The following is the recorded testimony of Simone Lefèvre, documented in Lyon, France, between May and June 1997. After fifty-four years of absolute silence regarding her experiences in the infamous “Block 10” during the height of the Second World War, Simone decided to share her story. These are her words.
The Decision to Speak
“My name is Simone Lefèvre. Today I am 75 years old. I am sitting here in my living room in Lyon, looking through the window at a world that has moved on. It took me five decades to accept my past—to finally sit down and recount what happened. During all this time, I kept the silence. I didn’t want my neighbors or my friends to know what was done to me.”
“I didn’t want to see pity in their eyes. But I feel that time is running out; my body is tired, and my hands tremble a little more every morning. If I don’t speak now, this truth will die with me. I was told it was important for people to know—not to gain fame, for there is no glory in this, but so that no one can ever claim these events were a fabrication.”
A Simple Life in Paris
“Before all this, I was just a young woman in Paris. It was 1943, and I was 21 years old. I worked in a small fabric shop in the center of the city. I loved the feel of silk and cotton between my fingers, imagining the elegant clothes the customers would create. I lived with my mother in a small apartment. My father had passed away during the First World War, so it was just the two of us.”
“Our life was modest. We survived on food stamps, but we didn’t mind. I remember the smell of toast in the morning and the whir of bicycles on the street. Back then, I thought the greatest danger was simply not finding enough coal for the winter. I was wrong.”
The Knock at the Door
“On a spring morning, everything changed. It was about 6:00 AM. There was a knock at the door—not a polite tap, but heavy, sharp blows that made the wood tremble. When I opened it, two French police officers and a man in a green uniform were standing there. Without explanation, they called my name and ordered me to pack a small suitcase.”
“My mother cried and clung to my arm. They pushed her away. I told her, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back in two or three days.’ That was the last lie I ever told her. I saw her through the small window of the police car; she looked so small standing on the sidewalk in her nightgown. I was taken to a collection center, a school filled with hundreds of terrified people. Soon after, we were forced into railway wagons.”
The Journey into Darkness
“These were not passenger cars with velvet seats. They were gray wooden cattle cars with narrow slits for air. Seventy people were packed into a space designed for eight horses. The journey lasted three days and three nights. There was no room to sit; we stood huddled together in thick, unbreathable air. Thirst was the worst of all; my throat was so dry I could no longer swallow.”
“When the train finally stopped, the bolts were released with a terrible metallic sound. The doors slid open and cold air hit us. But it wasn’t fresh; it smelled of something oily and burnt. I stepped onto the platform and saw the sign: Auschwitz-Birkenau. I didn’t know what it meant then. A guard hit me when I tried to protest leaving my suitcase. At that moment, I ceased to be Simone, the fabric seller. I was nothing.”
Transformation into a Number
“After the initial selection, hundreds of us were ordered to undress in a brick building. They cut our hair with blunt clippers and threw dirty, oversized striped clothes at us. Then, they tattooed my left arm. I became Number 38412. That is the number I see every morning when I get dressed.”
“Unlike the others, I was not sent to work in the fields or factories. A guard led me to the main camp, Auschwitz I, and stopped in front of a building with bars on the windows. It was Block 10. A Polish nurse named Martha looked at me sadly and said, ‘You are young and in good health; that is why they chose you.’ I didn’t understand the weight of those words yet.”
The Quiet Terror of Block 10
“Block 10 was different. We had slightly better food and didn’t work in the rain. But the silence inside was more terrifying than the screams outside. Women sat on their bunks with empty eyes. Sometimes a nurse called a number, and the woman who left never returned as the same person.”
“Martha eventually whispered the truth: this block was under the direction of doctors, specifically a man named Carl Clauberg. He was looking for a way to perform mass sterilizations quickly and without the subjects’ knowledge. At twenty-one, I didn’t fully grasp the cruelty. I still believed that even in a camp, a doctor was a person of healing. I didn’t know that science could be used as a weapon of torture.”
The Experiments Begin
“The doctors treated us like experimental animals, noting our hip measurements and temperatures on index cards. Then came the morning my number was called. I was led into a white corridor that smelled of phenol—a sharp, stinging scent. I waited outside a door, hearing the click-clack of metal instruments being placed on a tray.”
