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Fernand remained silent, thinking to his words. If Klaus was right, then Schreiber was not a monster incomprehensible. He was a broken man, broken by his own nature that he could not accept. This did not make his actions less horrible, but it made them somehow sadder. “How do you survive?” asked Fernand. After three years of this, Klaus smiles weakly.
I remember who I am, not what they say I am, a degenerate, a sick person, a criminal. But who am I really? A man who loves music, a man who taught to hundreds of students, a man who loved and who was loved. He turned the head towards Fernand. They can destroy your body. They can hurt you. every time you squat for the rest of your life, but they can’t touch who you really are unless you let them do it.
In 1944, some Things changed in the camp. The war turned out badly for Germany. The allies had landed in Normandy. The Red Army was advancing to the east. The Reich was collapsing. In Flossenburg, conditions are deteriorated further. The rations decreased, work intensified, executions increased and Schreiber became more eratic.
His torture sessions became more frequent, longer, more brutal, as if he was trying to do his best damage before the end or as if it was looking for something, an answer, a satisfaction that he did not find never. One day in November, Schreiber summoned Fernand for a private session. But this time something thing was different.
The room was empty. No guard, no witness, just Schre and Fernand. And Schreiber was not wearing his uniform. He was in civilian, simple pants and a shirt. He looked tired, old, diminished, assiettoid. he said pointing a chair. A real chair, not the wooden horse. Fernand obeys with precaution. Sitting still hurt but on a normal chair, it was bearable.
Schreiber sat down opposite him. He remained silent for a long moment, looking at him. “Are you wondering why you’re here?” he finally said. Fernand did not respond not. The war is lost, Schriber continues. We all know it, even if we let’s not dare say it. In a few months, maybe a few weeks, Americans will be there and everything will be over.
He paused. When they arrive, they will find evidence of what we did. They will find the registers, witnesses. You, he looked Fernand intensely, you will testify against me, right? You will tell what I did to you. Fernand supports his look. Yes. Schreiber nodded slowly the head. I suspected it. You are resistant. You never really gave in.
Despite everything I did to you, it got up, walked to the window, looked outside. You know what I wanted really? Not punish you, not you re-educate. I wanted to understand, understand how you can be what you are. and don’t not be ashamed of it. How can you accept your nature while I stopped.
His shoulders shook slightly. I hated you because you had something that I didn’t have. Peace with yourself. And I tried to take it from you because if I couldn’t not have it, no one should have it. Fernand listened to him in silence. He doesn’t didn’t feel pity. It was impossible. after all he had suffered.
But he felt something on the other, a form of understanding. Schreiber was not a monster inexplicable. He was a man destroyed by his own shame. “Why are you telling me all this?” asked Fernand. Schreiber turned around. “Because I wanted you to know before the end that it wasn’t a personal, that you weren’t just a number.” He opened the door.
Go back to the block, I won’t summon you more. Fernand got up with difficulty. Sitting down and getting up was always painful and he went out. It was the last time he saw Schreiber. 3 months later, the camp was liberated by the Americans. Schreiber had disappeared, probably flees with others SS officers. He was never found.
On April 23, 1945, American troops entered Flosenburg. Fernand was still alive. It was a miracle, or rather the result of 2 years fierce struggle to survive. He weighed 43 kg. He could barely walk and each movement of his pelvis, every attempt to sit up or squatting caused him pain excruciating. But he was alive.
In the weeks following the release, American doctors examined the survivors. They documented the injuries, malformations, after-effects. They tried to understand what had been done to these men. When they examined Fernand, they were stunned by the state of his basin. The waters were distorted, the scar tissue, nerves damaged.
A doctor asked him what that had happened to him. Fernand tried to explain “The wooden horse, the sessions, repeated torture. But words seemed insufficient. How to explain cruelty too calculated, also methodical, also personal?” The doctor noted what he could in his report. Trauma repeated pelvic, torture origin. This is what is likely to be permanent.
That was a colossal understatement. Fernand returned to France in July 1945. He returned to Paris to the district where he had lived before the war. But he there was nothing left for him there. Sound apartment had been requisitioned then rented to others. His things were gone. His friends, those who had survived the war, didn’t want to see him anymore.
They had learned why he had been deported. And in France in 1945, being homosexual remained a crime and a shame. And he couldn’t dance anymore. This was perhaps the worst of all. Sound body, this body that he had trained for years he had transformed into an instrument of art and beauty. was broken.
He could no longer make the movements that had been his life. Squatting for a plie was impossible. Jumping was unthinkable, even walking normally was a effort. It hurts when I squat down. This sentence became summary of his life after the war. Each day, several times a day, he was confronted with this pain. Every time that he had to sit down, get up, go up stairs, pick up something on the ground.
Every time the pain reminded him of what Schreyber had done. He couldn’t forget her. Sound body wouldn’t let him forget. Fernand found work as a salesman in a clothing store, a job standing which did not require sitting too often. a job anonymous where no one asked him questions about his past. He lived alone in a small apartment in the die district.
He did not seek to companions, did not associate with anyone. Intimacy had become impossible, no only physically difficult because of his injuries, but also psychologically unbearable. What had been done to him had created associations, traumas, blockages that he could not overcome. The years passed, France changed, but Fernand remained frozen in his silence, in his pain, in his memories.
He never spoke of what had happened to anyone, ever. When alumni associations deportees were formed, they were not did not join. These associations did not welcome pink triangles. Anyway, homosexuals were not recognized as victims of deportation. When historians began to take an interest in the camp, he did not testify.
