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the trees and fall into place. We walk that entire night, in neat rows of five. I shed tears of ice. Five days after walking out of Birkenau, we come to a train station in the Silesian village of Wodzislaw. We are herded onto open coal cars and travel through the night, exposed to the vicious January weather. The Germans had no need to waste any more of their precious ammunition on us. The cold kills half of the girls on my car alone. We arrive at a new camp, Ravensbrück, but there is not enough food for the new prisoners. After a few days, some of us move on, this time by flatbed truck. I end my odyssey in a camp in Neüstadt Glewe. On May 2, 1945, we wake to discover that our SS tormentors have fled the camp. Later that day, we are liberated by American and Russian soldiers. It has been twelve years. Not a day passes that I don’t see the faces of Rachel and Lene—and the face of the man who murdered them. Their deaths weigh heavily upon me. Had I recited the Sturmbannführer’s words, perhaps they would be alive and I would be lying in an unmarked grave next to a Polish road, just another nameless victim. On the anniversary of their murders, I say mourner’s Kaddish for them. I do this out of habit but not faith. I lost my faith in God in Birkenau. My name is Irene Allon. I used to be called Irene Frankel. In the camp I was known as prisoner number 29395, and this is what I witnessed in January 1945, on the death march from Birkenau.
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