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.
PHOTO: JENNY W. HSU, TAIPEI TIMES
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.
The diet at the camp was so meager that it consisted of watery coffee and one piece of bread made mostly of saw dust, she said.
Rapidly losing weight, soon weighing no more than 27kg, the young Ban was too hungry and emaciated to even have the strength to hate.
? was just trying to exist,?she said. ? was too hungry to blame.?br />
The day-in, day-out abuse, however, did not break Ban? spirit. When Josef Mengele ?the notorious Nazi doctor known as the Angel of Death for his horrific human experiments ?chose Ban as one of 25 苑omb-making 胄ungarian girls, she saw her chance to undermine the Nazi war effort.
?hen we heard that what we made was going to be put together with other pieces ?to be used to kill the Allies, the Americans, we were desperate,?she said.
The Nazi guards in the other room spoke no Hungarian and Ban got an idea. Instead of following the instructions of color-coding the wires and the boxes, the girls thought, ?et? make a little sabotage,?she recalled.
?e made a mess! We took the green and connected with the red, the brown with the yellow. We were giggling and laughing that finally, we are making something against that terrible power,?she chuckled.
Ban spoke of her Auschwitz experience in vivid detail, but with little animosity in her voice.
Instead, she punctuated the interview several times with warnings of the destructive nature of hate.
?f I had hate in my heart, I would be a prisoner and I wouldn? be free,?she said.
However, she said she was still working on forgiveness for some of her suffering and that she believed those who had a hand in the genocide must be punished.
The retired teacher said she would like nothing more than to see Mengele eye-to-eye and to tell him the atrocities and pain he had caused her and so many others.
? would also like to face those who deny the existence [of the] Holocaust and say: ?hat are you talking about? I was there and my family was killed in the concentration camp.?
Ban has since returned to Auschwitz six times, most recently with a group of history teachers, to witness the symbol of one of the greatest human tragedies in recent history.
?haring [my story] is healing,?she said. ? walked and lived through it, but sharing still gives me some kind of peace.
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