There was a corridor in the basement of the former Lille textile factory which did not appear in any official document German during the occupation. The soldiers of Vermarthe knew where they were found but did not mention never location in reports or correspondence. It was a secret whispered between the guard towers, transmitted only orally between officers who needed to know and recorded in notebooks personnel who would be burned before the German withdrawal in 1944.
The corridor led to a steel door reinforced painted in industrial gray without external identification. Just a number scribbled in white chalk that someone tried to erase several times but which reappeared always. 47 On the other side, reality was so brutal that many women who entered there prayed to die before dawn, because death seemed more merciful than surviving a night of no longer in this place.
Marguerite of Lorme was years old when she came down for the first time its steps wet concrete by a freezing dawn March 1943. She was a nurse Red Cross volunteer, daughter of a respected pharmacist from Roubet and had spent the last 18 months treating civilians injured in hospitals improvised from the region. Daisy was not a member of the resistance, did not carry weapons, did not know make bombs or sabotage rails railway.
His only crime, if one could call it that, had been to treat an injured young person who was bleeding on the sidewalk in front of the market municipal without asking which side of the war he found himself. The boy was a messenger of the resistance. Tris days later, the guestapo knocked on the door of the family’s house Orme at half past four in the morning with this methodical violence which didn’t need a cry to terrorize.
Just the sound of boots climbing the wooden staircase and the light lanterns cutting through the darkness rooms. Marguerite was taken away right to farewell without time to take a coat or put on shoes appropriate shoes. We put her to the back of a covered military truck of a tarpaulin with six other women that she had never seen before, all with the same stunned look of those who have not yet understood completely what happens to them, but already sense that something terrible awaits them at the end of this travel.
The journey took less than 20 minutes but seemed like an eternity. Every chaos on the road, causing bodies to collide against the walls of cold metal, each sudden braking drawing sighs suffocated to women who tried to keep where they could. When the truck finally stopped and the tarpaulin was pulled back, Marguerite saw the facade for the first time dilapidated old textile factory Rousell and Fields, a brick building red blackened by soot and rain acid from the years of war with broken windows that looked like
empty eyes watching the arrival of new victims. The factory had been decommissioned in 1940, just after the German occupation when the owner had fled England. taking with him the plans of the machines and not leaving behind him only the iron structures rusty and empty halls where formerly worked more than 200 workers.
But the Germans had found a use for this forgotten space. They had transformed the ground floor in storage supply, the first floor in temporary accommodation for troops passage and the basement, this basement damp and cold which once sheltered boilers and dye vats industrial into something that would never be mentioned in the official occupancy records.
There, in this labyrinth of narrow corridors, lit by dim bulbs which were flashing constantly, they had created a space where the rules of war did not apply, where the Geneva Convention was only a distant memory and where women French women disappeared for days, weeks or forever. Marguerite smelled the smell even before go down the stairs.
It was a nauseating to good mixture of mold, cheap disinfectants, sweat accumulated and something metallic that she recognized immediately like old blood. This specific smell that sticks to the wall and floor when there is no ventilation adequate or real cleaning effort. A German soldier in a stained uniform pushed in the back, making her trip on the first step, and she had to hold on to the rusty railing so as not to fall face down on the concrete.
Behind she, the other women went down silence, just the sound of footsteps reasoning in this descending tunnel. And Marguerite realized that none of them were crying, none begged because all had already understood that down below the supplications had no value. When they arrived at the corridor principal of the basement, Marguerite lives for the first time the doors.
There had seven in total, distributed irregularly along a passage which extended over approximately 40 m, each in heavy metal with small windows screens at eye level and reinforced locks on the exterior side. Some were open, revealing tiny cells with bunks of iron and improvised jumps like toilets. Others remained locked, but from the inside came muffled sounds, low moans, whispers in French that seemed like prayers incomplete.
And then Marguerite saw the back door, the last one in the corridor, the one who stood out from all others not by its size or color, but by the absolute silence that emanated from its interior and by the number scribbled in white chalk. 47 If you listen to this story now it may be difficult to imagine that places like this one really existed, hidden in the forgotten corners of occupied Europe, operating in the shadows while the official war took place on the battlefields and in the big newspaper headlines.
But room 47 was real. And if you are curious to know what happened to Marguerite and the others women who have passed through this door, leave a like on this video to support this work of memory history and write in the comments from where you are looking at us. Stories like this must be told, even if it hurts to hear them, because forgetting is the second death of those who suffered.
A middle-aged German officer with metal-rimmed glasses and clipboard under his arm, emerged from a from the side rooms and walked calmly to the group of prisoners. He doesn’t did not shout, did not threaten, observed simply each of them with this professional coldness of one who evaluates livestock or livestock equipment laboratory.
