More than a half century later, Noemi Ban? stomach still churns when she remembers the sour curdling stench of human excrement that she smelled on that train ride to German-occupied Poland.
The ride was free, but the cost of the journey was the lives of her mother, sister, grandmother and an infant brother, the silver-haired, 87-year-old Noemi Ban said in a recent interview with the Taipei Times.
?t was the most horrible period of my life, but I don? hate because hate destroys,?said Ban, gently touching the gold Star of David pendant on her chest that symbolizes her Jewish heritage.
But in the late 1930s, the Nazi Party turned the six-pointed star into an object of prejudice, bigotry and hate ?the three things that Ban has vowed to speak against for as long as she can.
As a girl growing up in Hungry, Ban, now a US citizen, described her childhood as ?eautiful,?complete with a set of doting parents, loving younger siblings and a piano that she cherished.
Her father? schoolteacher schedule allowed the Bans to take frequent vacations, she recalled.
But her near picture-perfect childhood came to a halt on March 19, 1944, when Adolf Hitler? ruthless grip on the era bulldozed her homeland.
Stripped of all their belongings, the Hungarian Jews faced the same humiliation as Jews in other Nazi-occupied territories ?they were rounded up and thrown into dilapidated ghettos.
?e had to wear the yellow star. We didn? have yellow stars at home. We had to go the store and spend our own money to buy it ?I felt so embarrassed,?she said.
The nervousness in the air was palpable, she said, and it was further amplified when her father, who was 48, was shipped off by the Nazi Party to work at a labor camp.
Ban described her mother? tearful goodbye as her father left the house with nothing but a small backpack. It was the last time her parents stood in the same room together.
Then came the next order, which, unbeknownst to Ban at the time, would mean a march straight to the gas chamber for her loved ones.
In June, the Bans, along with other Jews, were packed into a cattle car on their way to Auschwitz-Birkenau ?the largest German concentration and extermination camp set up by Hitler? regime.
The moment the Hungarian authorities turned the Jews over to the SS police, ?e ceased to be humans and became a number in their eyes,?she said, remembering being shoved into a container with 85 people who could barely stand, let alone sit or sleep in the small space.
?eople were crying, screaming. School children were asking, ?here are we going??The older ones like my grandma were having nightmares. They wanted to break out,?she said.
But being a 19-year-old young lady and the oldest child in the family, Ban said she had to keep level-headed and could not afford to break down because ?hey all depended on me.?
When a lady admitted stowing away a silver candlestick, it was Ban who convinced her to give it up so their lives wouldn? be in jeopardy in case the SS guard found out.
Ban? family was immediately separated when they reached the camp. She was yanked out right away to have her head completely shaven and her clothes replaced with a raggedy prison outfit, she said.
Many girls were ordered to wash themselves with a special soap to stop their menstrual cycle and some of these women remained infertile for the rest of their lives, the great-grandmother of six said.
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