What German soldiers did to pregnant black prisoners on the day of delivery

My name is Adelaï Baumont. Today, in January 1992, I am 74 years old, and for 50 years I have remained silent about what happened to me. For 50 years I have carried this burden alone, waking up every night with the same images, the same screams, and the same dull ache that never leaves me. My children sometimes ask me why I cry for no reason, why I flinch when I hear boots on the street, or why I can’t look at certain pictures.

I never answered them, but now I am old, my body is weakening, my hands are trembling, and I know: if I don’t speak now, this story will die with me. It will join the thousands of other stories that people wanted to erase, that they wanted to forget. That is why I am not speaking for myself, but for this child I was never allowed to hold in my arms, so that someone may know that it existed, even if only for a moment.

I was born in 1918 in Fort-de-France, Martinique. My father was a dockworker. My mother sewed dresses for wealthy families in the city. We weren’t rich, but we had a clean house, food on the table, and the love that held our family together. I was the eldest of five children. My father called me his little star.

He said I had my grandmother’s eyes, eyes that saw beyond the horizon. When I was twenty, I met a man. His name was Thomas Morau. He was a Frenchman from the mainland, an engineer who had come to Martinique to oversee the port work. He was different from other white people. He looked me in the eye. He listened to what I said.

He didn’t treat me as if I were invisible. We married in 1939. Despite the stares, the whispers, the anonymous letters his family sent him from France. We loved each other. That was enough. In May, war broke out in Europe. Thomas received his conscription notice. He was to return to France immediately.

I remember that morning. We were on the quay at the harbor. The sun was rising over the sea. He took me in his arms and told me to wait for his return, that the war wouldn’t last long, that we would have a life together after all. I believed him, I smiled, I watched him board that ship, and I never saw him again.

Three months later I received a letter, not from Thomas, but from his commander. Thomas had been killed during the Battle of France, a bullet in the chest, killed instantly. They had buried his body somewhere in Picardy. I will never know exactly where. This letter destroyed something inside me, but it also revealed something else.

I was pregnant. I was carrying Thomas’s child, and suddenly this life within me became all that remained of him, all that still connected me to the man I had loved. In 1941, I decided to go to France. It was madness, I know that now. France was occupied by the Germans, but I wanted to see where Thomas had died.

I wanted to find his grave. I wanted our child to be born on his father’s soil. So I took a ship. I had some savings. I traveled for weeks. When I arrived in Marseille, I was six months pregnant. My belly was already round. I walked slowly. Everything was different than I had imagined. The streets were gray. People were afraid.

German soldiers were everywhere, in uniforms, and with flags bearing that black cross that made me want to vomit. I tried to remain inconspicuous. I rented a small room in a dilapidated building near the old harbor. The owner, an old woman with a hard face, eyed me with barely concealed contempt. She took my money, gave me a key, and told me to keep quiet.

I could see what she was thinking: a Black woman, pregnant, alone. To her, I was a problem, but I needed a roof over my head. So I accepted it. The first few weeks were difficult. I didn’t know anyone. I only went out to buy bread and some vegetables at the market. People stared at me, some looked away, others insulted me.

“You dirty black woman, go home.” I lowered my head, clutching my belly. I thought it would pass, that I would survive until the birth and perhaps then return to Martinique with my baby. But one day everything changed. It was a September morning. I was at the market buying potatoes.

I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around. It was a tall, blond German soldier with cold blue eyes. He looked at me, then at my stomach. He said something in German that I didn’t understand, but the tone was clear. It wasn’t a question; it was an order. He grabbed my arm. I tried to break free.

He squeezed harder. It hurt. The people around us looked away. No one said anything. No one moved. He dragged me to a military truck parked on the street corner. Inside were already other women, five or six, all pregnant. Some were crying, others were silent. Their faces were rigid with fear.

The soldier pushed me into the truck. The door closed behind me. It was dark. It smelled of sweat, urine, and fear. A woman next to me whispered, “Where is he taking us?” I didn’t answer. I didn’t know. But deep down, I sensed that something terrible awaited us. The truck drove for hours. We huddled together. My stomach ached.