Marguerite felt her gaze wander his face, down on his neck, assess its physical structure. Then he made an annotation on the board with a fountain pen too expensive to be in the hands of someone working in a filthy basement. The officer designated three women including Marguerite and said something in German to guard soldiers.
Marguerite did not speak not fluent in German but recognized a word that was repeated many times in the following days. Experience. The three women selected were separated from the group and taken to a room small to the left of room 47 where there had a metal table, medical instruments arranged with surgical precision on a tray enameled and a strong earthy smell which made your eyes burn.
Marguerite, who was a nurse and knew well the procedure environment medical, immediately realized that this was not a common nursing station. He there was no prime material rescue, no plaster, no bandage clean, not the basic care we get with patients. There were syringes of glass lined up, bottles with strange colored liquids, hand written labels in german with terminology that it does not did not understand completely and a notebook annotation open on a filled page figures and tables.
A doctor military, wearing a white coat stained with something that looked like with iodine, entered the room without greet anyone. This will simply hands in a dirty sink and started to prepare an injection. It was at this moment that Marguerite understood that she was not there to be questioned about the resistance, that it was not there to sign confessions or denounce companions she didn’t know not even.
She was there because her young and healthy body was useful for a another way, as a human cobail for tests that no civilized government would not authorize, as disposable material for medical research that would later be buried with the evidence and corpses. The doctor approached her with the syringe and Marguerite tried to step back, but two soldiers grabbed her by the arms with a brutal force, immobilizing him completely.
She felt the needle penetrate the skin of his forearm. felt the cold liquid enter his vein and then felt a wave of vertigo which made her stagger, her legs gives way, the vision becomes blurred and the last thing she saw before fainting was the doctor noting something thing in the notebook with the same indifference of the one who records the temperature of a chemical solution, Marguerite woke up on a bunk narrow iron, covered only with a thin blanket that smelled of mold and other sweat people.
His head animated him dull pain that spread from the neck up to his eyes and his mouth was so dry that his tongue seemed stuck to the palace. She tried to get up, but her body was not responding correctly, the muscles weak and trembling as if she had gone days without eating. Little by little, his vision adjusted to the darkness of the place and Marguerite realized that she was in a cell shared with five other women, all lying on similar berths, some sleeping, others staring simply the ceiling with this empty expression of those who
no longer expect anything from life. One of the older women, perhaps in the forties, with hair gray hair tied in a bun of effects, slowly turned on the neighboring bunk and whispered in French with a southern accent. Don’t try to get up quickly. What he tells us injects leaves the body soft for hours.
Wait until you can feel your toes again. Marguerite looked at the woman and saw recent bite marks on his arms, small purple spots, which almost formed a line along the vein. “How long have I been remained unconscious?” asked Marguerite, her voice coming out rque and weak. The woman smiled sadly. I don’t know.
Down here, we lose the concept of time. It may have been a few hours. It may have been a whole day. He doesn’t leave us see the natural light and the towers of guard change without diagram. Everything is designed to disorient you. The woman presented as Simon Archambau, professor of literature from Toulouse, arrested three weeks earlier for having hidden books banned by the Germans in the library the school where she taught.
Simon recounted, with the resigned calm of that who has already gone through all the stages of despair and came to a sort of fatalistic acceptance that room 47 was used mainly for two objectives: medical experiences and violent interrogations. The German doctors, according to her, were testing experimental vaccines against tyfus and dysentery, a disease which ravaged the German troops on the eastern front and used the French prisoners like cobaï because they considered their life disposable without political value or
significant military. He injects us things and then we observe them reactions. They write everything down. fever, vomiting, convulsion, everything. Some women have terrible reactions, remain days of delirium. Others don’t seem to feel nothing. But then they increase the dose and try again. Marguerite felt a shiver run through his spine.
She knew medical experience stories Nazi, had heard whispers about this which was happening in the camps concentration, but never had imagined that something like this could happen here in the north of the France, in an abandoned factory in a few kilometers from his hometown. “Room 47” asked Marguerite, remembering that silent door end of the corridor.
Simon turned away look and for the first time Marguerite experiences authentic fear in his eyes. Room 47 is different. This are not just experiences medical. This is where they take women who are trying to resist or consider particularly problematic. What’s going on in there. Nobody talks a lot. Those who come back do not want to remember and many don’t come back.
The following days turned into a brutal routine and dehumanizing. Marguerite was awake at o’clock irregular, sometimes to what seemed be dawn, other times in the middle of what must have been the afternoon, always with the same routine, two soldiers opened the cell, shouted names from a list and women called had taken themselves to the procedure room.
There, the doctor stained blouse applied injections, took blood samples with thick needles which left painful hematomas and sometimes forced the prisoners to ingest bitter-tasting liquids that caused intense nausea and Diarrhes that lasted for hours. Marguerite was subjected to at least seven different injections during the two first weeks, each of them producing side effects that varied from very high fevers which made them tremble so uncontrolled until episodes of vomiting so violent that she thought that his stomach sank.
