Josette Molland’s testimony: scenes of life in Nazi camps

Josette Molland, who died at the age of 100 in France on February 17, was a young member of the French Resistance during World War II when she was captured by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Nazi forced labor camps for women. She survived, having repeatedly witnessed and endured atrocities. Later, after returning to France, she would speak to students about her experiences.

But in her eighties, worried that her story was not getting through to them, she decided that telling them about her camp life was not enough. She should show them. So, from painful memory, she began to paint scenes of the harsh confinement she and many other female prisoners suffered. In total she made fifteen paintings in folk art style. Here are five, with the accompanying text she wrote.

‘The laundry room’

“Place where one was washed. No soap, toothbrush or towel. Cold water flows in a kind of narrow, difficult trough.”

’50 strokes of the “Gummi”’

“Almost always fatal if the woman was thin. Here the blows are administered by our block captain, a German common-law prisoner (Green Triangle).”

‘Liberation of the camp by Polish partisans on horseback’

“They had surprised the SS, ready to flee, and had mined the camp.”

‘At the dentist’

“Naked, so that nothing could be hidden in clothing. He is looking for gold (used in that period). He pulls out the crowns, with the tooth. Here is the bucket full of gold.”

“She had just cut down a tree.”

“She collapsed from fatigue. The “auseherin” (guard) finished her off with a bullet in the back of the head.”