The baby moved. I placed my hand on it and tried to calm it, to calm myself. Through the cracks in the truck, I saw unfamiliar landscapes passing by: fields, forests, destroyed villages. Then the truck finally stopped, the door opened. The daylight blinded me for a moment. A soldier shouted, “Out, out, get out, get out!” We got out one after the other, awkwardly because of our bellies.

I looked around. We were standing in front of a large building surrounded by barbed wire. There were watchtowers, armed soldiers, and dogs. The air was cold, the sky gray. And suddenly I understood: It wasn’t a hospital, it wasn’t a refuge, it was a prison, a place he had brought us to for a specific reason—a reason I didn’t yet understand, but which I would soon discover.

We were led into the building. A long, dark corridor with doors on both sides, the smell of disinfectant mixed with something older, darker. The smell of death, perhaps. We were led into a large room where a woman in uniform was waiting for us. She had a hard face, thin lips, and eyes that showed no emotion. She looked at us slowly, one by one, as if she were judging us.

When her gaze fell on me, she paused. She frowned. She said something in German to another soldier. He nodded. Then she approached me. She reached out and touched my face. Her fingers were cold. She turned my head from side to side, as if I were an object. She touched my hair, she looked at my hands, then she placed her hand on my stomach.

I wanted to push her away, to scream, but I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with fear. She said something. I heard a word I’ll never forget: “Mixed-race, Métis.” She was talking about my baby. She was talking about what I was. And in that word lay all the contempt, all the hatred, all the violence he had reserved for people like me.

I was separated from the other women. I was taken to another room, smaller and colder. In the middle was a metal table, medical instruments on a tray, a lamp hanging from the ceiling, and a man in a white coat was waiting for me. He didn’t look me in the eye. He simply gestured for me to lie down on the table.

I obeyed because I didn’t know what else to do. The table was freezing. I could feel the cold seeping through my dress and into my skin. The man approached. He placed his hands on my stomach—cold, methodical. He pressed, felt, measured. Then he took a long, cold, metallic instrument and inserted it into me. I can’t describe the pain. It wasn’t just physical.

It was a deeper pain, a pain that touched something inside me I didn’t even know could be hurt. I closed my eyes, I gritted my teeth, I tried not to scream. But the tears flowed of their own accord. The man spoke. He dictated notes, numbers, to a nurse standing beside him.

Medical terms, words I didn’t understand, but I understood the tone. I was a case, a problem, something that needed to be solved. When he was finished, he told me to get dressed. He didn’t explain anything. He just left. The nurse looked at me with a mixture of pity and disgust. She waited until I took a tissue to wipe myself.

Then she let me go. I was taken back to a long, narrow barracks where wooden bunks were lined up on each side. There were other women there, all pregnant. Some looked at me curiously, others looked away. An older woman with gray hair and tired eyes came up to me. She said to me in French, “You’re new here.” I nodded.

She looked at my face, my skin, my hair, and whispered, “My God, you’re Black, they’re going to make your life a living hell!” This woman’s name was Marguerite. She had been there for four months already. She whispered to me that this place was a sorting center, a place where the Germans brought pregnant women to decide the fate of their babies.

She told me they were obsessed with creating a pure, perfect race, driven by a crazy idea, and that anything that didn’t fit their vision was eliminated. Women like us, pregnant and imprisoned, were nothing more than incubators to them. Our babies were assessed even before they were born. Some were deemed acceptable and placed with German families.

Others simply vanished. Marguerite didn’t dare tell me what happened to them, but I could see the fear in her eyes. And as she looked at my skin, my face, she added in a trembling voice, “It will be worse for you. He hates Black people. He thinks you’re less than human. Your baby, no matter what it looks like, they will never let it live.”

Those words are seared into my memory. “They will never let him live.” My child, the only piece of Thomas I had left—they would take him from me, they would kill him, and there was nothing I could do. I placed my hands on my stomach. I felt the baby move, a small kick, then another, as if he wanted to tell me that he was there, that he wanted to live.

And I whispered to him very quietly, “I will protect you. I don’t know how, but I will protect you.” But deep down, I knew it was a lie. How can you protect a child when you yourself are a prisoner? How do you fight against armed men, against an entire system designed to destroy? The following days were a descent into a nightmare from which I couldn’t wake up.