But there were even more methods cruelties applied in this basement. Marguerite learned from others prisoners that some doctors tested techniques of forced sterilization injecting chemicals directly into young woman’s uterus to check if they could induce infertility permanent without the need for surgery. A young girl of only years named Colette was subjected to this procedure and spent three days screaming in pain in the cell, bleeding profusely until we finally took him on a stretcher and no one ever knew what
that had happened to him. Another prisoner, a pregnant woman of 5 month which had been captured during a roundup in Sainthomè was used to test the effects of controlled radiation on fetal development. And when the baby was finally born three weeks old prematurely, the tiny body presented deformations which caused even turn their faces away from the soldiers guard.
Marguerite, with her training nurse, tried to offer a little of comfort to other women, sharing what little they knew about how to minimize infections, how to clean wounds with precarious resources they had, how to control fever with cold compresses from dirty water. But the truth is she felt completely helpless in the face of the extent of the suffering around of her.
There were women who could no longer walk properly cause of nerve damage caused by incorrectly applied injections. There was women who had lost teeth after untreated infections in the mouth. There were women who simply gave up eating, slept on the bunk and were waiting for death to come because death seemed more worthy than continue to be used as an animal laboratory.
And then there was the room. Daisy was taken there for the first time by one night in April when an officer German different from the usual ones, appeared in the hallway and pointed to her directly. The man was younger than the others, maybe thirty of years, blond hair combed in back with brilliantine and wore an impeccably uniform clean which contrasted with the dirt widespread underground.
He doesn’t say anything, just waved his hand let her follow him. And Marguerite, knowing that resisting would be useless and would result in immediate violence, got up from the bunk and walked behind him with his legs trembling with fear. Simone, from the next bed, briefly held the Marguerite’s hand when she passed a last gesture of human solidarity and whispered: “Try not to show fear.
They like it when we show fear.” The door to room 47 was opened by a soldier who stood guard permanence on the other side and Marguerite entered a space larger than herself didn’t expect it, maybe one twenty square meters lit by bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling which cast harsh shadows on the concrete walls and notebooks.
The ground was covered with dark spots which looked like dried blood and center, there was a wooden table heavy with leather straps attached to the sides. There was no no medical instruments there, no syringe or vial of substances chemicals. There was only this table, these straps and three soldiers Germans whom he observed with expressions that Marguerite recognized immediately as a predator, this a look she had seen before in men who did not see the women as human beings, but as objects available for use.
What happened in the hours following inside room 47 was something that Marguerite could not never describe completely, even decades later, when she found finally the courage to talk about this period of his life. She remembered fragments of being forced to undress while one of the soldiers laughed something that the other had said German.
to feel the leather straps tighten your wrists and ankles until stopping traffic, shouting until his voice lets out and realizes that no one would come and help because that down below the screams were so common that it became just background noise more. She remembered the smell of sweat and cheap alcohol in the wool of men, physical pain who seemed not to be hungry and the deep humiliation of having your body used as if it were his own not.
as if she were nothing else than a disposable object that would be thrown away as soon as that it would lose its usefulness. When they finally removed from the table and thrown back into the cell, Marguerite could no longer walk correctly. Simon and another prisoner helped him get on the bunk, cleaned the blood from his legs with wet rags and remained by his side in silence because that there were no adequate words for this type of suffering.
Daisy went three days without being able to eat anything solid, the body whole painful as if it had been beaten. And when she succeeds finally get up and go up to the jump which served as a toilet, she saw that she was still bleeding small red spots that stained the the only item of clothing he had left. Life in the basement of the textile factory the island continued without a pattern predictable, which was part of the strategy to break psychologically the prisoners.
There was no fixed schedule for the meal which generally consisted of a clear soup with apple pieces rotten earth and hard bread that had a taste of silliness. There was no regular bath, only water breaks cold that women used to wash as best they could. Always monitored by soldiers who were obscene comments in German and laughed among themselves.
There was no natural light, no schedule, no way of knowing if it was daylight or night outside. And this disorientation time meant that a lot of prisoners completely lost their senses notion of the time she spent there. If weeks or months had passed elapsed since their capture. Daisy began to make small marks on the concrete wall with a fragment of metal that she had found on the ground.
A brand for every time it is woke up from what she supposed to be a period of sleep. trying to create a mental structure which would help him maintain his health mental. From what she could calculate, about 6 weeks had passed in this underground hell and his body showed accumulated signs of abuse constant.
