"9 minutes" is how long the German soldier spent in room 6 with each French prisoner.

I discovered that the human body could be compared to a stopwatch when I was twenty years old. I am not referring to a metaphor. I'm talking about something precise, quantifiable, and mechanically repeated.

9 minutes.

It was the time allotted to every German soldier until the next time was called. There was no clock hanging on the wall of Room Six, no dial visible. Nevertheless, we were all terribly aware of the end of these minutes. When the mind stops thinking, the body learns to measure time.

Élise Martilleux is my name. Today is my 47th birthday, and this is the first time I have consented to discuss what truly transpired in this administrative building that was turned into a detention area close to Compiègne in August 1943. This location is hardly mentioned in any official registry. It was only a sorting center and a transitory crossing point to more significant camps, according to the few papers that discuss it. But we, those who were there, we know what was actually going on behind these gray walls.

Born and bred in Senlis, a little town northeast of Paris, I was an average young girl, the daughter of a seamstress and a blacksmith. During the French Debacle in 1940, my father was crushed someplace on a route that was packed with refugees. In an occupied nation where every bite of bread was negotiated against one's dignity, my mother and I were forced to make uniforms for German officers in order to live. I had small, intelligent hands, chestnut hair that fell to my shoulders, and I still had the youthful naivete that if I kept my head down and didn't draw attention to myself, the war wouldn't truly affect me.

However, three Wehrmacht troops attacked our door early on April 12, 1943. The sun had not yet risen. They reported that my mother had been condemned for having hidden a clandestine radio station. We never had a radio, thus this was untrue. But the truth in those gloomy days no longer had any value. Simply by virtue of my presence, my age, and the fact that my name appeared on a list that had been written in a chilly, nameless office, they also took me.

Along with eight other ladies, we were hauled on a freight truck. No one said anything. Like a mechanical beast, the engine roared. I gripped my mother's hand as if we were still able to defend one another as the treacherous road rocked us mercilessly. About ten in the morning, we got to the building. It was a gray, three-story structure with thin, high windows. A façade that must have been refined prior to the conflict. Now, it was nothing more than cold, impersonal, stripped of any compassion. At the door, they divided us. My mother was carried to the second floor, me to the bottom floor. She was never seen by me again. Later, I found out from a prisoner who had lived longer that she had died of typhus three weeks after we arrived, in an unventilated cell where the air itself appeared to be putrefying. But at that time, when the door closed between us and her face went behind the dark wood, I still felt that we would find each other again. I continued to think that this horror would come to an end.

If you are listening to this tale right now, no matter where in the world you are, know that it has been buried for more than six decades. Élise only spoke once, and it was so that we could finally hear what the official archives had deleted.

I was placed in a room with 12 other young ladies. All were between 18 and 25 years old. None of us understood exactly why we were there, or what crime we purportedly had committed to deserve this punishment. A few had been discovered carrying Resistance pamphlets concealed beneath their clothes. Others, like myself, just found themselves in the wrong location, at the wrong time, with the wrong name on the wrong list. Marguerite, one of them, was just ten years old. She wailed without interruption, wordless sobs which rocked her whole body.An elderly woman called Thérèse was attempting to calm her down by whispering that we would soon be released, that it was simply an administrative misunderstanding which would be easily handled. However, Thérèse was lying, or perhaps she simply had to accept this falsehood in order to avoid going insane.

A German officer came into the room in the late afternoon. He didn't yell since it wasn't necessary. He spoke in a composed, almost official tone. When he described the new restrictions to us with chilling bureaucratic coldness, he added that this structure acted as a logistical support hub for troops in route. Only soldiers—weary warriors in need of recuperation and "moral support" before returning to the horrors of battle—passed here on their way to the Eastern Front. He used the precise phrase "moral support." Then he explained that this role will be assigned to us, the inmates.

There were no inquiries. Nobody inquired what that meant exactly. However, we grasped everything right away. In a monotone, he went on. He explained that there would be rotations, that each soldier would have precisely nine minutes, that the room at the end of the ground floor hallway would be used for this, and that any resistance would result in an instant transfer to Ravensbrück. This term we all knew; tales of this detention camp for women were already spreading across occupied France. Then he stepped out, leaving us alone with this oppressive, stifling stillness where even the air seemed scared to travel. Marguerite vomited on the cold stone floor. Thérèse closed her eyes and began to pray out loud, her lips quivering on words that I couldn’t understand. I stood there, gazing at the door the cop had just come out of. I was attempting to comprehend how the world could have reached that point, how men could have determined in an office setting that nine minutes was sufficient to destroy someone, and how a human being could be reduced to a simple cog in a systematic dehumanization machine.