Every morning a guard came and shouted names. Those whose names were called had to get up and follow her. Some returned a few hours later, pale, trembling, with red eyes. Others never returned at all. No one asked questions, no one dared. We lived in constant fear, never knowing if our name would be next, never knowing what awaited us behind those closed doors.

My name was called three days after my arrival. My heart stopped. I looked at Marguerite. She quickly and discreetly squeezed my hand. I stood up, my legs trembling. I followed the supervisor down the corridor and then down the stairs to the cellar. The air grew colder with every step.

The smell of disinfectant was so strong it burned my nostrils. We arrived at a metal door. She opened it. Inside were two men in white coats and a German officer in uniform. They looked at me as I entered, the way one would look at an animal about to be dissected. One of the men gestured for me to undress. I hesitated.

The officer shouted something in German. The tone left no room for doubt. It was an order. So I slowly undressed, ashamed in front of these three men who stared at me without the slightest embarrassment. Naked, vulnerable, seven months pregnant. I stood there, shivering with cold and fear. One of the men approached with a measuring tape.

He measured my head, my skull, the distance between my eyes, the width of my nose, the length of my arms and legs. He took notes and dictated numbers. The other man examined my abdomen, pressing on it and listening with a stethoscope. They spoke to each other in German and discussed things as if I were a mathematical problem that needed solving.

Then the officer approached. He looked me directly in the eyes for the first time. His eyes were blue, icy, devoid of any humanity. He said in French with a heavy accent, “What are you, an African Antillean?” I answered in a weak voice, “Martinian.” He smiled, a contemptuous smile. “So you’re French, but not really French.” He pointed to my stomach and asked about my father. I hesitated.

Then I said, “My husband, he was French, he died in the war.” Officer Harit let out a cold, cruel laugh. “A Frenchman sleeping with a Black woman. He deserved to die.” Those words hit me like a punch to the gut. I felt tears welling up, but I held them back. I didn’t want to give them that satisfaction. The officer signaled to the two men.

They grabbed my arms and forced me to lie down on the metal table. I tried to resist, but they were stronger. They strapped my wrists, then my ankles. I was immobilized, unable to move, exposed, humiliated. One of the men picked up an instrument I had never seen before, long with some kind of clamp at the end.

He positioned himself between my legs. I understood what he wanted to do. I screamed, “No, please, no!” But no one listened. He inserted the instrument into me. The pain was unbearable. I screamed. I felt something tear inside me. I felt blood flowing. The baby moved frantically in my womb, as if sensing the danger.

The man pulled out the instrument. It was covered in blood. He placed it on the tray. He said something to the officer. The officer nodded. Then he leaned toward me and said, “Your baby is a mixed breed, a bastard, half white, half black. He will be useless. When he is born, we will decide what to do with him.”

But you will be sterilized after giving birth. We cannot allow women like you to further defile the race.” He said it calmly, as if he were talking about the weather, as if my life and my child’s life were worthless. They untied me. They told me to get dressed. I could barely move. My whole body was shaking. There was blood between my legs.

The guard brought me back to the barracks. The other women saw me arrive. They saw the blood, they saw my face, and they knew. Marguerite helped me lie down on my bunk. She brought a wet cloth and gently cleaned me. She said nothing. There was nothing to say. We all knew we were in the hands of monsters.

I didn’t sleep that night. I stared at the rotting wooden ceiling of the barracks. I heard the muffled sobs of the other women. I felt my baby inside me and thought of Thomas. I wondered if he knew, wherever he was, what was happening to me. I wondered if he would forgive me for being so naive, so stupid, to come to France.

I wondered if he would forgive me for not being able to save our child. And for the first time in months, I prayed. I prayed to the God of my childhood, the one my mother called upon every Sunday at the church in Fort-de-France. I prayed for a miracle, for anything that would save my baby. The weeks passed. My belly continued to grow.

The baby’s movements grew stronger, more frequent. Sometimes I felt those little feet or those tiny points pressing against my skin. It was painful, but it was also the only thing that gave me hope. He was alive, he was fighting, he wanted to be born. And despite everything, despite the fear, despite the certainty that it would all end badly, I wanted to meet him.