She had lost at least 10 kg. Her hair was starting to fall out per clump due to malnutrition and extreme stress. And she had a persistent cough that got worse at night due to humidity in the basement. But the worse are not the physical brands. The worst part was feeling like she was losing pieces of herself. That the marguerite, who had been a nurse devoted, loving daughter, young woman with dreams of getting married one day and to have children, were slowly deleted and replaced by an empty version, mechanized, which reacted only to
orders and survived by animal instinct. Other women failed to maintain even that. Marguerite futmoin of prisoners taken after psychotic attacks. One of them shouting that she saw angels ceiling, the other repeating the same name dozens of times until its voice becomes rque. She witnessed of a young student from Lyon trying to hang yourself with your own clothes in tatters and she only succeeded because that Simon noticed it in time and called for help.
The Germans removed it from the cell, applied a sort of sedative and when they brought her back from hours later, the girl had glassy-eyed and walked like a zombie, completely drugged with a whatever substance held her docile and non-reactive. But there were also moments of silent resistance, small acts of solidarity that kept alive the humanity of the prisoners.
Simon organized poetry sessions, whispered at night, reciting from memory verrs of Baudir and Rimbeau and others women contributed with songs folklore from their region. Sung if low that we could barely hear them, just to remember that they were still French, that they still had a culture and history and identity that no German could tear away completely.
A peasant from Brittany arrested for hiding grain that she should have delivered as a tribe to the occupying forces shared the rare portions of bread that she received with the weakest, even when she herself was dying of hunger. and Marguerite used his medical knowledge to teach other women basic hygiene and first aid, little skills that sometimes made the difference between survive and succumb to infections.
This was during one of these conversations nights that Marguerite learned the story of Jeun Viève Laurent, a of the first prisoners taken to the room 47 months before the arrival of Marguerite. Young Viè was 29 years old, was piano teacher at Haras and was arrested after a neighbor collaborationist denounced him for supposedly having listened to illegal BBC transmissions.
She spent 4 months in the basement, being used for experiments with experimental drugs that doctors Germans were testing to potentiate resistance of soldiers to fatigue on the eastern front. Young Viève received very high doses of amphetamine and other stimulating substances, remained days without sleeping under observation medical and when his heart entered finally in serious arrhythmia, he simply left to die in the cell without any attempt to resuscitation.
His body was removed to a stretcher covered with a tarpaulin and never appeared in the registers official deaths from the occupation. Of stories like those of Jeuneviève were innumerable. Daisy heard about Thérèse Bonet, a 52-year-old midwife from Amien who was subjected to hypothermia experiments to test how long a being human could survive in water frozen before entering thermal shock fatal.
She heard about Isabelle Rousseau, a young textile worker from years old, who was deliberately infected with Tyfus bacteria to test the effectiveness of an antibiotic experimental and who died of generalized skepticemia after 10 days very high fever and delirium. She heard about Émilie Garnier, a 23-year-old medical student who ironically had enough knowledge to understand exactly what German doctors did with her and who tried to resist by explaining in precarious German that this what he was doing violated all the norms
international medical services, but was brutally beaten and taken to the ward 47 from which she left three days later later so traumatized that she could not never speak. The stories multiplied in the darkness of its moist cells. Each woman wore in her the weight of memory that she would have preferred never to have.
Marguerite learned of Claire’s existence Fontaine, a 36-year-old librarian from Valencienne, arrested for having lent books banned from students. It was used in tests of sensory deprivation, locked in a completely dark and silent room for days, fed only by a tube, until she starts to have auditory hallucinations and visuals so intense that even after release of this part, it never managed to completely find his lucidity.
German doctors meticulously documented his reactions, taking notes on the gradual deterioration of his condition mental, as if she were only one fascinating subject of study, rather than a human being in suffering. There was also the story of Hélène Morau, none relationship with Marguerite despite the name similar, a 43-year-old seamstress from Dunkerk who was captured while sewed civilian uniforms for members of the resistance.
Helene was subjected to repeated injections of a substance that German doctors simply called compound B7, a chemical mixture that no one really knew the composition exact. The effects were devastating. Helene developed tremors uncontrollable in the hands, lost gradually the vision of one eye and her hair fell completely the space of two weeks.
When the doctors realized that she had no more useful for their test, they simply stopped feeding her correctly and Helene died of starvation, combined with toxic effects, accumulated injected substances. Every morning, when the prisoners woke up, there was always this anxiety of not not knowing who would be called that day, who would be dragged to the room procedure or even worse towards the room 47.
The soldiers seemed to choose chance sometimes. In the past, he deliberately selected women who still showed signs of physical resistance or strength. Marguerite noticed that the most fragile, those who were already weakened to the point of almost no longer able to walk, were generally left alone as if she had no more value, same cobail.
This cruel realization made him understand Marguerite that their survival depended of an impossible balance. To be strong enough not to die, but weak enough not to be considered useful for new experiences. In June 1943, there was a significant change in the dynamics of the subsoil. News prisoners arrived, among them several women captured during a big roundup of the Guestapo in Roubet, the Marguerite’s hometown.
