny hands, nothing. They took it away . And I stayed there, tied down, bleeding, drained, screaming in that cold room while they ripped my child from me. After the delivery, they untied me.

They cleaned me up superficially, threw me a clean gown. “Stand up,” a nurse ordered, “I could n’t.”  My legs could no longer support me. My body was exhausted.  My soul emptied. They dragged me down the corridor.  My feet were scraping the ground.  I couldn’t feel anything anymore .  The young soldier had stayed behind.

He followed me.  When the nurses let me go in front of the barracks, he approached.  He looked at me.  He said in hesitant French, “I’m sorry, two words, just two words.” Nothing changed.  He wouldn’t give me back my baby.  He didn’t repair what was broken.  But it was the first time someone acknowledged that what had just happened was wrong.

He left quickly.  I went into the barracks.  The other women saw me. My face, my trembling body, my empty hands.  They understood. Marguerite approached.  She said nothing.  She took me in her arms. She left me to cry.  For the first time, I cried silently. To prevent the guards from hearing, I stayed lying down for days.

I didn’t eat, I didn’t speak.  I placed my hands on my flat stomach as if I could still feel it, as if my baby was still there.  But he was no longer there.  The other women looked at me with that look I now knew, the look of ghostly mothers.  Hélène was still cradling her rag.  She would sometimes look at me as if to say, “Welcome .” Weeks passed.

My body healed. The bleeding stopped. The physical pain subsided. But not the inner pain. I dreamed of him every night. I heard him cry. I felt him in my arms. Upon waking, the voids. One morning, we were gathered together. We were told transfer. You’re leaving, or no one knew. We were loaded into a truck.

The same kind that had brought me. Destination unknown. During the drive, I looked at the snow- covered fields, the destroyed villages. I wondered if my baby was out there somewhere , alive or dead. The uncertainty was the worst thing. The truck stopped in front of a larger, darker camp. Ravensbrook, I heard the name whispered.

A camp for women. Unforget about there, no more pregnancy, no more babies. Just labor, the end, a slow death. I survived, I don’t know how . Maybe by  habit. Perhaps because something inside me refused to die until I had an answer, but the answers never came. The war continued. 1942, 1943, 1944, the Allies advanced.

The bombings drew closer. In April 1945, they arrived. The gates opened. We were free. Librus. The word sounded false. What is freedom when you’ve lost everything? Liberation came in April 1945. The Americans opened the gates of Ravensbrück. We walked out. Staggering, bewildered. Some wept, others remained silent as if they couldn’t quite believe it. Free. The word sounded strange.

What is freedom for someone who has lost everything that mattered? We were fed, washed, given civilian clothes. An American doctor examined me. He saw the scars, the tattoo,  the state of my body. After the delivery, he nodded, he wrote “Severe trauma, probable sterility, fragile psychological state .  I didn’t say anything.

I was repatriated to France by train along with other survivors.  In Paris, we were welcomed like heroines, with speeches and flowers.  I smiled, I said thank you, but deep down, I felt empty, dirty, unworthy.  I returned to my village, or what was left of it .  The house had been bombed. My parents were dead.

Henry never came back.  I was alone, completely alone.  I found a small apartment in Épinal.  I worked as a seamstress.  I survived. I met Paul, a former prisoner of war, a good, calm man.  He understood the silence.  He didn’t ask any questions.  We got married.  We had three children, two girls and a boy.  I loved them with all my heart, but every time I held them in my arms, I thought of the one I had never held.

Every first cry, every first smile brought me back to that cold room, to that cry I had heard before it was torn from me.  I never talked about it.  Paul knew there was something there , but he respected my silence.  At night, I had nightmares.  I was reliving the birth, the silence after the cry. I woke up screaming.  Paul took me in his arms.

He said, “It’s over, but it wasn’t over. It never would be. I searched for my baby for years. I wrote to the Red Cross, to the archives, to organizations. Always the same answer : ‘No trace, as if he had never existed.’”  I continued to live for my children, for Paul.” But the emptiness was always there, an unanswered question , a grief without a grave, the years of silence.

That’s what I call them. After the liberation, I came home alone, drained. I lived, I survived. I rebuilt a life on the surface. Paul was good. He didn’t ask questions. He understood the silences. The nightmares. We had three children. I loved them dearly. But each birth brought me back there. Each newborn’s cry awakened my own.

I never spoke to anyone. Not to Paul, not to my children, not to friends. The secret was too heavy, too shameful. People would ask me, “What did you do during the war?” I would answer, “I was deported to Ravensbrück,” and change the subject.  People nodded their heads.  They said, “You suffered, but they didn’t know .” I searched in secret.

I wrote to the Red Cross, to German archives, to Jewish organizations, even though my baby wasn’t Jewish. I gave the dates, the place, the details. Always the same answer: no trace, file destroyed. As if it had never existed. I kept the letters in a box at the back of a closet. Sometimes I reread them alone.