I wanted to see his face, to hold his tiny hand, if only for a moment. The tests continued. Twice a week I was taken to that cursed room. Each time it was the same humiliation, the same pain, the same cold, clinical words. They took measurements of my belly. They listened to the baby’s heartbeat. They took notes, they talked amongst themselves as if I didn’t exist.

And every time the officer was there, looking at me with that icy contempt, reminding me that my baby wouldn’t live long, that I was a mistake of nature, a stain that had to be erased. One day, as I lay on that table, I heard one of the doctors say to the officer: “The fetus is developing normally, but given the mother’s racial characteristics, a full evaluation will be necessary at birth.”

“If the child has too pronounced Negroid features, it will be eliminated immediately. If it looks more like its father, we can consider other options.” I closed my eyes. I tried not to listen, but those words echoed in my head. “Too Negroid, eliminated immediately.” My own child would be judged by its skin color, the shape of its nose, the texture of its hair, and by that arbitrary and monstrous judgment, it would live or die.

Back in the barracks, I told Marguerite what I had heard. She looked at me with profound sadness. “Adelaï,” she said gently. “You have to prepare yourself. You have to accept that you may never see your baby. They leave us nothing. They take everything away from us.” I shook my head. “No, I refuse. I refuse to accept this.”

But even as I spoke those words, I knew she was right. What could I do? I was a prisoner. I was alone. I was Black in a world that hated me for it. I had no power, no resources, no hope. There were other women in the barracks who had already given birth. Some spoke in hushed voices about what had happened.

A woman named Sophie recounted how her baby was snatched from her arms seconds after birth. She hadn’t even seen it. She had only heard a scream, then silence. Another woman, Louise, said she had seen her stillborn baby, but she was certain it had been alive before being taken away. She believed it had been killed.

A third woman stopped speaking altogether. She just sat on her cot, her eyes blank, cradling a piece of cloth as if it were her child. She had lost her mind. I refused to become like her. I refused to lose my mind. Every day I told myself I had to stay strong, that I had to survive, that I had to be there for my baby, even though I didn’t know how.

I talked to my belly. I softly sang songs my mother had sung to me when I was little. Creole songs that told of the sea, the sun, and freedom. I imagined my baby could hear my voice, that it would recognize me when it was born, that it would know I loved it. The ninth month had arrived.

My body was exhausted, my legs were so swollen I could barely walk. My back was in constant pain. But the worst part was the waiting. Waiting for the moment when everything would change, when I would lose control, when he would take my child. Every night I woke up in a cold sweat, terrified that labor might begin, because I knew: once birth starts, it’s the beginning of the end.

It happened one morning in December. It was freezing cold. Snow was falling outside. I woke up with a dull ache in my lower abdomen. At first, I thought it was just a normal cramp, but the pain returned stronger, more regularly. I understood. Labor had begun. I called Marguerite. She came immediately.

She placed her hand on my stomach and felt the contraction. Her eyes filled with tears. “This is it,” she whispered. She went to get the supervisor. A few minutes later, two female guards entered. They grabbed my arms and forced me to stand. The contractions became increasingly painful. I could barely walk.

They dragged me from the barracks into the biting cold, barefoot in the snow. My feet felt frozen, but the pain of the contractions was so intense that I could hardly feel anything else. They took me into the main building, then down into that basement room I knew all too well. When they opened the door, I saw the scene that awaited me.

The metal table in the middle, the blinding white lights, the medical instruments lined up on a tray, and three men: two doctors and the officer I hated with all my heart. He was waiting for me as if for a scheduled appointment. The female attendants threw me onto the table. I was too weak to resist. They tied my legs with straps, then my arms.

I was immobilized, at their mercy. The contractions intensified, the pain was unbearable. I felt as if my body was being torn apart from the inside. I screamed, I couldn’t help it. But no one comforted me, no one held my hand. The doctors talked amongst themselves, consulted their notes, and prepared their instruments.