Among these new prisoners was a young girl that Marguerite recognized immediately. It was Véronique Petit. daughter of the street baker where Marguerite had grown up, a child that Marguerite had seen her grow since her younger age and now at 16 years old had been arrested for having distributed leaflets of resistance to school.
See Véronique there, with that look terrified of the one who doesn’t understand still the extent of the nightmare in which she entered, woke up in Marguerite a protective fury that she didn’t yet know she had. Marguerite hugged the young girl in her arms arms, whispered words of comfort which she herself did not believe completely and promised that she would everything in his power to protect her.
But there was little that Marguerite could do. Veronica was selected for experiments from the second day and Marguerite assisted helpless while we dragged the young girl towards the procedure room. When Véronique returned, hours later late, she vomited violently and had injection marks on both arm.
Marguerite dyes her hair while she vomited in the jump, cleaned his forehead with cold water and prayed for the first time in years, asking God to give to the young girl the strength to survive. Véronique survived that night, but was taken five other times for procedures in the following weeks and with each return, she was more weak, no longer extinguished, until a morning she just wakes up not, his little thin body already cold, when Simon tried to shake her distribution of bread, the death of Véronique broke something inside Marguerite. She realized
that if she only continued to survive passively, only react what the Germans imposed, she would end up like Véronique, like Jeun Viève, like all the others whose names would never appear in the official records, erased from history as if she had never existed. Marguerite began to lend more pay attention to the movement pattern of the guards, at the times at which the officer medical staff arrived and left, with small inconsistencies in the routine that could represent vulnerabilities.
She shared her observations with Simon and others prisoners of trust. And together, They began to develop a plan who was almost suicidal, but seemed preferable to simply wait for death. She would try to escape. The plan depended on several factors aligning perfectly. First, they need a night when there would be fewer guards in the basement, what was happening generally when troops were seconded for operations in other towns in the region.
Second, it had to create a distraction that would attract guards away from the main cells. Third, she had to get access to the staircase which led to the ground floor and then find a exit the building before the alarm is given and the reinforcements do not arrive. Chances of success were minimal and everyone knew that if they were captured in the middle of escape, the punishment would be worse than everything they had already suffered.
But the alternative was to continue there, being slowly destroyed until that there is nothing human left in her. The days preceding the attempted escape were filled with a almost unbearable tension. Marguerite and the other women involved in the plan were to continue to act normally. not to show no sign that she was planning something, while remaining constantly vigilant to identify the opportune time.
They recovered secretly small objects that could be used as improvised weapons, fragments of metal, a piece of pipe detached from a broken sink, even a heavy stone that one of prisoners had found in a corner from the hallway. These objects were hidden under the bunks, wrapped in rags so as not to make noise if it moved accidentally.
Simon, with his experience as a teacher accustomed to organize and plan became naturally the coordinator main point of the plan. She assigned specific roles for each woman participant. Some would be responsible for creating the distraction, others to overpower the guards if necessary, still others to guide the group towards the exit once they would have reached the ground floor.
Marguerite, with her knowledge medical conditions and his ability to remain relatively calm under pressure, was designated to care for any injuries immediate which could occur during the attempt. Everyone knew that the chances of all surviving were practically zero, but the hope of see at least a few succeed in escape and bear witness to what is happening happened in this basement justified the risk.
The opportunity presented itself by one night in July when a Allied bombing hit a train station railway about 15 km from the island and half of the soldiers in the garrison were mobilized to help control fires and safety of the area. Only three guards remained in the basement and one of them was the young soldier that Marguerite had already observed falling asleep during his shift during the previous night.
Simon provoked a simulated collapse, falling on the floor of the cell and convulsing from convincing way. And when the guard opened the door to check what was happening passing, two other prisoners attacked him with the piece of pipe metal that they had managed to detach from a broken sink. The soldier fell, his head violently hitting the concrete and lost consciousness even before to be able to scream.
Marguerite took the key of the keychain attached to the belt of the soldier, opened the other cells and a few minutes there were 14 women in the hallway, all fragile, badly nourished, traumatized, but animated by one last spark of will live. They went up the stairs in a file silent, each step measured with take care not to make noise, hearts beating so hard it seemed that the Germans could hear it even from a distance.
They arrived at ground floor where the deposit of supplies were immersed in the twilight and Marguerite guided the group towards a side door she had seen to be used by soldiers for take out smoke. It was there, a few meters of freedom that all collapsed. A German officer who came back from the toilet popped up in the corridor, saw the group of prisoners on the run and shouted the alarm before that none of them can react.
In a few seconds, soldiers appeared on all sides, weapons pointed, crises in German reasoning in the building. Some women tried to run anyway, but were knocked down by blows rifle butts. Others gave up simply and knelt by earth, knowing that to resist would be useless. Marguerite looked at the door sideways so close and for a second considered running, trying his luck.