None of us slept that night. We lay on our pallets with our eyes wide in the dark, listening to other people's jerky breathing as we tried to psychologically get ready for what was ahead. But how can one prepare for the impossible?

The next morning, the calls started. On a Tuesday morning, I heard my name called for the first time. I recall because the sun entered through a break in the wall and I remarked to myself, how can there still be sun in a place like this? I was picked up by a guard. He beckoned for me to follow him without a word. My legs were trembling so severely that I had to lean against the wall to continue further. The other females glanced at me; some looked away, others gazed at me as if they were trying to memorize my face in case I didn’t come back.

The corridor smelled of cold, moist perspiration and was long and narrow. Six doors were present. Room Six was the final one at the bottom. It had a worn copper handle and was painted gray. Nothing noteworthy or indicative of what was going on behind it. I was shoved inside when the guard unlocked the door. After that, he shut it behind me. It was a little space, about three by four meters. A wooden chair, a high window obstructed by boards, and a narrow iron bed against the wall were all present. What lingered the longest was the scent, a blend of perspiration, terror, and something deeper and older. Something I still can't put my finger on.

There was already a soldier present. He must have been 25 years old, maybe thirty, blond, his face marred by tiredness. He didn’t look me in the eye. "Take off your clothes," he continued in roughly French. I couldn’t move. My body was no longer mine. It seemed like I was outside, gazing down from the ceiling at this 20-year-old girl who still didn't know how she got there. This time, he said it more loudly, and I complied.

I won't explain what transpired next since I can't recall. I can still clearly recall that, and it still bothers me. But because certain things don’t need to be uttered to be understood. All I can say is that the nine minutes was not a rough estimate. It was a tight rule. When the allotted time had passed, another guard knocked on the door, and the soldier walked out without saying anything or turning around. After he left, I rested on this bed for a few minutes. I gazed up at the ceiling. A river-like fissure was present. To avoid thinking about what had just happened or feeling my own body, I concentrated on this crack. The door then opened once more. Another soldier, another guard. Nine minutes, repeatedly. I counted seven troops that day. A total of sixty-three minutes. But for me, it lasted forever.

I was unable to walk normally when they brought me back to the general area. I was assisted in lying down by Thérèse. I was given water by her. She remained silent. What was there for her to say? The youngest, Marguerite, received a call the same afternoon. She stopped talking when she came back. For hours, she sat in the corner and gazed at the wall. Nobody tried to talk to her. We were aware that it was beyond words.

The days that followed blended together. The distinction between dawn and evening had vanished. There are only phone calls, hallway doors opening, and one number: nine. A few females attempted to tally the number of times they had received calls. Some declined to count. I didn't choose to count; rather, I did so because my mind was holding to anything that still appeared to be order, rationality, or something quantifiable—as if counting would help me keep some kind of control.

But there was something worse than the minutes themselves. The delay was the problem. I heard footsteps in the corridor and wondered, "Is this for me this time?" not knowing when your name will be called. Your heart stops as you see the door open, but then you hear another name. Then, when it wasn't you, there was this awful humiliation of being relieved that it wasn't you because you still had a few hours of reprieve and your body was still your own. That is, I believe, what they sought to destroy in us: not only our dignity but our humanity itself. They encouraged us to think of ourselves as things, as minutes on an unseen clock, or as numbers.

Thérèse talked one evening. She claimed to have read before to the war about psychological torture techniques in which the executioners did not even touch their victims. They were satisfied with establishing a system in which victims ultimately commit suicide. She stated it was this that they were doing with us—that Room Six was not simply a place of physical assault, but a place of psychological devastation. And she was correct. But what she didn’t know yet, what none of us knew, is that even in a place created to crush us, some of us were going to find a way to fight. Not in a heroic or dramatic manner, but in a quiet, imperceptible, and yet complete manner.

Simone was the name of one of the girls in our group. She was twenty-three years old, had short black hair styled like a flapper, and had an unwavering appearance even under the most trying circumstances. She attended the Sorbonne in Paris to study philosophy before to the war. In February, she was taken into custody for handing out pamphlets advocating for nonviolent protest in the Latin Quarter. Before bringing her to this gray facility on the outskirts of Compiègne, she was questioned by German officials for three days.

