The German general who impregnated three imprisoned sisters…

The German general who impregnated three imprisoned sisters…

and what he did to them afterward

 I was 18 when I learned that a woman's body can turn into a battlefield.  Not in books, not as a real metaphor.  On the skin, in the belly, in the silence that comes afterwards.  My name is Mais duoc.  I was born in 192 in a village called Saint-Rémy sur Loire, so small that it didn't even appear on military maps.

  I grew up between vineyards and wheat fields, between Sunday laughter and sung masses.  My mother baked bread every morning.  My father repaired clocks.  My sisters, Aurore and Séverine, were all I knew of unconditional love. Aurore was 19 years old and dreamed of becoming a schoolteacher. Séverine, 21, embroidered wedding dresses that she never wore.

  I simply wanted time to stop, for the war everyone was talking about to never reach us.  But she arrived in June 1942. They came to get us.  Not because we were criminals, not because we had done anything , simply because we were young, French, and in the wrong place at the wrong time. An officer from the Vermarthe knocked on the door at dawn.

  My mother fell to her knees. My father tried to argue but he was pushed against the wall.  Three soldiers dragged us outside while the sun was still rising over the fields that we would never see the same way again.  They threw us into the back of a truck covered with a dirty tarpaulin.  There were other women there, all young, all terrified.  No one was speaking.

  She was just crying silently.  I was holding Aurore's hand so tightly that I could feel her under my palm.  Séverine murmured a prayer that would never end.  The truck moved forward on the potholed road while the smell of sweat, fear, and burnt gasoline choked us.  We didn't know where we were going.

  We didn't know if we would come back.   All we knew was that something had ended that morning.  Something that would never be recovered. We arrived at the camp in the late afternoon.  It was not a concentration camp like Auschwitz or Dachao. There were no gas chambers or crematoria.  It was something different, something that official history rarely mentions.

  A forced labor camp administered directly by a high-ranking officer of Vermarthe.  A place where the rules were dictated by a single man.  His name was Auberst Friedrich Funsteiner, general.  42 years old, grey hair combed back, straight posture, calm voice.  He never shouted, he never hit anyone. He gave orders in an almost polite tone, as if he were asking for sugar for his coffee.

   That was the scariest thing.  Von Steiner administered this camp as one would administer a rural estate.  There were rules, there were hierarchies, there were punishments that didn't need to be said out loud because everyone knew what happened to the one who disobeyed. He personally chose who would work in the kitchen, who would clean the officers' rooms, who would sew the uniforms, and who would be chosen for other tasks.

No one explained what this other thing was, but we all knew.  For the first few days, we tried to become invisible.  We worked in silence, kept our heads down, and avoided looking directly at any soldier. But Von Steiner was still watching us.  He walked between the rows of women during the morning headcount and his gaze lingered.

  It wasn't a vulgar look of lust , it was something worse. It was a look of ownership. One evening, Séverine received a call.  Two soldiers appeared at the door of our barracks and called out his name.  She stood up slowly, her legs trembling, and looked back before leaving.  I will never forget that look.  It was a goodbye.

  It was a request for forgiveness.  It was pure fear. She returned at dawn.  She said nothing.  She simply lay down on the plank bed and turned her face towards the wall.  Aurore tried to touch her, but Séverine curled up as if she had been hit.  I stayed there, sitting on the frozen ground, feeling something dying inside me.

  Three weeks later, it was Aurore's turn.  Then, as for mine, I'm not going to describe what happened those nights, not because it's forbidden or because I'm ashamed, but because there are things that, even after six years, are still too heavy to be put into words.  I would only say this. Fun Steiner did not need to use physical violence.

  He used absolute power and that was enough.  When I realized I was pregnant, it was winter.  My body was skeletal, my hair had fallen out, but my belly was starting to grow.  Aurore too, Séverine too, three sisters, three pregnancies, same father.  The silence that fell over the camp when they discovered it was deafening.

  The other women looked at us with pity, with horror, with relief that they were not her.  The soldiers looked away .  Even the most brutal guards seemed uncomfortable .  Von Steiner, however, remained impassive.  He summoned us to his office one afternoon in February.  We stood there , the three sisters of the rock, while he signed papers without looking at us.

  Finally, he looked up and said in almost perfect French, you will give birth here. The children will be registered as war orphans and sent to suitable German families. You will return to work as soon as you are physically able. There was no room for discussion.  There was no possibility of appeal.  Séverine gave birth first in April 1943.