The Unrecorded First Night: Testimony, War Crimes, and the System History Tried to Erase

My name is Éléonore Vassel. I am 84 years old, and what I am about to describe is not found in most official archives, not summarized in postwar government reports, and not fully captured in televised documentaries about the occupation of France during World War II.

It concerns what happened before the registration numbers, before the striped uniforms, before the forced labor assignments. It concerns what many survivors later referred to simply as “the first night.”

For decades, the dominant historical narrative of deportation from France focused on transport lists, forced labor quotas, resistance networks, and liberation statistics. But behind those statistics were teenage girls, factory workers, students, daughters, and shopkeepers who were processed through a system designed not only for incarceration—but for psychological domination.

I was nineteen in May 1944 when German forces entered our home in Beaumont-sur-Sart, a small town in occupied France. Three soldiers. One list. One word: Raus.

No warrant. No explanation. No time to pack.

My father was struck when he tried to intervene. My mother was pushed aside. I was taken barefoot into the street before sunrise and placed into a military truck already filled with women from our village—teachers, seamstresses, shop assistants. Forty-seven of us.

Two days later, we arrived at a camp under German command.

Above the iron gate were words I could not yet read:
Arbeit macht frei.

Later I would understand what those words meant. Later I would understand that what awaited us before labor began was something not recorded in administrative logs.

The Processing That Wasn’t in the Records

When the truck doors opened, floodlights blinded us. Guards separated us into lines. We had not yet been assigned numbers. We had not yet been classified as labor units. We were unregistered.

And that detail mattered.

Several of us—seven in total—were directed to a separate barracks described as “internal service candidates.” We were told we would work indoors, cooking and cleaning for officers.

Then came the word: evaluation.

In historical studies of Nazi camps such as Ravensbrück concentration camp and Auschwitz concentration camp, researchers have documented intake procedures, medical inspections, and forced labor sorting. But what many testimonies from French, Polish, and Hungarian survivors later described went beyond hygiene checks or work assessments.

It was a ritual of domination.

We were taken to a concrete washroom, ordered to undress under guard supervision, inspected for lice, disease, and physical condition. We were issued thin dresses. No undergarments. No identification yet. No paperwork reflecting what happened next.

An officer entered.

He did not shout. He did not rage.

He observed.

One by one, girls were told to stand, turn, lift their dress to the knee. They were examined as though livestock at auction. Some were taken away for “private questioning.”

Two girls did not return until dawn.

There are details I will not describe. Not because I cannot remember them—but because certain memories do not require graphic repetition to be understood. What occurred that night was calculated humiliation designed to communicate a message before forced labor ever began:

You no longer control your body.
You no longer control your fate.
And no record will reflect what has happened.

The next morning, when we were officially registered and assigned numbers, a senior officer made something clear:

“What happened last night never happened. Do you understand?”

We whispered yes.

That was the erasure.

Why Survivors Stayed Silent

After liberation by American forces in April 1945, I returned to France physically alive but internally fractured. My father had died. Our bakery was rubble. My mother never asked what had happened. I never told her.

For decades, many survivors avoided discussing sexualized abuse in camps for several reasons:

·         Social stigma in postwar Europe

·         Fear of being blamed

·         Legal systems focused on forced labor and mass killings rather than sexual violence

·         Cultural pressure to “rebuild and forget”

War crimes trials, including those held in Nuremberg under the authority of the Nuremberg Trials, prosecuted crimes against humanity, forced labor, and extermination policies. Yet thousands of women across occupied Europe later testified that gender-based abuse inside camps was rarely prioritized in legal indictments.

Not because it did not happen.
But because proving it required victims to relive it publicly in a society not prepared to listen.

A System, Not Isolated Incidents

When French historian Julien Blanc interviewed me in 2009, he told me something that changed my understanding of my own experience.

Dozens of women from France, Poland, Hungary, and Austria had independently described nearly identical first-night procedures:

·         Separation before registration

·         Inspection beyond medical necessity

·         Officer “selection”

·         No documentation

·         Direct order to remain silent

Patterns across locations indicate that this was not the misconduct of one rogue officer. It resembled an unofficial intake ritual operating within certain camps under German command.

While not codified in surviving administrative paperwork, repeated survivor testimony suggests systemic tolerance.

This is what makes it historically significant.

When multiple accounts across geographic regions describe the same structure—separation, inspection, selection, silence—it shifts from anecdote to pattern.

And patterns matter in war crimes analysis.

The Psychological Objective

The first night was not random cruelty.

It was strategy.

Psychological research into coercive systems shows that early humiliation increases long-term compliance. Break resistance before solidarity forms. Instill fear before identity stabilizes.

Before we became numbered prisoners, we were broken as individuals.

The goal was not only physical control but narrative control.

If no record exists, did it happen?

If survivors remain silent, does the system escape accountability?

For sixty years, many women answered those questions by saying nothing.

Liberation Did Not End the War

When Allied forces entered the camp in 1945, they provided food, blankets, and medical care. But trauma does not dissolve at the sight of uniforms from another nation.

I married. I had children. I built a life. Yet certain sounds, certain smells, certain silences brought me back instantly to that corridor and that locked door.

Post-traumatic stress among female deportees was rarely discussed in mid-20th-century Europe. Mental health treatment for survivors was minimal. Many women internalized their experiences as shame rather than crime.

This is one reason documentation lagged.

It was not absence of abuse.
It was absence of permission to speak.

The Historical Reckoning

Since the 1990s, Holocaust scholarship and World War II archives have expanded to include survivor-centered research. Testimonies preserved in French national archives and international Holocaust memorial institutions have increasingly acknowledged gender-specific abuses.

Sites like Ravensbrück concentration camp have become focal points for studying women’s experiences in the camp system, including forced labor, medical experimentation, and coercive exploitation.

The question historians now confront is not whether such first-night rituals existed.

It is how many went unrecorded.

And how many voices died before speaking.

Silence Protects Systems

When I finally testified in 2009, I did not do so for revenge. Most perpetrators were dead. Courts were closed.

I spoke because silence protects systems more effectively than denial ever could.

The first night existed.

It was not written in intake forms.
It was not photographed.
It was not archived in neat bureaucratic files.

But it shaped thousands of lives.

For every documented deportation number, there may be an undocumented story of what happened before that number was assigned.

History is often told through official records.
But justice sometimes begins with testimony.

I am Éléonore Vassel. I survived deportation from occupied France during World War II. I survived forced labor. I survived liberation.

And I survived the first night.

The question that remains is not whether it happened.

The question is how many other stories remain buried beneath administrative silence—and whether we are prepared, finally, to listen.