Simone initially didn't say anything. She frequently remained in her corner with her arms folded, watching everything with an almost scientific gaze. But one evening, when we were all taken back to the common room—exhausted, shattered, some of us unable even to cry, as we were empty—Simone stood up and sat in the midst of the room. She waited till silence settled. Then she said something that resonated with me forever, something that was going to affect the way we survived in the coming weeks. She said: “They can take our bodies, they can lock us up, break us and use us as objects. However, they are unable to take what we decide to hold within of us.

I didn't first get what she was saying. I was too worn out, too ruined. My mind felt numb, as though a part of me had separated, relieving me of the need to experience agony. However, Simone went on. She said that they could not totally destroy us as long as we were able to recall who we were before coming here, as long as we retained a piece of our identity, our dreams, our memories, and our loves—as long as we refused to become simply what they wanted us to be. "We will tell our lives every evening," she declared. They will never know our true life, not this one or the one in Room Six. And that’s precisely what we did.”

Every evening, when the guards finally left us alone, when the heavy boots in the corridor went away and the door to the common room closed with that terrible mechanical noise, we gathered in a circle on the chilly floor. They all spoke, some sitting right on the stones, some on their flimsy seats. A childhood recollection, a happy event, a dream, a favorite book, a Sunday meal made by her mother or grandmother, a song she sung at work—anything. As long as it was ours, something that existed beyond these confines, and something they couldn't take away from us.

The youngest among us, Marguerite, who was only ten years old and occasionally sobbed at night while calling her mother in her sleep, described how she learnt to swim in the river next to her Brittany hamlet. She told us about the chilly water on her skin, the July sun that made the surface shimmer like thousands of diamonds, and her elder brother's delight as he yelled encouragement at her from the bank. Her eyes brightened as she said. She was no longer this scared, damaged girl for a split second. She had become the carefree child playing in the clean water.

Thérèse, the elderly woman who prayed incessantly, told about her husband, a country teacher who read poetry by Verlaine and Rimbaud to her in the evening by the light of an oil lamp. Her voice quivered with passion as she read entire lines to us that she knew by memory. These lyrics brought back memories of a period when beauty and love were still conceivable. Another girl, Louise, who had hands scarred by work in the fields and who hailed from a village near Rouen, sang a lullaby that her grandmother sung to her when she was tiny. Her voice was gentle, weak, nearly broken, but she sung till the end. We were all crying when she was done. Not of melancholy, but of something more profound—possibly thankfulness for this fleeting moment of beauty among terror.

I also mentioned my father's forging. My father was a blacksmith in Senlis. At the rear of our house, dad had a little workshop filled with tools that gleamed in the firelight, a huge anvil in the middle, and a bellows that snored like a live animal. My father would frequently take me to the forge when I was younger, before the war arrived to wipe everything out. He let me perch on a little wooden stool near the fire while he worked. I like seeing the metal progressively change, turn red in the extreme heat, and become pliable so it could be sculpted. My father took the blazing metal with his tongs, set it on the anvil, and pounded with his hammer in a regular, exact, almost melodic rhythm. Each hit echoed in the workshop and bit by little, the metal acquired shape. It turned into a tool, a grid, a horseshoe, and a lock. Iron has a memory, my father used to say with his calm smile. It resists, bends under strain, and even distorts, yet it never breaks. We can always reforge it and give it a new form, even if it appears to be totally damaged, twisted, and worthless. It recalls its previous state.

I didn't really get what he meant at the moment. I was too young. I simply nodded and kept staring at the swirling flames. But in this room, in the midst of these shattered daughters, of these damaged bodies and ripped hearts, I finally understood. We resembled this iron. Despite being pummeled, twisted, and distorted, we did not entirely shatter. Not as long as we had this recollection of our former selves. As long as we resisted forgetting, that is.

As the weeks went by, our nighttime circles developed into a holy custom. In this environment where everything had been taken, it was the one thing that really belonged to us. They had taken away our freedom, our clothes, and our dignity. But our tales, our experiences, our voices, that remained ours. Simone, who had initiated this practice, regularly gave us excerpts from novels she had read. She had an exceptional memory. She was able to recite whole passages from Sartre and Camus. She talked to us about existentialism, philosophy, and the inner freedom that persists even in the absence of physical freedom.

