IRENE: The next memory I have, shortly after that, is us walking--it was nighttime--through the snow and our, my mom, our mom had a suitcase that she was dragging along, and I remember I didn't, I kind of didn't want to go wherever it was that we were going. I remember she gave me a real yank, like, like, you know, just come. So I remember her--and that's when I remember her presence, 'cause I remember, you know, her actually pulling me, to, like...
RENE:I guess I was going peacefully, because I don't, I don't remember the pulling. I do remember that night, though, and I remember dogs.
IRENE: Yes, yes, there were dogs, barking. Then we got on a train.
RENE:Yeah, that train ride I remember.
IRENE: Yeah, me too.
RENE:I mean, this was, uh, this now, we now know, that this was the train ride to, to Auschwitz. But the combination of, uh, heat, odor, crammed quarters, the, uh, the size, the agony of it, uh, in the car. You, I mean you heard that people just died...
IRENE: There was this moaning and...
RENE:Moaning, I mean it was, it was horrible.
IRENE: And being little, it was, like, hard to, you know, it was just all these bodies kind of next to you. And I remember I just wanted to, like, I wanted to lie down.
RENE:Yeah, right, we couldn't lie down for some reason...
IRENE: Right, there was no place...
RENE:Either there was no place, or there wasn't room, or it was too dirty, or it was like nowhere to lie down.
IRENE: You couldn't, there was no place. You just kind of had to stay the way you got on. And...but we didn't cry.
RENE:No.
IRENE: We didn't. We were scared. We knew that crying was not something you did.