Who would like to hear its history and how to explain what had been done to him. When homosexuality was decriminalized in 1981, he did not celebrate. It was too much late for him, too late to do it again life, too late to heal, too late to be something other than this survivor broken that he had become. In 1976, the pain became unbearable.
of decades of accumulated damage, osteoarthritis, bone deterioration. Fernand consulted a doctor, Doctor Fournier, in Lyon, where he had moved to escape Paris and its memories. It was the first time in 31 years that he talked about what happened to him. The Doctor Fournier listened to him with mixture of amazement and horror.
He examined his body, documented his injuries, tried to understand the mechanism of torture which had caused such damage. “Why didn’t you never seen it before?” he asked. Fernand shrugged his shoulders, a gesture which hurt him like all gestures. Uh, to say what? That the Nazis gave me tortured because I was gay? that German doctors did to me sit on a wooden beam until break my pelvis.
Who would have believed me? Who would have wanted to listen to me? The doctor Fournier had no response to this question because Fernand was right. For 30 years, no one would have wanted listen to it. The doctor did what he could. Of painkillers, exercises rehabilitation, tips for managing daily life with a damaged body. But he couldn’t fix what had been destroyed.
You will hurt for the rest of your life, he said finally. I’m sorry, there is no of solution. Fernand nodded. He already knew it. He lived with this reality for 31 years. Fernand Leclerc lived another 23 years after this consultation. years of daily pain. Avoided sitting, squatting, do the simplest movements. 23 years brought in his body the traces of what Schreiber had done to him.
But something changed in him over the years years. The world was changing, attitudes towards homosexuals changed, associations were formed, voices rose. And for the first time, historians were really interested in the fate of pink triangles. In 1998, the daughter of Doctor Fournier, who became herself a doctor, published the research of his father on the survivors of Das Ron.
The article caused a stir in the academic circles. For the first times, this form of torture was documented, recognized, analyzed. Journalists contacted Fernand, historians too, associations from memory. Fernand hesitated for a long time. 55 years of silence weighed heavily. How break this silence now? How find the words to describe the indescribable? In the spring of 1999, he agreed to testify.
He was 81 years. His health was declining. He knew that he He didn’t have much time left. If I die without speaking, he said to the historian who questioned him. They will have won. Schreiber wanted me keep quiet, let me be ashamed, let me carry away his secret in the grave. I refuse to give him this satisfaction. The testimony was recorded on several sessions.
Between May and July 199, Fernand told everything. His arrest, the Schreiber camp, the wooden horse, the torture sessions, the pain that never left him. He also spoke of his life after the war, of silence, of loneliness, of the impossibility of dancing which had perhaps been the loss the cruelest of all. “They got me took my dance,” he said.
They took me the thing I loved most in the world. For two years I survived dancing in my head. It was my refuge, my resistance. And then when I was released, I realized that I don’t could never dance again true. My body wouldn’t allow me more. He paused, his eyes shiny. Perhaps this is the act more serious.
Not physical pain, we gets used to the pain of a certain way, but deprive myself of what made of me, me, transforming myself into a dancer in invalid, destroy not only my body but my identity. The historian asked him if he had any regrets. “Just one,” he replied. “I should have spoken sooner. I kept silence for 50 years because I was ashamed, not ashamed of what I am.
I’ve made peace with it since a long time, but ashamed of what had me been done, like it was my fault, like I deserved it. He squeaked his head. This is what he wanted, that we are ashamed, that we keep quiet, that we disappear and I played their game for 55 years. I should have resisted earlier. I would have had to speak, but he sighed.
He is not never too late, even now, even at one year old. It’s never too late to tell the truth. Fernand Lecler died on November, four months after completing his testimony. He was 81 years old. Sound testimony was published in a book collective in 2002 alongside the stories other Da Wrighton survivors found thanks to research by Doctor Fournier.
The book was titled The wooden horse, a forgotten torture. He caused a scandal. Many refused to to believe that such cruelty had existed. Others accused the perpetrators exaggeration, sensationalism, lie. The deniers are leaving were given to their heart’s content, but the evidence were there. medical records, concordant testimonies, traces physical on the bodies of survivors and above all the Nazi registers themselves who mentioned Das Ren as a rehabilitation method applied to homosexual prisoners.
In 2008, a commemorative plaque was installed in the location of the old Wheuse in Flossenburg. The building was demolished after the war, but the location was known. The plaque bears the inscription. In this place, men were tortured for their identity. They carried in their body the traces of this cruelty until their last breath.
That their suffering will never be forgotten. What their courage be honored. It hurts when I squat. This sentence pronounced by so many survivors has become a symbol of this that they endured. A simple sentence, daily, banal, but which contains a world of suffering. Every time one of these men sat down, stood up, climbed stairs, picked up something, he remembered.
His body forced him to remember. This was the purpose of torture. Not only hurt in the moment, but create a permanent inscribed memory in the flesh and the waters. These men transformed this curse into testimony. They carried their pain for decades and finally they spoke. They told the world what had been done to them.
They refused to disappear into oblivion. Fernand Leclerc could no longer dance with his body, but in the last months of his life, he danced with his words. He has told his story, his true story, with all its pain and all its beauty. And this story still dances years after his death. If this story touched you, leave a comment to tell me where you are from look.
Each message is a way to say to Fernand and the others: “We hear you, we do not turn away the look. Your pain was not vain. Subscribe to the channel for discover other forgotten stories. Stories of those we wanted silence. Stories that deserve to be heard even when they are difficult to listen to. Fernand Leclerc was in pain when he squatted for 56 years, but he found the strength to speak.
And now it’s up to us to pass on his word. It hurts when I squat down. It is a sentence of pain, but it is also a sentence of truth. And the truth, even painful, is the first step towards recognition. Thanks for listening. Please don’t forget.