One of them positioned himself between my legs and began to examine me. His hands were cold, brutal. He said something in German. The other doctor nodded. Then they waited. They waited for my body to do the work, for the baby to descend further, for everything to be ready for their intervention. Hours passed, or perhaps minutes; I lost track.

Time ceased to exist; there was only pain. Again and again, increasingly powerful waves overwhelmed me completely. I sweated, I trembled, I felt my body draining away all its energy. At one point, I thought I was going to die. I thought my heart would stop, that I wouldn’t make it to the end.

And a part of me wished for death, just to escape this suffering, to avoid having to go through what would follow. Then I suddenly felt immense pressure, a sensation of being torn apart, and I heard one of the doctors say, “The baby is coming, get ready.” I pushed with all my strength. I pushed again and again, screaming each time, feeling my body ripped apart.

And then, after what felt like an eternity, I felt something emerge from within me. I heard a cry. My baby’s cry, faint but alive. My heart stopped. That was him, my child. He was there, he was alive. I tried to turn my head to see him. “My baby,” I whispered. “Please let me see my baby.”

But one of the doctors held my head still. “Stay calm,” he ordered coldly. The other doctor took the baby in his hands. I couldn’t see anything, only its back. He carried it to a corner of the room. I could hear the baby crying. That small, fragile cry that meant it was alive, that it was breathing. I tried to free myself from the straps.

“Give him to me!” I screamed. “He’s my baby. Give him to me.” But no one listened. The officer approached the doctor who was holding the baby. They spoke in hushed voices. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I could see their eyes, their expressions. The officer took the baby in his hands. He examined it.

He looked at his face, his skin, his hair. Then he said something in German. The doctor nodded. The officer turned to me. His face was unmoved. He said in French: “It’s a boy.” A boy? I had a son, Thomas’s son, our child. Then the officer added: “But his skin is too dark, his features are too Negroid, he cannot be integrated, he will be eliminated.”

Those words echoed in my head like thunder. “Eliminated!” My baby, my son—they wanted to kill him. I screamed. I screamed with all my might. “No, no, you can’t do this. He’s my child. Give him back to me.” I tugged at the straps until my wrists ached. I tried to stand up, to free myself, to run to him, but I was bound, helpless.

The officer looked at me with the same icy contempt. “You have no rights here. This child should never have been born.” He signaled to the doctor. The doctor wrapped my baby in a cloth. My son cried. I could hear him crying, and that cry, that small, desperate cry, was the most heartbreaking thing I have ever heard.

They left the room, taking my baby with them. I saw them walk through the door, I saw the door click shut, and suddenly: silence. An absolute, crushing, unbearable silence. My son was gone. I hadn’t even had him. I hadn’t held him in my arms. I hadn’t seen his face. I hadn’t touched his tiny hands. He had been snatched from me seconds after his birth, and now he was doomed to certain death.

I lay on that bloody table, broken, empty. Tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t scream anymore. I had no voice. I had nothing left. One of the doctors approached. He said, “We will now proceed with the sterilization as planned.” I barely heard it; I was already dead inside. Let them do what they wanted.

Nothing mattered anymore. My baby was dead, my son was dead, and a part of me died with him. They began the procedure. I don’t remember exactly what they did. I only remember the pain, over and over again. Physical pain mixed with emotional pain. The pain was so intense I thought I was going crazy.

At some point, I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was back in the barracks, lying on my bunk. Marguerite was beside me. She was crying, holding my hand. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.” The following days are like a fog in my memory. I didn’t eat, I didn’t speak. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling my empty body, my flat stomach, my arms that had never held my child.

I could hear the other women around me. Some whispered, others wept. One woman gave birth two days after me. I heard her screams, then her baby’s cry, then silence, and I knew. The same thing had happened to her. We had all been through it. We were all ghost mothers, women whose motherhood, life, and future had been stolen from us.

One morning a guard came in and called out names. My name was among them. “You’re leaving, transfer.” I stood up slowly. My body was still weak, still aching. We were led out of the barracks. A truck was waiting there. There were about ten of us women. We all had the same blank stare, the same face etched with suffering.