I cried. Decades passed.        Ninety, seventy, and my children grew up. They married and had their own children. I smiled in family photos, I baked cakes, I knitted, but inside, the void. An unanswered question, an eternal grief. And in 190, I turned 62. I started to think, “If I die, everything disappears with me.

” But I couldn’t speak. The shame was too strong, the fear of judgment. What will people think of me? A woman  who lost her child because she wasn’t good enough. That was their logic, not mine. But it had affected me deeply. Endos Millum, a journalist, found me. She was making a documentary about pregnant women in the camps.

She had my name in some archives. She came over. She asked, “Would you like to testify?” “I refused.” She came back several times. She was gentle. “Be patient!” She said, “Your story deserves to be known so that this never happens again .” One day, I agreed. I spoke for the first time in front of a camera in my living room. I told everything.

The cold table, the examinations, the birth, the scream, the silence. I cried. The journalist cried. When it was over, she hugged me . Thank you. Thank you for having the courage. It wasn’t courage, it was a necessity. The silence had become a prison. By speaking out, I freed myself a little from public testimony.  That’s how everything changed.

When the journalist returned for the last time, I said yes. I sat in my living room, surrounded by photos of my children and grandchildren. The camera was rolling. I spoke for the first time in sixty years. I told everything: the village, the arrest, the sorting center, the examinations, the birth, the scream, the silence. I cried in front of the camera.

The journalist cried too. When it was over, she hugged me . Thank you, Éise, thank you for breaking the silence. The documentary came out in 2003. It was called “The Ghost Seas.” It was broadcast on television in France, Germany, all over Europe. People discovered this secret program.

The reverse Lebensborne, the babies stolen from the lower sea. Thousands of letters arrived from survivors, families, and historians. Some said, “I was there too.”  “Thank you for speaking for us.” Others said, “I’ve been searching for my child my whole life.” I answered them all as best I could. I was invited to commemorations and conferences.

In schools, I spoke to young people, showed them photos, told them stories, and they listened. Some wept silently. One young girl told me, “Thanks to you, I know that courage can survive anything, even the unspeakable.” I wept. In 2005, a memorial was created. Not large, but real, in Berlin: a wall with names, hundreds of women’s names, and next to it, a blank line for the unknown child.

My name is there. Elise Morrow, child born in February 1941. Sex unknown, fate unknown. I went to the unveiling. I touched the plaque. I spoke to the crowd. I said, “We were not heroines, we were ordinary women, but we  We carried life into hell and it was stolen from us.   Don’t forget, so that it never happens again .

Since then, I haven’t stopped talking.  I wrote articles, I gave interviews, I helped other survivors break their silence. Some had ended in anant.  They thought it was too late.  I told them it’s never too late.  To ensure the truth came out, my family uncovered everything.  After the documentary, they cried.  They hugged me. They said, “Why didn’t you tell us anything?” I replied, “Because some pain is too heavy to share, but now I give it to you. Carry it with me.

” And they did . That is my legacy. Not just the pain, but the memory passed on. I left in 2007. At 49, my body was worn out, but my heart, my heart was finally light. My children were there. My grandchildren, Marie, my eldest daughter, held my hand. I smiled at them. I told them, “Don’t cry too much, I might finally find him again.

” They cried anyway. But they understood. Before closing my eyes, I thought about everything. The village, a bowl of rice, that round belly under the occupation, the cold table, the scream, the silence. But I also thought about what I had accomplished afterward, my voice finally freed, the documentaries, the letters, the young people who listened to me, the  A memorial, with my name engraved on it.

Next to this blank line for my unknown child. I’ve been thinking of you, of those listening to this story today. I want you to know one last thing. What they did to us was monstrous. They stole our children, they stole our humanity, they tried to erase us, but they didn’t succeed because I spoke out, because others spoke out after me, because you are listening now.

As long as this story is told, my baby exists. All these babies exist, all these mothers exist. We are not ghosts, we are voices, voices that travel through time. To those of you listening, I leave you a message. The last one: never let hate decide who deserves to live, who deserves to be loved, who deserves to be a mother.

When you see injustice, speak out. When you see silence, break it. When someone says, “That was a long time ago,” answer no, it’s today.  forget.  Protect the children.  All children, regardless of their origin, regardless of their story, because every child deserves a first look from their mother, a first hug, a first “I love you”.

It was stolen from me .  But I wasn’t robbed of the right to tell you.  So, I tell you this with all the love I wasn’t able to give to my first child.  I’ll pass it on to you.  Keep it, pass it on.  And if one day you hold your child in your arms, think of me, think of all of us and tell him/her that he/she is loved simply because he/she exists.

This is our victory, the only one that matters. Thank you for listening.  Thank you for carrying a little of my cross with me.  I can now leave in peace.  Elise Moru.