But then she saw Simon being beaten by a soldier and could not abandon him. All were taken back to the basement, but not in common cells. This time, they were all locked in the room 47. What happened in the Cante-7 room that night in July 1943 was the the most brutal collective punishment that the Germans applied throughout the occupation of this basement.
The 14 women who tried to escape were enclosed in the same space of twenty square meters without water, without food, without toilet and with door locked from the outside. The temperature in the basement was already naturally high because of summer. But in room 47, without ventilation adequate, the heat became unbearable.
Marguerite felt in the first hours sweat ran down his body. Thirst began to tighten his throat and despair growing as she realized that the Germans had not no intention of opening this door so early. The women tried to relay near the small slot at the bottom of the door where a thin stream entered of air, but it wasn’t enough for 14 people to breathe comfortably.
Some began to hyperventilate cause of panic, which aggravated the oxygen consumption. Simon, always the most rational, tried to maintain all calm, suggesting that she stays sitting, breathing slowly, saving energy. But as and when the hours passed and no soldier appeared to free them or less give water, panic established itself irreversibly.
The stifling heat transformed the room into a human oven. The tight bodies against each other aggravated the situation. Every breath seems consume the little oxygen available. Marguerite smelled of her own sweat soak his tattered clothes, his tongue swelling in his parched mouth and a nagging migraine set in behind his eyes.
Some women began to moan softly. Others cried in silence, tears tracing furrows on their faces dirty. The almost total darkness of the room, lit only by a faint light that filtered under the door, made the experience even more nightmarish. Every woman locked up in his own terror, while being physically attached to others.
At the second night, one of the most elderly, who were already weakened by previous experiences, began to raving, talking to people who were not there, calling children that she would probably never see again never. Marguerite tried to comfort, but without water, without medication, with nothing other than words, there was little she could do.
The woman dies on the third day, his body simply sedating to extreme stress, dehydration and exhaustion. and the other prisoners had to live with the corpse for two more days until that finally the door is opened. The smell quickly became unbearable. The decomposing body, combined with droppings that the women had not had no choice but to go into a corner from the room, created a stench which made even the one who had the strongest stomach.
Marguerite tried to breathe through mouth, but it only got worse things. The nauseating taste is good depositing on his tongue. She lives several women vomited, which made it worse their already critical dehydration. Some began to have hallucinations, seeing water where there was none, speaking of fountains and rivers that only existed in their minds tormented by thirst.
Simon, despite his own suffering, tried to maintain a semblance of order and hope. She recited poems in a rque voice, encouraged the women to think about their family, about happy memories, to all that could help them hold on for another little. But even his remarkable strength was starting to weaken.
Marguerite life on the fourth night collapsed against the wall, eyes closed, lips cracked and bleeding, murmuring words that no longer had any meaning. Marguerite crawled up to her, took her bony hand and thus remained two women on the verge of death giving oneself mutually the only thing that remained, the human presence.
On the 5th day, when the soldiers opened finally room 47, they found three women dead, nine seriously weakened and two including Marguerite and Simon who still managed to hold on standing although with difficulty. The survivors were dragged out of the room, their legs no longer able to wear correctly. and were taken back to the cells.
We gave them water, but some drank too quickly and vomited immediately, their stomachs unable to no longer manage rapid ingestion after so much days of deprivation. Marguerite goal slowly, forcing his body to accept the liquid in small sips, knowing that it was the only way to survive. In the days that followed, Marguerite noticed significant changes in the basement.
There were less than guards, fewer doctors doing their round, fewer experiments conducted. The Germans were clearly in the process of prepare something and prisoners began to hear rumors whispered between soldiers about the advance of the Allied forces. The big day took place in June and now in August 1944, Allied troops were progressing across France.
Hope, this feeling that many women thought they had lost forever beginning to be reborn. But with this hope also came news terror. What would the Germans do with prisoners when they should evacuate ? Rumors circulated in the cells on massacres in other facilities, on prisoners executed to leave no witnesses. Marguerite and Simon were talking in voice low of this possibility, wondering if they had survived all this only to be shot down in the last days of the occupation.
This uncertainty was perhaps worse than the experiences themselves, this expectation distressing to discover their fate. Then, one foggy morning outside, the cell doors opened abruptly. A German officer that Marguerite had never seen before shouted in broken French that all the prisoners had to go out immediately.
The women, confused and terrified, looked at each other, not knowing not if it was their execution that was waiting or something else. But when they arrived in the corridor, instead of being lined up against a wall, they were simply pushed towards the staircase. “Go away, disappear!” shouted the officer in German and one of the younger soldiers translated roughly in French.
Marguerite and the other survivors climbed the stairs stumbling, their legs weakened struggling to support their own weight. When they emerged ground floor then outside the building, the sunlight was so shiny after months in the darkness that it hurt them eyes. Some women had to cover the face, their eyes having been so accustomed to darkness that they could no longer tolerate the clarity natural.