One evening, she told us about the Myth of Sisyphus. She explained to us how Sisyphus, doomed by the gods to constantly push a boulder to the summit of a mountain only to see it drop down each time, yet found meaning to his existence. According to her, Camus said that one had to see Sisyphus in a joyful state. Not because his labor had purpose, but because he decided to find a meaning, because he refused to allow the gods take his inner dignity. We reminded me of Sisyphus. We ascended this unachievable peak every day. Every day the rock came down again. But every evening, in this circle, we decided to remember that we were more than our sorrow.

One day, something odd and extremely unsettling happened. As usual, a soldier went into Room Six. During these nine lengthy minutes, I was laying on the narrow iron bed with a tight body and a disconnected mind, prepared to mentally travel to another location. However, he did nothing this time. He did not come close. I was not touched by him. He merely sat on the wooden chair in the corner of the room and stayed silent. I didn’t comprehend. My heart was thumping fit to shatter. Because I had no idea what that signified, I was terrified—possibly much more so than when everything went according to plan. Was the game cruel? Was the outcome going to be worse? Was he intending to punish me for something I didn’t know? But he stayed sitting. I'm not sure if he was staring at the ceiling or the wall. The minutes passed in an almost intolerable quiet. Then the guard knocked on the door and the soldier went without a word, without looking at me.

I felt scared and perplexed. I had no idea what to think. But he came back the next day, then again two days later. The same thing each time. He entered, took a seat, said nothing, and departed after the allotted time had passed. On the third day, I ventured to lift my eyes towards him. It was the first time I truly looked at him. He must have been around 25 or 26 years old, with short blond hair and a face that showed signs of weariness and something more. A sort of profound melancholy that penetrated his features. His hands trembled a little.

He talked on the fifth day. First, there were terms in German that I didn't comprehend. Then he recovered and attempted in French with a thick accent and uncertain phrases. He said, “I’m sorry.” I didn't respond. What might I have said? What justifications could change what was occurring here, to what all these other guys were doing to all of us, day after day? I remained silent, but he went on. He stated that he had a sister who was my age, that she lived near Munich, that he thought of her every time he visited this room. That he did not know how he become this sort of man, how he could have consented to join in this awful system. He claimed to have been sent to the Eastern Front, saw horrific events there, and said that war turned people into monsters.

I said nothing while I listened to him. There was a part of me that wanted to yell, spit in his face, and tell him that his justifications were meaningless, that he was an accomplice, that he could have refused, and that he could have taken action. However, a different aspect of myself perceived a shattered human being in front of me. Not broken as we were, not in the same way, not with the same agony, but broken nonetheless—trapped in a system which exceeded him, which was beyond us all.

He was never forgiven by me. I want it to be very clear. It was unacceptable what he and the other men did. Nothing can excuse what happened in this room, in this building, in all these sites across Europe where women were turned to objects for the so-called “moral support” of the soldiers. However, as I looked at him closely for the first time that day, I realized something significant that would take me decades to come to terms with. Additionally, they were ensnared in a vast, bureaucratic, dehumanizing system that turned people into machines, numbers, minutes, and cogs in a big destructive machine. Furthermore, this system was larger, stronger, and more hazardous than any of us.

I ended up sharing this experience with the other females in our nightly circles. After paying close attention to what I had to say, Simone said something that I will never forget. She said: “It’s exactly what Hannah Arendt would call the banality of evil. The worst crimes are not usually carried out by these monsters. These are regular individuals who submit to authority, cease thinking for themselves, and let themselves be used as tools by a system that is superior to them. Thérèse shook her head. She argued that she couldn’t tolerate this, that every guy had a conscience, a choice, a responsibility. I could also see where she was coming from. The reality, I feel, lies somewhere between the two. Yes, every person has an individual duty, but totalitarian systems are built exactly to crush this responsibility, to dilute it in a chain of command where no one truly feels guilty since everyone merely obeys commands. The worst thing I took away from this building is that monsters are not necessarily necessary for terror. All it takes are regular people who comply, look elsewhere, and keep quiet.

Something started to shift in June 1943. The frequency of calls decreased. Massive German forces were advancing eastward into the Russian front, which was turning into a man-eating abyss. The building's strategic significance was progressively diminishing. Some females were sent to unidentified locations or to work camps. Others, like poor Marguerite, perished of disease, starvation, or just having abandoned all desire to live. But even in these latter weeks, we continued our circles. We kept telling our stories even when there were only five of us left, and then just three, since it was all we had left—an inner flame. Simone said it was our most powerful act of resistance. Not armed resistance, not spectacular resistance, but existential resistance. retaining our humanity at the core of dehumanization by refusing to be reduced to what they wanted us to be. And she was correct.

