MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: I was taken back to the Santé prison where I
was placed in solitary confinement. However, I was able to communicate
with my neighbors through the piping and the windows. I was in a cell
next to that of Georges Politzer, the philosopher, and Jacques Solomon,
physicist. Mr. Solomon is the son-in-law of Professor Langevin, a pupil
of Curie, one of the first to study atomic disintegration.
Georges Politzer told me through the piping that during his
interrogation, after having been tortured, he was asked whether he would
write theoretical pamphlets for National Socialism. When he refused, he
was told that he would be in the first train of hostages to be shot.
As for Jacques Solomon, he also was horribly tortured and then thrown
into a dark cell and came out only on the day of his execution to say
goodbye to his wife, who also was under arrest at the Santé. Hélène
Solomon-Langevin told me in Romainville, where I found her when I left
the Santé, that when she went to her husband he moaned and said, “I
cannot take you in my arms, because I can no longer move them.”
Every time that the internees came back from their questioning one could
hear moaning through the windows, and they all said that they could not
make any movements.
Several times during the 5 months I spent at the Santé hostages were
taken to be shot. When I left the Santé on 20 August 1942, I was taken
to the Fortress of Romainville, which was a camp for hostages. There I
was present on two occasions when they took hostages, on 21 August and
22 September. Among the hostages who were taken away were the husbands
of the women who were with me and who left for Auschwitz. Most of them
died there. These women, for the most part, had been arrested only
because of the activity of their husbands. They themselves had done
nothing.