Marguerite blinked several times, leaving his vision adjust gradually and when it could finally see clearly, she realized that they were really free, that the Germans had them simply thrown out like waste that they no longer needed. The women slowly dispersed, each walking in one direction different, some collapsing after just a few steps, their body too weak to go further.
Daisy wanted to run, get as far away as possible possible from this cursed place, but its legs did not obey him. She staggered through the streets of the island, unrecognizable, thin as a skeleton. Her hair fell in leaving bald patches on his skull, its skin marked with scars, hematomas and infected wounds. The some civilians she came across looked away, either out of fear, either by inability to face the living proof of the horror that had taken place took place so close to home.
He him took 3 days to reach home of a distant tent that still lived in the city. The tent opened the door, looked at Marguerite for a long time moment without recognizing her, then carried his hands to his mouth while choking a scream when she finally realized who it was this skeletal creature on its threshold.
She brought Marguerite in, washed with infinite sweetness, nourishes it with clear broths that the stomach of Marguerite could barely tolerate and cried silently when she saw the extent of the damage inflicted on its denied. It took weeks before Marguerite is sufficiently recovered to undertake the journey to Roubet, towards his parents’ house.
When she finally arrived, her mother opened the door and remained anxious, his eyes wide-eyed. “Daisy!” she whispered, as if she was afraid what pronouncing the name too loudly does disappear the appearance. It’s you Marguerite’s father arrived behind his wife and he too took time to recognize their daughter.
The young woman lively and smiling who had left ten months ago had returned transformed into a broken shadow, aged prematurely, carrying in his eyes a darkness that neither time nor love could completely erase. Marguerite tried to get back to life normal, but quickly discovered that it was impossible. She could no longer work as a nurse, hospitals triggering seizures insurmountable panic which made her vomit and shake.
the smell of disinfectant, tiled corridors, white uniforms. Everything reminded him of basement and German doctors with their syringes and their notebooks observation. She couldn’t no no longer sleep normally. Awake every night with nightmares where she found himself still in room 47, attached to this table, hearing the soldiers’ laughter and feeling the pain which never ended.
The years passed slowly. Marguerite does not maria never, unable to envisage physical intimacy after what she had suffered. She never had children. Partly because the experiences medical procedures had damaged his system reproductive to the point of making a pregnancy almost impossible. partly because she couldn’t imagine give birth to a child after seeing so much human cruelty.
She lived discreetly, working as seamstress in a small workshop, avoiding deep conversations, keeping its secrets locked away darkest corners of his memory. But Marguerite did one thing, one thing only thing which guarantees that the history of the room 47 would not be completely erased from history. In, when the memories were still painful but sufficiently organized in his mind to be put on paper, she sat down at the table his parents’ kitchen and wrote.
She wrote for weeks, filling notebook after notebook with a tight and shaky writing, documenting everything she remembered. She wrote down the names of the women who were dead, those who had survived, the physical descriptions of German doctors and officers, details of the experiments carried out, the exact location of the basement, the room number, dates approximate, anything that could day serve as proof that these horrors had really taken place.
Simon Harchambeau, who had survived and was returned to live in Marseille, did the same. The two women corresponded for years, comparing their memories, filling the gaps in memory one with the details preserved by the other. Together, they created the most complete document which happened in the basement of the island’s textile factory.
But none of the two did not dare to publish this document of their living. Post-war France wanted to turn the page, rebuild, forget the parts darkest of the occupation. The testimonials on collaboration, on specific atrocities, on individual sufferings were often received with embarrassment or disbelief. Cahauscrit Marguerite in a box metal that she buried in the garden of the family home, under the old apple tree where she played as a child.
She left instructions in her will so that the box is not open only after his death, hoping that that time the world would be ready to hear what she had to say. Simon did something similar, confident his own testimony to his niece with the instruction to only make it public many years later. Marguerite of Elm lived until 1998, reaching the age of 79.
She died of natural causes in his sleep. A peaceful death that contrasted cruelly with the violence she had endured in his youth. It is denied in emptying the house for sale remembered the instructions of the will and dug under the apple tree. She found the rusty metal box decades but still sealed and inside Marguerite’s notebooks.
Their page Johnny but their words always readable. The document was given to the museum of the resistance of Lille where historians examined it carefully. They cross-checked the facts with other archives from the period, contacted Simon Archambau, who was still alive in Marseille and confirmed the authenticity of the testimony.
Simon, then aged 85, agreed to meet historians and corroborate every detail of Marguerite’s story, adding his own observations and remembering women including Marguerite hadn’t written down the names. The story of room 47 was finally returned public in 2001 during an exhibition special at the museum entitled The Shadows of the occupation, testimony found.
