[question] I come to the doors now. All the girls are at the Washington Place doors, but nobody could go out that way. It was a terrible thing, I don’t know if it was somebody’s fault, because the door, it opened in, and we all knew that from every day. They inspected us going out that door every time we leave, they had a guard looking in our bags and checking us, even our clothes, to make sure we didn’t have anything hidden in our garments. They were afraid we would steal the goods.

[question] I never took anything, and my sister she never took anything, but I knew some girls did. It wasn’t worth the risk, because if they catch you, they fire you and I heard in some shops they have people, they pay some prostitutes is what I heard, but that could be just a rumor, I don’t know, I never saw it with my own eyes, these tough girls would follow you, they said, after you got fired, and they would beat you up in the street to teach a lesson.

[question] At the door, girls were pushing, it was very terrible. There was this smell of everything burning, hair and clothing too, but the worst smell in the world—if you smell it once you never get over it in your whole life—is that smell like cooking meat, that smell of burning flesh. It makes you ashamed, to smell that, it is the worst thing in the world. I smelled that, and it is still in my nose. I will never forget that smell. So this black smoke was everywhere all at once, to make everyone choke. I heard the girls in the front maybe even got squeezed to death from the pushing because nobody could open that door, is that true, do you know? [informative comments] Ach, that is so terrible. So many girls died that day and each way to die was a terrible way. There were no good ways.

[question] So I had this idea about the other door, the one by the elevators on the Greene Street side. We weren’t supposed to use it on a Saturday because those freight elevators didn’t run on the weekends so we weren’t supposed to use those stairs on the weekends. Maybe the bosses used those stairs to go up to ten, for the offices, but the girls weren’t supposed to go by those stairs. So I go across that way, but I had to run right into the flames to get across. And this is where I lost my sister, because I was holding her hand and then I let it go, I don’t know why, and she didn’t follow me when I thought she was right there behind me, she must have been afraid of the flames, maybe she thought I was crazy to go into the flames to escape, but you had to do it, you had to go into the flames to get out.