“Inside, I was forced onto a cold metal examination table. Dr. Clauberg had his back to me, filling a container with a thick, grayish liquid. He never looked me in the eye. I stared at a small crack in the ceiling that looked like a river, trying to imagine I was back in Paris. Then I felt the instruments—a dry, tearing pain. Clauberg muttered in a monotonous voice, ‘Don’t move… otherwise everything will go wrong.'”
The Aftermath of the Injections
“I felt a thick, burning liquid spread through my stomach. It wasn’t a sharp stab, but a corrosive heat that felt like it was devouring me from within. After the procedure, I walked back to the dormitory, holding the walls for support. My belly became swollen and hard as stone. The fever rose quickly.”
“Life became a state of constant, terrified waiting. We sat on our beds in silence. Sometimes Dr. Schumann would take us to a room with large metal plates to expose us to high-intensity X-rays. My skin began to turn red and peel. We were 800 women—French, Polish, Dutch, Greek—mostly Jewish, along with political prisoners like myself. The pain made us selfish, but we tried to help where we could. I remember Odette from Bordeaux, who shared her bread until an infection took her life. She was replaced within two hours. That was the reality: a constant exchange of battered bodies.”
The Loss of Identity
“We lost our female identity. Our bodies became dry and haggard. I looked in the reflection of a dirty window and saw a 60-year-old woman staring back, though I was barely twenty. I underwent three more procedures over the months. Every time, it was the same: the cold metal, the boiling liquid, and the command, ‘Don’t move.'”
“Martha, the nurse, was our only link to humanity. She told us to stay clean and keep our heads high. ‘If you let yourself go, they see you are weak and send you to the chimneys,’ she would say. So we walked straight, despite the burning in our stomachs and the shame tattooed on our skin.”
The End of the War
“In January 1945, the sound of Russian cannons became a constant rumble. The guards became nervous. Dr. Clauberg fled with his files. We were forced into the ‘Death March’ through the snow. If a woman sat down to rest, she was shot. I stared at the heels of the woman in front of me and counted my steps, thinking of my mother.”
“One morning, the guards were gone. We hid in a barn until men on horses with red stars on their caps arrived. A Russian soldier gave me a piece of dark chocolate—the first sweet thing I had tasted in years. I didn’t cry. I was too empty.”
Returning to a World that Wanted to Forget
“I returned to Paris in May. I ran to our old apartment and knocked, but a stranger opened the door. My mother had been taken months after me and died in Bergen-Belsen shortly before the liberation. I was alone. The city was busy with reconstruction and cinema; no one wanted to hear about Auschwitz. When I tried to speak of Block 10, people changed the subject. ‘It’s over, Simone. You must forget.'”
“I moved to Lyon to escape the memories. I met Jacques, a good man who had been in the Resistance. We married in 1950. He wanted a large family, but after two years of trying, a doctor in Lyon told us the truth: my internal organs were scarred and burned beyond repair. Jacques was silent for a week. He wasn’t angry; he was infinitely sad. We lived the rest of our lives with the ghosts of the children we would never have.”
The Burden of the Witness
“I hid my arm under long sleeves for decades. I felt ashamed—though the shame belonged to the perpetrators, not the victims. I decided to speak today because I saw people on television claiming these events never happened. My body is the proof. The scars on my stomach are the proof. The silence in my apartment for fifty years is the proof.”
“Evil does not always come with screams. Sometimes it wears a white coat and speaks to you as if you are an object. For Clauberg, I was a statistic. For the world, I was an uncomfortable silence. I am no longer afraid of death; it will be a release. But before I go, I wanted you to know that behind the number stood Simone—a girl who loved fabrics and wanted to live a simple life.”
“They took everything from me except my memory. Now, I hand this memory to you. Do with it what you want, but never say that you didn’t know. The story is engraved in my flesh, and now it is a little bit in yours.”
Postscript: Simone Lefèvre passed away in 2005 at the age of 83 in her apartment in Lyon. It is estimated that approximately 800 women were subjected to forced procedures in Block 10. Only a small fraction survived the war and the years of complications that followed. Her testimony serves as a vital historical record of the resilience of the human spirit in the face of dehumanization.