MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: I was with a convoy of 230 French women; among us were Danielle Casanova who died in Auschwitz, Maï Politzer who died in Auschwitz, and Hélène Solomon. There were some elderly women . . .
M. DUBOST: What was their social position?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: They were intellectuals, school teachers; they came from all walks of life. Maï Politzer was a doctor, and the wife of the philosopher Georges Politzer. Hélène Solomon is the wife of the physicist Solomon; she is the daughter of Professor Langevin. Danielle Casanova was a dental surgeon and she was very active among the women. It is she who organized a resistance movement among the wives of prisoners.
M. DUBOST: How many of you came back out of 230?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Forty-nine. In the convoy there were some elderly women. I remember one who was 67 and had been arrested because she had in her kitchen the shotgun of her husband, which she kept as a souvenir and had not declared because she did not want it to be taken from her. She died after a fortnight at Auschwitz.
THE PRESIDENT: When you said only 49 came back, did you mean only 49 arrived at Auschwitz.
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: No, only 49 came back to France.
There were also cripples, among them a singer who had only one leg. She was taken out and gassed at Auschwitz. There was also a young girl of 16, a college girl, Claudine Guérin; she also died at Auschwitz. There were also two women who had been acquitted by the German military tribunal, Marie Alonzo and Marie-Thérèse Fleuri; they died at Auschwitz.
It was a terrible journey. We were 60 in a car and we were given no food or drink during the journey. At the various stopping places we asked the Lorraine soldiers of the Wehrmacht who were guarding us whether we would arrive soon; and they replied, “If you knew where you are going you would not be in a hurry to get there.”
We arrived at Auschwitz at dawn. The seals on our cars were broken, and we were driven out by blows with the butt end of a rifle, and taken to the Birkenau Camp, a section of the Auschwitz Camp. It is situated in the middle of a great plain, which was frozen in the month of January. During this part of the journey we had to drag our luggage. As we passed through the door we knew only too well how slender our chances were that we would come out again, for we had already met columns of living skeletons going to work; and as we entered we sang “The Marseillaise” to keep up our courage.