They attempted to annihilate us in Room Six during these repeated minutes at infinity. But in our nighttime circles, we rebuilt ourselves minute after minute, tale after story, memory after memory. We were the iron of my father: hit, bent, disfigured, but not shattered. Never fully broken because we remembered, because we refused to forget who we truly were. And that memory—he could not take that from us.

I went back to Senlis after the Liberation, but it was no longer my home. This was nothing like what I had known before the war. My mom had passed away. My father also, for a long time now, washed away in 1940 during the French Debacle. My father's forge in the shed and the small cottage where I grew up, complete with a backyard garden, had been pillaged. The blacksmith's tools had been taken, and the furniture was vanished. Even the priceless black-and-white family portraits that were hanging on the wall had been ripped off. Nothing from my former life remained, nothing at all. I recall spending an hour in front of this deserted house. I couldn't even weep, let alone move. I was physically there, but my thoughts were still elsewhere. A part of me stayed in this room with the iron bed, in this gloomy hallway, in those endless minutes.

Madame Rousseau, an older neighbor, noticed me and extended an invitation for me to stay at her house. She offered me hot tea and stale bread. She gazed at me with this sympathy that I would see so many times later in people’s eyes. They didn't know what to say since they couldn't comprehend what we had gone through, so their sympathy was coupled with unease. She asked me where I had been. "Compiègne, in a building," I informed her. As though she understood, she nodded her head. However, it was evident to me that she had no comprehension. How was she able to?

I resided at my aunt Jeanne Vienne’s place for a few months. She resided in a neighboring village. My aunt was kind yet aloof. She had no idea how to communicate with me. She strolled about me as if I were delicate, as if I was going to break at the slightest phrase. The nights were the worst; I barely ever slept. When I closed my eyes, I saw everything again. I saw the soldiers' faces, the gray door, the hallway, and most importantly, the other girls. Marguerite who grieved, Thérèse who prayed, Simone who talked of resistance. I could still hear all of these voices. My heart was racing and I was sweating when I woke up. Sometimes I yelled. I was terrified and crouched in a corner when my aunt came racing. I never informed her what had happened, and she never asked.

I got a job in a textile mill in 1946. In a loud workshop, I made clothing from dawn to dusk. The work benefited me. As long as my hands moved, I didn’t have to think. It was a means of preventing insanity. The other workers sometimes talked of the conflict. They explained where they had gone, what they had lost. But I never spoke. "I was in a detention center," was my hazy response to their inquiry. Nobody insisted. There were certain things that hurt too much to speak.

In 1947, I met Henry. He was employed at a garage as a mechanic. He had a lovely appearance, deft hands, and a composed demeanor. It was at a bakery when we met. He gave me a grin. I smiled in return—a nervous grin, as if I had forgotten how to do it. We started seeing each other. He walked me around Senlis' historic streets. I never inquired about his background, and he never inquired about mine. We were two survivors who were attempting to construct something on damaged foundations. Henry was really patient. When I woke up in the middle of the night crying, he cradled me in his arms and waited for the tremors to subside. He never inquired as to why. He stayed there, firm and in the moment.

In May, we were married in a modest ceremony at the town hall. No huge celebration, no music, just a signature and a chaste kiss on the stairs. We had two kids. Jacques was born in 1955, and Marie in 1950. My God, I loved them so intensely that it occasionally scared me. When I held Marie for the first time, I sobbed. Not grief, but relief. This small, innocent existence served as evidence that beauty could still exist and that love and hope could be created in spite of all the misery. I tried to be a decent mother, at least. I clothed them, fed them, and taught them. I performed lullabies. I fulfilled all the duties expected of a mother. However, I was constantly separated from the rest of the world by this invisible wall. Part of me lingered in this corridor and never fully returned. Marie, aged fifteen, asked me one day: “Mom, why don’t you ever really smile?” I was unable to answer. How can I explain that years ago, in a location she would never have known existed, the true grin had been ripped from me?

Lung cancer claimed Henry's life in 1999. During the past several weeks, he asked me if I had been pleased with him. Yes, I replied. It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the full truth either. Henry had performed well. He provided me a steady life, a home, and kids. However, the genuine satisfaction I had previously experienced never returned. How do you describe attempting to forget something your body won't let go of for the rest of your life? that there was always a shadow, even in the most delightful moments. Nine is the constant number.

