“It hurts when I sit down”: what German soldiers did to French prisoners.
“Even sitting down hurts”: what German soldiers did to French prisoners was, for many, worse than death.
January 1944. In Alsace, the thermometer dropped to fifteen degrees below zero, and the freezing air seemed to carry with it a lingering smell of the end.
In the Schirmeck camp, by the Bruche River, the cold didn’t just bite at the skin; it also pushed fear into the bones.
Schirmeck was not Auschwitz or Dachau, without giant chambers or crematoria operating day and night, but the cruelty there was methodical and constant.
For Claire Duret, twenty-nine years old, and for hundreds of women in the French Resistance, that place was a hell designed to break wills.
The guards didn’t need large killing machines; routines, threats, humiliations, and a repertoire of tortures that turned the body into a prison were enough for them.
Hell on earth and the cruel “Act” was how some prisoners described it, because the central punishment attacked the most intimate thing: dignity.
Claire was a Resistance messenger and was captured while transporting secret documents on escape routes used by hidden Allied pilots.
In Schirmeck, she and other women—nurses, teachers, and those suspected of hiding Jews—faced a punishment that the guards called “The Act.”
It was not a simple beating or a quick punishment; it was a systematic destruction, intended to reduce them to obedience through pain and shame.
The soldiers forced the prisoners to sit on rough and sharp objects, such as planks with rusty nails or heated metal bars.
Sometimes the order was simpler and crueler: to remain seated for hours on frozen cement, while the cold hardened muscles and broke resistance.
The objective was clear: to turn the act of sitting, a basic rest for the human body, into permanent agony, with infections, damage, and deep pain.
They wanted those proud women to learn just one lesson: that even rest would be a punishment, and that the body would obey out of fear.
However, Claire harbored a secret heavier than her own life, a name that should not be uttered under any circumstances, even if it would destroy her.
She knew the identity of the head of the network in Strasbourg: Étienne Duret, her twenty-six-year-old younger brother, and revealing that meant total collapse.
His torturer was named Klaus Richter, an SS officer, deceptively polite, with impeccable French, and a disturbing talent for reading the minds of victims.
Richter did not rely on brute force; he manipulated with patience, showed photographs of exhausted bodies, and turned each image into a calculated warning.
He whispered promises of freedom and family reunions in exchange for a single name, as if hope could be bought with a spoken word.
The cruelty reached its peak when Richter brought Louise, a sixteen-year-old girl arrested along with her mother, into the interrogation room.
He threatened to destroy the girl if Claire did not talk, and forced her to choose between protecting an innocent child and saving dozens of hidden comrades.
It was a decision no one should ever have to face, because duty and humanity became enemies within the same heart, and both demanded sacrifice.
In the darkness of the barracks, thick with sweat and disease, Claire did the unthinkable: she began to write so that the truth would not die with her.
With pieces of coal and bits of cement sacks, hidden in his straw mattress, he wrote down names, dates, faces, and destinations of lost women.
She wrote short phrases, almost whispers, on stolen paper: who fell, who disappeared, who died nameless, and how many more would leave without witnesses.
Those fragments were their most powerful resistance, because each line defied the camp’s plan: to erase identities and turn pain into eternal silence.
Then came a sacrifice from where it was least expected, when Richter decided to execute Claire as an example, humiliating her in front of the entire camp.
Marguerite, a former nurse who was protecting her, stepped forward and claimed to know the location of a clandestine radio station, diverting Richter to another target.
Marguerite was tortured to death three days later, but her gesture ignited an indestructible flame in Claire: she had to live to honor that price.
The opportunity arose on April 2, 1944, when an Allied bombing raid hit a nearby ammunition depot and chaos ensued in the camp.
While the guards ran to put out fires, Claire stuck the papers to her skin and lunged towards a gap in the barbed wire.
She ignored deep cuts and gunshots behind her; she ran with a speed born of terror and duty, as if her life depended on every step.
For six endless days he hid in the forests of the Vosges, drinking icy water from streams and fighting against hunger and fever.
Finally, he reached a safe farm, where the air didn’t smell of confinement, and there he was reunited with Étienne, whom he had protected with his soul.
Claire’s notes later became compelling evidence in war crimes trials, but also an irreplaceable human testimony.
In 1974, a journalist rediscovered their papers, and when the story was published, France felt a collective shudder for those forgotten women.
Those prisoners, who endured “the pain of sitting” in shame and silence, were finally recognized as heroines before a world that looked late.
Claire Duret died in 1989, but her legacy continues; in a Resistance museum, her yellowed papers rest under dim, steady light.
They tell the story of ordinary women who became extraordinary, proving that, even with a broken body, human dignity can continue to burn.
Their story leaves an essential lesson: to remember is to resist, and the truth, however buried it may be, always finds a way to the light.
After the escape, Claire found no immediate relief. The cold still seeped into her bones, and the pain when she sat down reminded her of Schirmeck even in safe places.
For weeks, her body healed slowly, but her mind remained on constant guard, as if the footsteps of the guards still echoed behind her.
Étienne tried to take care of her, but he soon realized that no words could erase what his sister had silently endured to protect them all.
Claire slept little. Every hard surface stirred memories, and the simple act of sitting remained an intimate battle against the recent past.
Even so, she asked for clean paper. She wanted to rewrite her notes, organize dates, names, and places, so that nothing would be lost among fragmented memories.
He knew that the war would not last forever, but he also knew that human memory is fragile when it is not fixed with ink and truth.
When Alsace was liberated, Claire handed over copies of her writings to Allied officers, insisting that they were not stories, but evidence.
Many listened in silence, uncomfortably, because the suffering of women rarely fit into the heroic narratives they wanted to tell.
After the war, France wanted to look ahead. Rebuilding cities was easier than rebuilding consciences scarred by shame and silence.
Claire was advised to keep quiet, “live in peace,” to forget Schirmeck. She agreed publicly, but privately continued writing and remembering.
The physical pain lessened over the years, but it never completely disappeared. Sitting still hurt some days, like an invisible signature of the past.
However, that pain became her compass. Each pang reminded her why she had to speak out when others preferred to forget.
In 1974, when a journalist found her papers, Claire hesitated. Reliving that meant reopening wounds that never fully healed.
She finally accepted, not for herself, but for the nameless women who died without a grave, without history, and without recognized justice.
When the report was published, France was shaken. Letters arrived by the hundreds, from daughters, granddaughters, and former prisoners.
Many wrote the same thing: “It hurt me to sit down too, but I never knew why nobody asked.”
For the first time, Schirmeck’s hidden punishment was made public, and silence ceased to be a shared condemnation.
Claire didn’t seek fame. She refused excessive interviews and avoided noisy tributes, because grief didn’t need a stage.
He did, however, agree that his writings would be preserved in a museum, so that future generations would understand the true price of courage.
She died in 1989 quietly, sitting by a window, her body tired, but her memory calm for having fulfilled her promise.
Today, their yellowed papers are still there, reminding us that horror doesn’t always scream, sometimes it hides in everyday gestures.
Because there are tortures that don’t kill immediately, but seek something worse: to make living, even sitting down, an eternal punishment.
And that’s why this story still matters, because remembering is not about reopening wounds, but about preventing them from being inflicted again in silence.
