"I was watching a young mother. First she took off her shoes, then the shoes of her small daughter. Then she removed her stockings, then the stockings of the little girl. All the time she endeavoured to answer the child's questions steadily. When she asked: ' Mummy, why are we undressing?' her mother replied: 'Because we must.' When the little girl went on to ask: 'Is the doctor going to examine me, and make me well again?' her sorrowful mother replied: 'He will, my darling, soon you will be well, and then we'll all be happy.' It cost the unfortunate woman all her self-control to utter these words. She was struggling to keep on talking to her beloved child quite normally to spare her the terror of her imminent death. In these last few minutes the young mother had aged fifty years."
Eyewitness Auschwitz - Three Years in the Gas Chambers by Filip Müller