Each German soldier had 7 minutes per day with each French female prisoner

Each German soldier had 7 minutes per day with each French female prisoner.

“I was 20 years old when I learned that the human body could be reduced to a stopwatch. I am not speaking of a metaphor; I am speaking of something literal, measured. Repeated with mechanical precision: seven minutes. That was the time granted to each German soldier before the next one was called.”

“There was no clock hanging on the wall of Room 6, no visible dial, and yet we all knew with terrible exactness when those minutes ended. The body learns to count time when the mind has already given up on thinking. 

My name is Élise Martilleux. I am now 88 years old, and this is the first time I have agreed to speak about what really happened in that administrative building repurposed on the outskirts of Compiègne between April and August 1943.”

“Almost no official record mentions this place. The few documents that do speak of it lie. They say it was simply a sorting center, a temporary transit point toward larger camps. But we, those of us who were there, we know what truly happened behind those gray walls.”

“I was an ordinary girl, the daughter of a blacksmith and a seamstress, born and raised in Senlis, a small town northeast of Paris. My father died in 1940 during the French defeat. My mother and I survived by sewing uniforms for German officers. Not by choice, but because it was that or starving to death.”

“I had chestnut hair that fell to my shoulders, small and skillful hands, and I still believed, with that naivety peculiar to youth, that if I kept my head down, if I didn’t get noticed, the war would pass me by without really touching me. But on April 12, 1943, three Wehrmacht soldiers knocked on our door in the early morning.”

“The sun had not yet risen. They said my mother had been denounced for hiding a clandestine radio set. It wasn’t true, but truth in those dark days no longer had any importance. They took me too, simply because I was there, because I was of age, because my name appeared on a list that someone, somewhere, had written in a cold and anonymous office.”

“We were transported in a freight truck with eight other women. No one spoke. The engine roared; the stony road shook us. I held my mother’s hand as if we were still capable of protecting each other. We arrived around 10:00 AM. A gray building, three floors, narrow and high windows.”

“A facade that must have been elegant once. Now, it was cold, impersonal, emptied of all humanity. They made us get out of the truck. They lined us up in the courtyard. An officer counted twice. Then they pushed us inside. They undressed us. They shaved our hair.”

“They gave us a gray shirt, nothing else. They led us to a large room on the ground floor. Twelve young women, all between 18 and 25 years old. I remember their faces. I see them still today. Marguerite, barely 19, blonde hair cut short. She cried silently. Thérèse, 22, tall, brunette, she prayed in a low voice.”

“Louise, 21, her hands damaged by field work. Simone, 23, a philosophy student, a gaze that never wavered. And the others, names I will never forget. They gave us thin straw mattresses on the stone floor. The smell was suffocating: mold, sweat, disinfectant. In the late afternoon, an officer entered.”

“He wore an impeccable uniform. He spoke French with a perfect accent. He did not shout. He didn’t need to. His voice was calm, almost administrative. He said that this building served as a logistical support point for troops in transit, that soldiers passed through here before leaving for the Eastern Front, that they were exhausted, that they needed rest, ‘moral support.'”

“He used exactly those words. Then he specified that we, the prisoners, would be designated to fulfill this function. There would be rotations. Each soldier would be entitled to exactly nine minutes. The designated room was Room 6, at the very end of the corridor. Any resistance would be punished by an immediate transfer to Ravensbrück.”

“That name, we all knew it. He left, the door closed, and a heavy, stifling silence fell. Marguerite vomited on the floor. Thérèse closed her eyes and began to pray. I stared at the door. I tried to understand: how was it possible? How could men have decided that nine minutes was enough time to destroy someone? That night, none of us slept.”

“We lay there, eyes open in the darkness. We listened to the ragged breaths, the muffled sobs. We waited for the next morning. The calls began. A guard would open the door and shout a name. The girl would stand up; she would follow. Some came back staggering; others did not return.”

“Marguerite was called in the afternoon. When she came back, she no longer spoke. She sat in a corner and stared at the wall for hours. No one dared to speak to her. We knew. The first time I heard my name called