I was born in the city of Troyes on the 4th of June 1928, daughter of a Jewish couple.
I speak French, of course, a bit of German, because of the circumstances, and I learned Hebrew, of which I've forgotten a lot.
My father worked in a hosiery factory.
On the 27th of January 1944, the day of the raid against the Jews of Troyes,
nine members of your family, including your parents, get arrested by German soldiers.
We were hosting three members of the French resistance who were staying in our house and came to eat and spend the night.
They warned my father that we should leave with them in the morning,
because a roundup had been announced in the city of Troyes in Saint-Savine and in the whole town.
My father, who was a very optimistic man, does not believe this.
He says, that's not possible. We've been living like this for years. There's no reason for us to be arrested.
He was in some way fatalistic. I believe it is somehow in Jewish nature to be fatalistic.
He was like that, and my mother too.
The members of the resistance leave around six o'clock in the morning.
My sister and I are awakened to go to work.
Wound by your neighbour, you leave in high to avoid getting caught by the Germans at your workplace.
You have to leave straight away. Your parents have just been arrested.
With your aunts, the children, everybody has been taken away. Run, quickly.
We go to see our bosses. Leave, leave this place. Don't stay here.
When the Germans arrive, our bosses tell them.
No, there's nobody here. They've left. We have no idea where they are.
Your parents and the other members of your family are taken to Grandsie, then Auschwitz,
where they will be gassed and burned on the 15th of February 1944, leaving you in deep disarray.
We leave, my sister and I, and find shelter in a nearby café in total panic.
Then, we ask each other, what are we going to do?
Then, we ask each other, what are we going to do?
This was a strange situation for people, because they were very frightened.
You leave the great adventure of the resistance as liaison officer, carrying documents, weapons.
So, we find ourselves in Paris and we join our fellow members of the resistance,
who give us mission orders to carry out, the sort of thing that any other liaison officer does.
This time, it's for good.
Take care of yourself.
And we'll see each other again.
During this time, you go to unlikely places, under the locks, under the bridges, in the woods,
often on foot or by bicycle, sometimes by train.
If we didn't meet the right person, if we went four or five times to the same meeting point and the person wasn't there,
then it meant that he had been arrested.
So this game continued in Paris, in the metro.
The Germans, who saw me as a poor little young girl, carrying such heavy luggage,
offered to carry my luggage through the metro stations.
It was quite a comical situation.
Stop!
The thought of being arrested is always on your mind,
as well as the prospect of being caught and tortured and whether you could then hold on without speaking.
I couldn't imagine the danger.
I think, by the way, that the danger of these missions was somehow an idea of vengeance.
I don't know what to say.
Hello little lady, are we in the raid?
Yes, we're in the raid, I think.
Well, look at this.
This is my daughter, she's with me.
You're not going to believe me, are you?
It was during a mission that led you from Normandy to Rennes
to get arrested by the French militia on the 31st of May 1944.
For a second, I said to myself, if it's the Germans, I may have a chance to get away with this.
But if it's the French militia, I won't get away with anything.
I'm led to a car, a Citroën traction, and inside, I see a man I do not recognise.
And finally, I understand that he's my network chief, who has been so badly tortured that he has become unrecognisable.
He pointed at me as I came out of the train station and I was arrested.
I said to myself, I'm lost.
Immediately, they undress me and take all the papers I had on me. I couldn't do anything.
And this is where, unfortunately, my sad days begin.
I couldn't deny being part of a network because of the papers I had on me.
And they started torturing me on the 1st of June. This increased after D-Day, which took place on the 6th of June.
I was tortured day and night from the 1st to the 11th of June.
And I must say to my defence that because of me, nobody was arrested.
I just gave my name, my real name, because I thought I had to leave some clues so that people could find me and know what had happened to me.
Then after those days and nights of torture, I was taken to a dungeon guarded by two members of the militia in a cellar.
I waited there, guarded day and night by two men who took it in turns, holding machine guns.
As if I were a terrorist.
In the morning, a German officer comes and tells you that you are sentenced to death and will be shot in the next few days.
A sentence which you expected but which annihilates you.
And I waited.