We climbed into the truck. No one spoke. There was nothing to say. The truck drove for hours. Through the gaps in the windows, I watched the landscape pass by: snow-covered fields, dark forests, destroyed villages. I wondered where they were taking us. To another camp, to death. I didn’t care; I was already dead. When the truck stopped, we stood before a huge complex.

Barbed wire everywhere, watchtowers, rows of barracks as far as the eye could see, thousands of women in striped uniforms wandering like ghosts. “Ravensbrück,” I heard one of the prisoners whisper the name—the women’s camp, the hell reserved for those who, in the Nazis’ view, did not deserve to live.

We had to get out, were stripped naked, our heads were shaved, and we were given dirty, torn uniforms. A number was tattooed on our arms. I became number 10,684, born Baumot. I was no longer a person. I was a number in a death machine. I was assigned to a barracks. I was given a job. I had to sew military uniforms for twelve hours a day.

My fingers bled from the needles, my eyes burned in the pale light, but I kept sewing, because anyone who didn’t work fast enough was killed. The months stretched into years. 1942, 1943, 1944 – time had lost all meaning. There was only survival. Finding a piece of bread, dodging blows, not getting sick, breathing for another day.

I saw women die of hunger, of disease, of despair. I saw executions. I saw bodies piled up like garbage. And every night I dreamed of my son. I saw him in my arms. I felt his warmth. I saw his small face. But when I woke up, there was nothing. Nothing. Only emptiness, only this pain that never left me.

In April 1945, something changed. We heard strange noises in the distance, explosions, gunfire. The guards were quite nervous, restless. They shouted louder, more violently. We knew something was happening, but we didn’t dare to hope. Hope was dangerous. Then, one morning, we woke up, and the guards were gone. The watchtowers were empty, the camp gates stood open.

We went out slowly, cautiously, like animals fearing a trap. There were soldiers outside, but not German soldiers—Soviet soldiers. They looked at us with horrified eyes. Some were crying. A young female soldier approached me. She offered me a piece of bread. I tried to take it, but my hands were shaking so much that I dropped it.

She picked it up and brought it to my mouth. And I cried for the first time in years. I cried in front of someone. We were free. Free. But what does freedom mean to someone who has lost everything? What is freedom when your soul remains a prisoner even when your body is no longer? The following days were chaotic. The Soviets set up field hospitals.

They tried to treat us, to feed us. But many women still died. Their bodies were too weak. They had survived for so long, but by the time of liberation, they no longer had the strength to go on. I survived, I don’t know how. Perhaps through sheer stubbornness. Perhaps because a part of me still wanted to know what had happened to my son.

The Red Cross arrived. They began registering our names to try and reunite us with our families. I gave my name: Adelaï Baumont, born in Martinique, married to Thomas Morau, who died in 1940. One son, born in December, was taken by the Germans. They noted everything down. They said they would search, but I could see in their eyes that they didn’t believe they would be able to find my child.

There were too many missing persons, too many stolen children, too many dead. I waited a few weeks in a refugee camp, then decided to return to Martinique. I had nothing left in France, only nightmarish memories. I wanted to find my mother, my family, the warmth of the sun, the smell of the sea. I wanted to try to build something new, even though I knew I would never be the same again.

The journey home was long. I was thin, sick, broken, but I was alive. When the ship arrived in Fort-de-France, I saw my mother on the quay. She was waiting for me, crying. When she saw me coming off the ship, she ran towards me. She hugged me, and for the first time in years, I felt… safe. My mother took me home.

She cared for me, she fed me, she listened when I wanted to speak, and she respected my silence when I couldn’t. Little by little, my body healed, but my mind never did. Every night I dreamed of that room in the basement. I dreamed of my baby’s cry. I would wake up in a cold sweat, in tears, screaming his name, even though I had never given him one.

How do you name a child you never held? How do you name a ghost? I tried to rebuild my life. I found work as a seamstress. I tried to smile, to talk to people, to pretend I was normal—but I wasn’t. I never would be. People sometimes asked me why I didn’t have children. I replied that I couldn’t have any, which was true. He had sterilized me.

He had stolen not only my son from me, but also any chance I could ever have of being a mother. This wound was perhaps the deepest. Knowing that I would always carry this emptiness within me, that I would never be able to fill this void. For years I wrote letters to the Red Cross, to military archives, to missing persons organizations. I sent letters to France, Germany, Poland, everywhere I thought there might be a trace of my son.