After Henry died, I found myself alone. My children were grown, married, with their own lives. I resided in a little flat in the middle of Senlis. From my window, I saw the cathedral and the ancient neighborhood where I grew up. The years went by in a kind of mist. I got up, I did my shopping, I watched television—daily gestures comfortable in their normality. But dreams constantly returned at night. The door, the hallway, the minutes. My body remembers, even at sixty and eighty years of age.

I kept what actually transpired a secret from everyone for decades, including Henry and my kids. I assumed that if I didn’t talk, it would ultimately fade. However, nothing is erased by time. Time covers and buries, but it doesn't heal. The wounds stay there under the surface. A simple sound, a door slamming, and all of a sudden I was twenty again.

A young historian visited me in 2009, years after my release. Claire Dufresne was her name. During the Occupation, she was researching makeshift incarceration facilities. She found my name in an incomplete record at the national archives. She asked whether I would be willing to testify. I initially declined. I was eighty-six. My hands were shaking. After spent my entire life attempting to heal this wound, why revisit it? However, Claire came back. She remarked to me: “If you don’t speak, no one will know. It's as if it never happened if no one is aware of it. These ladies should be honored.

And I recognized that she was right. Marguerite, Thérèse, Simone, Louise. These girls are all worthy of being remembered. "They were there, they existed, they suffered, they resisted" is what they earned. So I accepted. The interview was conducted over two afternoons in November 2009 in my small Senlis flat. Claire put a camera on a tripod. For the first time in sixty-four years, I answered her inquiries.

I informed her about the room, the minutes, the females' faces, and the names I had made an effort to remember. I told her about Thérèse, who prayed even though she had lost all faith, Simone with her story circles, and Marguerite, who had stopped speaking. And I told her about this soldier, the one who sat in quiet, he who had murmured “I’m sorry.” Claire asked me whether I had forgiven. I said "no" because forgiving myself would have required me to acknowledge that what had happened could be undone, which is impossible. But I also remarked that I knew something larger now: that the battle does not affect simply the victims, it also transforms the executioners. And that as long as we, as mankind, continue to design systems where human people can be reduced to numbers, to minutes, to things, nothing will actually change.

I became ill years after this interview. cancer. The doctors warned me that I didn’t have much time left, a few months, maybe a year. Marie, my daughter, came to see me at the hospital. She was weeping. She questioned why I had carried this load by myself for so long and why I had never discussed it. I explained to her that I didn't want her to grow up with this shadow and that I wanted her to experience a world in which these issues didn't exist. But now I knew that quiet did not protect anyone. These creatures can only procreate in quiet.

I died in March in a modest hospital room in Compiègne, not far distant from where it all began seventy years ago. But I asked Claire a question before I left. I urged her to ensure that the minutes from Room Six are not lost to history, that this tape does not vanish, and that someone somewhere hears it.

If you are listening to this testimony today, it is because Claire fulfilled her pledge. Because she refused to let our voices be lost. I don’t know what you will feel when you hear this narrative. Maybe wrath, maybe despair, maybe even disbelief. How could someone have harmed other people in this way? But if I can leave you with just one thing, it’s this: We are not merely what happens to us. We are also what we decide to preserve, what we decide to share, and what we won't let go of. In Room Six, for 9 minutes at a time, they sought to reduce us to nothing. However, we retained our names, tales, and recollections. And you hear them now, decades later. That, they couldn’t take from us. That, no one will ever be able to steal.

This narrative is not simply a witness of the past; it is a warning for the future. Élise Martilleux handled the weight of the pendants for nine minutes (during/for a time). A burden so enormous that she chose quiet rather than enduring this misery. But she made the decision to end this quiet before heading out. Not for her, but for all those who never had this chance. Too young for Marguerite. For Thérèse, who prayed till her dying breath. For Simone, who would not abandon her humanity. Their voices can resound now only if you consent to listen to them, to carry them, to convey them.

If this narrative impacted you, if it has awoken anything in you—anger, despair, revolt, or an awakening of conscience—then don’t let it die here. In the world we live in, history is easily forgotten, the agony of the past is reduced to cold figures in dusty books, and history is lost in the incessant din of contemporary events. But Élise was not a statistic. When she was twenty years old, she enjoyed watching her father forge metal. She was a mother who used to sing her kids lullabies. She was a lady who endured the impossible and who, at the twilight of her life, chose to commit her truth to the world.

Only if everyone chooses to respect this decision will it make sense. Thus, keep in mind, communicate, and resist forgetting. Because as long as there are others to hear, remember, and share... These women are here to stay.