"We had fallen into the trap, up to our necks. The doors were nailed, the way back irrevocably caught off. The world had become a hermetically sealed cattle car."

"'The fire, over there!' She was pointing somewhere in the distance, always the same place. No one felt like beating her anymore. The heat, the thirst, the stench the lack of air, were suffocating us. Yet all that was nothing compared to her screams, which tore us apart. A few more days and all of us would have started to scream."

"'Jews, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!' And as the train stopped, this time we saw flames rising from a tall chimney into a black sky. Mrs. Schachter had fallen silent on her own. Mute again, indifferent, absent, she had returned to her corner. We stared at the flames in the darkness. A wretched stench floated in the air."