A Testimony Given at the
Edge of Time
My name is Madeleine Fournier. I am
eighty-three years old, and this is the first time I have spoken publicly about
what happened to me during the Second World War.
For more than six decades, my testimony remained
unrecorded—absent from official archives, war crime trials, and postwar
histories. Not because it lacked significance, but because no institution ever
asked for it. What I witnessed occurred in a place that no longer appears on
maps, governed by policies never entered into surviving documents, and
inflicted upon women whose suffering left no living advocates.
I speak now because silence has protected the
perpetrators long enough.
Occupied France and the
Disappearance of Civilian Protections
In October 1943, France was already fractured by
occupation. Remote regions like Vassieux-en-Vercors—isolated mountain
communities—were considered strategically insignificant by the outside world.
That assumption proved fatal for many of us.
My husband had been taken for compulsory labor years
earlier. Like thousands of civilian men, he disappeared into Germany’s wartime
industrial system, never to return. I remained behind, living alone, pregnant,
and increasingly invisible to the authorities who were meant to protect
civilians under international law.
At that time, pregnancy offered no exemption. In fact,
it became a liability.
The Arrests No Records Admit
One morning, military vehicles entered the village
without warning. The operation was precise. No lists were read aloud. No
charges were announced. Women were identified visually, removed from their
homes, and transported without documentation.
Those selected shared one trait: they were pregnant.
We were not accused of resistance. We were not
questioned. We were classified.
Only later would I understand that our condition
placed us within a category German medical authorities described as “biologically
informative.”
A Facility That Officially
Never Existed
We were taken to a small, isolated compound hidden in
mountainous terrain. It was not a concentration camp in the conventional sense.
There were no prisoner numbers tattooed, no industrial infrastructure.
Instead, it functioned as an experimental medical
site, staffed by military personnel and physicians operating under wartime
research directives.
After liberation, this site vanished from
documentation. Buildings were dismantled. Records were destroyed. The women who
passed through were dispersed or died shortly after.
Only memory survived.
The Corridor and the Illusion
of Choice
Several days after arrival, a small group of us was
separated from the others and brought to a concrete corridor.
At its end were three numbered doors.
There were no explanations, no consent forms, no
translations of purpose. An officer stated only that each woman must choose one
door and that the choice could not be reversed.
This was not a choice in any meaningful sense. It was
an administrative procedure designed to transfer responsibility from authority
to victim—an act now recognized by legal scholars as coerced decision
displacement, a technique used to obscure accountability.
Each door led to a different experimental condition.
None were intended to preserve maternal or fetal health.
What Postwar Law Would Later
Name a Crime
I will not describe the procedures in detail. That is
unnecessary, and it serves no educational purpose.
What matters is this:
- These interventions had no therapeutic intent
- They were conducted without consent
- They disproportionately targeted pregnant civilians
- The outcomes were documented clinically, not humanely
Under today’s standards, these actions would violate:
- The Hague Conventions
- The Nuremberg Code
- Multiple principles of modern medical ethics
At the time, no framework existed to protect us.
Survival Without Recognition
I survived. Many did not.
Some women returned altered—physically weakened,
psychologically silent. Others never returned at all. Their names do not appear
in memorials. Their children were never registered.
When liberation came months later, there was no
investigation. The priority was reconstruction, not testimony. We were
advised—sometimes gently, sometimes firmly—to move on.
So we did.
The Long Silence After War
For decades, I told no one—not my child, not my
neighbors, not officials. Silence became a survival strategy. In postwar
Europe, stories like mine complicated narratives of heroism and victory.
Only late in life did a historian ask a different
question:
“Were there places no one wanted to document?”
That question reopened everything.
Why This Story Matters Now
This account is not an appeal to emotion. It is a historical
correction.
Wartime crimes are often understood through numbers
and tribunals. But many abuses—especially those inflicted on women—were
systematically excluded from prosecution due to destroyed evidence and social
discomfort.
Pregnant civilians were not collateral damage. They
were deliberately selected populations.
That fact deserves recognition.
The Responsibility of Memory
I do not ask for sympathy. I ask for accuracy.
If history records only what survived in files, then
it fails its most basic function. The absence of documentation does not imply
the absence of crime.
It implies success at erasure.
This testimony exists to counter that erasure.
A Final Record
I lived long enough to speak because others did not.
Their names were:
- Hélène
- Jeanne
- Claire
- Marguerite
- and many more who were never recorded
They were not symbols. They were civilians.
And this is their place in history.
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