Each German soldier was allowed 7 minutes per day with each French prisoner.

Each German soldier was allowed 7 minutes per day with each French prisoner.

I was 20 years old when I learned that the human body could be reduced to a stopwatch. I'm not talking about metaphor, I'm talking about something literal, something measured. Repeated with mechanical precision every 9 minutes. This was the time allotted 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 accuracy when those minutes ended. The body learns to count time when the mind has already given up thinking. 

My name is Elise Martilleux. I am now years old and this is the first time I have agreed to talk about what really happened in this converted administrative building on the outskirts of Compiègne between April and August 1943.

Almost no official records mention this place. The few documents that mention it are lying. They say it was simply a sorting center, a temporary transit point to larger camps . But we, those of us who were there , know what really went on behind those grey walls. I was an ordinary young girl, the daughter of a blacksmith and a seamstress, born and raised in Saint-Lis, a small town northeast of Paris.

My father died during the French retreat. My mother and I survived by sewing uniforms for German officers. Not by choice, but because it was that or starve to death. I had chestnut hair that fell to my shoulders, small and skillful hands, and I still believed , with that naivety typical of youth, that if I kept my head down, if I didn't draw attention to myself, the war would pass by me without really touching me.

But on April 12, 1943, three soldiers from the Vermarthe knocked on our door early in the morning. The sun had not yet risen. They said my mother had been reported for hiding a clandestine radio. It was n't true, but in those dark days, the truth no longer mattered . They took me away simply because I was there, because I was the right age, because my name was on a list that someone somewhere had drawn up in a cold, anonymous office.

We were transported in a freight truck with eight other women. No one was speaking. The engine roared, the stony road shook us. I held my mother's hand as if we were still able to protect each other. We arrived around 10am. A grey, three-story building with narrow, tall windows. A facade that must have been elegant in the past.

Now she was cold, impersonal, devoid of all humanity. We were made to get out of the truck. We were lined up in the courtyard. An officer counted twice. Then we were pushed inside. We were stripped naked. They shaved our heads. We were given a grey shirt, nothing else. We were led into a large room on the ground floor.

Twelve young women, all between the ages of 18 and 19. I remember their faces. I can still see them today. Marguerite, barely 19 years old, with short, blond hair. She was crying silently. Thésée, 22 years old, tall, brunette, she was praying in a low voice. Louise, 21 years old, her hands damaged by working in the fields.

Simone, 20 years old, a philosophy student, had a gaze that never wavered. And the others, names I will never forget. We were given thin straw mattresses on the stone floor. The smell was suffocating: mold, sweat, disinfectant. Late in the afternoon, an officer entered. He wore an impeccable uniform....

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