The exhibition attracted attention considerable not only in France. But internationally, researchers began to investigate on other similar sites which could have existed, realizing that the room 47 was probably not a case isolated, but an example of a more network large number of clandestine installations where Nazis were conducting experiments illegal attacks on civilian prisoners.
Of the 28 women identified in the testimonies of Marguerite and Simon, only six survived the war. The others died in the basement, victims of experience, illness, malnutrition or direct violence. No German soldier was specifically prosecuted for crimes clerk in room 47, partly because that the majority of registers had been destroyed during the withdrawal, part because many of the victims were dead or too traumatized to testify in court.
Today, the former textile factory of the island no longer exists. It was demolished in 2003 to make way for a complex modern residential. But in 2005, thanks to the efforts of the museum and the families of victims, a commemorative plaque was installed on the site. She wears the names of the 28 women identified and the simple inscription in the memory of women who suffered in the basement of this place.
May their courage not be never forgotten. The history of room 47 reminds us of an uncomfortable truth. During the war, the horror did not not limited to the battlefield. She also hides in basements, in rooms without windows, in places that official maps do not not show. She lives in the medical experiments carried out without consent, in violence systematic against the most vulnerable, in the silence of witnesses who look away because recognizing the truth is too much painful.
Marguerite de l’Orme and Simone Archambau refused this silence. They carried their testimonies through decades, keeping them safe until the world is ready to hear. Their courage did not lie only in their survival in the face of unimaginable brutality, but in their determination to ensure that the women who died in this basement would not disappear completely from history, that their name would be pronounced again, that their suffering would be recognized.
Room 47 existed. The women who suffered there existed. and their voice at the same age later we still reason recalling that human dignity is fragile, that cruelty can hide in the darkest corners of history and the courage to survive and testifying is sometimes the only act of possible resistance when the world whole seems to have turned its back.
This history is not only that of Marguerite, of Simone, of Véronique, of Jeuneviève or 24 other women including we know the names. It is also the story of all those whose names were lost, whose bodies have never been found, including the families spent the rest of their lives wondering what had happened to their daughters, their sisters, their mother.
It’s the story of memory itself, our responsibility collective not to forget even when this memory hurts. Even when forgetting seems easier. Because if we let’s forget, we allow these horrors happen again. But if we we remember, if we tell these stories, if we say these names, we not only honor the dead, but also the survivors who have found the strength to testify.
And we we remind ourselves that even in the darkest moments of humanity, there have always been people who chose to resist, to survive and to ensure that the truth, too painful though it may be, or ultimately revealed. What you just heard is not simply a story of past, it is a testimony torn from silence, preserved by women who refused to let their suffering be erased from collective memory.
Marguerite de Lorme and Simone Archambau carried his memories for decades, waiting for the moment when the everyone would be ready to listen, to understand, no longer divert the look. Their courage did not lie only in their ability to survive to the horror of the Cante room, but in their fierce determination to ensure that the 22 women who died in this basement will not disappear in oblivion, that their name would continue to be pronounced, that their lives would have counted for something.
Today, by listening to this story, you become part of this memory chain. You are now the custodian of these testimonies, guardians of a truth that some would have preferred to see buried never. Every time we tell these stories, every time we we refuse convenient forgetting, we let us perform the act of resistance that these women started in the wet cells of the island.
We say that their lives have value, that their sufferings were not, that humanity can only move forward by honestly recognizing these moments the darkest. If this story touched, if it awakened in you something essential about dignity human nature and the fragility of our freedoms, leave a like on this video so that the algorithm allows other people to discover these testimonies forgotten.
Each like is an act of memory, an way of saying that these women matter again, that their story deserves to be known. Subscribe to this channel to continue to discover these stories historical that time has tried to erase but the truth refuses to let die. And above all, write in the comments from where you listen to us right now.
Tell us which country, what city do you live in while you hear the story of Marguerite and all those women in room 47. Share your thoughts, your emotions, what this story awakens in you. Because it is in these conversations, in this exchange between people from around the world whole who refuse oblivion, that the memory becomes truly alive.
Your comment is not just a interaction on a video. It’s your way to testify that you have heard, that you understood, that you you remember. Room 47 no longer exists physically. The walls have been torn down, the basement was filled and modern apartments occupy now this space which was once a place of nightmare.
But as long as we let’s tell this story, as long as we let us pronounce the names of Marguerite de Lorme, Simone Archambeau, Véronique Small, Young Viè Laurent and all the others, room 47 continues to exist in our collective memory, not like a place of horror to be forgotten, but as an urgent reminder of what humanity must never again allow.
Thanks for listening to the end. Thank you for being one of those who choose to remember rather than to forget, to bear witness rather than to shut up. The story of these women survives now through you, through your attention, your empathy and your desire to pass on their memory. And this is perhaps the most beautiful tribute that we can return to them.
do in so that their courage, their suffering and their humanity continues to reason in the hearts of those who, like you, chose to listen to their story until the last word. Mr.