Once again, your fate will be shaken by the bombing of the prison of Wren, because the Americans were at the gates of the city.
I waited. I waited.
The prison of Wren is then emptied and on the 2nd of August, you are all pired like animals.
And I think it was the last convoy to leave for Germany.
This was the beginning of a long journey through France.
Women, some of whom are pregnant or elderly or sick, have to endure the extreme heat.
It's true that it was very hot, maybe 30-35 degrees that year.
Hunger, thirst, transport conditions, you could not sit or lie down or even stand.
We go to Orléans and are then taken to Belfort.
This journey lasted for more than two weeks.
From the prison to Belfort, we were stopped constantly by resistance fighters.
We were forced to get off the train because of the bombings and for one reason and another.
Belfort, this was the last stage before Germany.
Next day, departure for Saarbrocken. After our arrival, the station was bombarded. We were stopped again for several hours.
Then we continued. I didn't have a clue as to our destination.
After a week, the train stopped in the countryside and we were told to get off.
A month-long journey into hell. You describe your arrival in Ravensbrock as a dentine scenery
with a high wall topped with barbed wire and these gates on the top of which can be read.
Leave your hope, you who enter here.
Not long after that, we were given these jackets.
This triangle you see, red, means that I was considered as a political deportee.
There were many triangles for different categories because there were not only political deportees in Germany.
There were also common rights deportees who had green triangles, gypsies who had black triangles,
homosexuals who had pink triangles and there were red triangles with stars for some Jewish children who were there.
This jacket was made with women's hair. When the women were shaved, the Germans transformed their hair into fabrics
which, by the way, were not only used for the jackets of the deportees.
These materials were also used to make clothes for the Germans.
You are then forced to join the camp of Schliven, which depends on Borenwald,
where you work in the industrial manufacture of anti-tank grenades.
The regime of this camp is even more difficult than that of Ravensburg, as the hygiene conditions are unbearable.
We made small anti-tank shells in this workshop.
Needless to say that the nights were very difficult because we had to weigh the powder on tiny scales.
I think we had to put five grams of powder onto each side of the shell and then everything was assembled together.
At night, some people fell asleep on the scales.
The deportee members of the resistance tried to do a little sabotage and not to put the right weight of powder.
The Germans realised this and we are all punished.
For example, at Christmas in 1944 we were taken outside in front of an illuminated Christmas tree
which was 30 metres high and left standing there without eating or drinking for 48 hours.
On a February 1945 evening, you hear successive waves of intense bombardments.
It was the bombing of Dresden that killed 30,000 people.
Needless to say, we had some very difficult moments because as soon as there was a bomb scare, we were taken back to the camp.
We were five kilometres away from the camp.
We arrived at the camp, it was the end of the bomb scare and we had to go back to the factory.
The noise of cannons came closer to the camp until that day on the 21st of April 1945 when the Cossacks of the Red Army entered the camp.
We went out and what did we see in the courtyard?
Little horses ridden by the Cossacks who came to free the camp.
The Red Army was on the way.
We were all surprised to see the Russians because we didn't know who was going to come, the English, the Russians or the Americans.
We arrived in Torgó and there we witnessed a historical fact.
It was precisely the day of the junction between the Americans and the Russian armies.
They built us a special boat deck to cross the river Elbe over to the American side.
Then the day came when I was put on a train back to France.
As I came back, how can I pass from an unreal universe to a real world? How not to feel outside?
The camp has for a long time kept a reality more intense than that of the world around me.
I was haunted by the meager, sharp faces, blue with cold, which had the permanent smile of the skeletons.
I do not forget you, unfortunate companions who have never returned, and I pay homage to you.
In the late 70s, we began to testify in front of secondary students and high school students.
Tirelessly, you tell your story, testify to explain, testify to understand and finally testify to transmit the memory.
This living and painful memory that you passed on to more than 10,000 pupils during these precious years,
for these young generations who will remember your words for a long time and still witness to you today
with poems, letters, drawings, their immense recognition.
We declare you chevalier de l'ordre national de la Légion d'honneur.
Et la ville entraîne par le bout du nez
sans crainte et sans haine, toutes ces années
toutes ces années
