21/04/2026
"She was eight months pregnant" — What German soldiers did to her before she gave birth
There are things we don't forget even when we try. The noise of boots pounding the wooden floor your house at three in the morning. The smell gun oil mixed with sweat masculine. The feeling of a hand rough squeezing your arm for that another pushes your belly h month as if he were an obstacle on the path.
My name is Victoire de la Cross. I am years old and for sixty of them, I kept a secret that must now be revealed, not because that I want it, but because dead people can't speak and someone must testify to what they has arrived. When the German soldiers took me snatched from my home that night in March4, I was 33 weeks pregnant. My son was moving so much that I could barely sleep.
He gave blows feet in my ribs as if he wanted already come out, as if he knew that something terrible was going to happen produce. I didn't know it yet, but he was right. What they got me done before childbirth has no name in no language that I know and what they did next was worse. They didn't take me alone. We were ten women that night, all young, all beautiful enough to attract attention.
Five were pregnant like me. The others were virgins, engaged, young mother. We have been choose as one chooses fruit a market. They entered the house through house with lists, lists containing our names. This means that someone from our own village had delivered. Someone we acquaintances, someone who took the coffee in our kitchen.
I lived in Tul, a working-class town in the center of France, known for its arms factories. My father worked in the factory of weapons. My mother sewed uniforms for the German army under occupation forced. We had learned to lower the eyes when soldiers passed by, not to not answer when they spoke to us, pretend not to exist.
But That night, pretending didn't work enough. Henry, my fiancé, tried to protect. He threw himself in front of the soldier who pulled me towards the door. I have heard the sound of the rifle butt, hitting his head before seeing the blood. Then silence. My mother screamed. My father remained motionless, his hands up, trembling....
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