I described the circumstances of his birth, the sorting center, the officer, the doctors. I gave all the information I could remember, but the answers were always the same: “We’re sorry, we haven’t found any trace. The files were destroyed. There were so many cases.” Some letters suggested I give up my search: “It’s likely the child is dead. It’s best to grieve and move on with your life.”

But how do you grieve for someone you never buried? How do you give up hope when it’s the only thing keeping you alive? In 1953, I married. His name was Joseph. He was kind and patient. He had lost his first wife during the war. We were two broken souls trying to rebuild our lives together.

I never spoke to him about my son. I couldn’t. The pain was too great, too intimate. We tried to have children, but of course, that was impossible. Joseph never blamed me. He said we were enough for each other, and we lived a simple, quiet life, filled with small, everyday joys. But deep inside, there was always this emptiness, this void, this unanswered question.

Where is my son? Did he die a few hours after his birth? Did he suffer? Is he somewhere in the world, alive, without knowing who I am? Decades passed, the 60s and 70s. Joseph died in 1986. Cancer. He fell asleep peacefully, surrounded by love, and I found myself alone again. Old, tired, but still haunted by this past that never left me.

Never left. I began to think that I had to speak up, that I had to bear witness before it was too late. There were so many documentaries, books, and testimonies about the war. But no one talked about what happened to Black women in the camps. No one talked about the mixed-race babies they killed.

No one spoke about the specific racial hatred directed against us. In 1991, a young historian approached me. Her name was Claire. She was researching women from the French colonies during the Second World War. She had found my name in some archives. She wanted to interview me. At first, I refused. How could I tell all of this? How could I put this pain into words? But Claire was gentle, respectful.

She came back several times. She told me that my story was important, that it needed to be recorded, that the world needed to know. So I finally agreed. We sat down in my living room. Claire set up a tape recorder, and I began to talk. For the first time in fifty years, I told everything.

The capture, the sorting center, the humiliating examinations, the birth, my baby’s cry, the officer who said he would be eliminated, the sterilization, Ravensbrück, everything. I cried as I told my story. Claire cried too, but I didn’t stop. I told everything because I knew: if I stopped, I could never begin again. When I finished, Claire hugged me and thanked me.

She told me that my statement would be archived, that it would serve history, that thanks to me people would learn what had happened to women like me. And for the first time, I felt something inside me shift. It wasn’t relief. It wasn’t peace, but it was recognition. My story existed, my son existed.

Somewhere in the archives, in history, there would be a trace of him. Today, in January 1992, I am an old woman. My body is worn out, my hands tremble, my eyesight is failing, but my mind is bright. I remember everything. I remember Thomas’s face. I remember the weight of my belly when I was pregnant. I remember my son’s cry, and I remember the promise I made to him that day as I lay on that cold table.

I promised him I would tell his story, that I would bear witness, that I would make sure the world knew what they did to us. My son, wherever you are, dead or alive, know that I loved you. Know that I thought of you every day of my life. Know that you are not forgotten. And to everyone who hears this story, I say: Don’t let these crimes be erased.

Don’t let racial hatred, misogyny, and dehumanization return. Because what happened to me, what happened to my son, can happen again if we don’t remain vigilant. History repeats itself if we refuse to face it. So look, listen, remember—that’s all I ask. Adé Baumont died on November 23, 1999, in Fort-de-France, Martinique.

She was 75 years old. Her testimony, recorded in January 1992, remains one of the few documented accounts from a Black woman from the French colonies who survived Nazi eugenics policies. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime forcibly sterilized approximately 400,000 people deemed racially inferior. Among them were hundreds of Afro-Germans, people of mixed race, and people from the colonies.

Thousands of babies born in camps and sorting centers were killed or vanished without a trace. Adé’s son was never found. Her story, like that of thousands of other Black and mixed-race women, remained invisible for decades. This testimony exists so that these gaps are not forgotten, so that her suffering is acknowledged, so that humanity remembers what it is capable of in its darkest hours.

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