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Devorah Hilsenrath is the only member of her family who lived to tell their story.

Hilsenrath, the wife of Yakov Hilsenrath, rabbi emeritus at the Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth shared her experiences of living in Auschwitz, at Young Israel of East Brunswick's Yom Hashoah program April 22.

"One of the 10 commandments is do not murder," Hilsenrath said. "In Auschwitz, the Nazis interpreted the commandments backwards. They believed in Auschwitz the commandment reads thou shall murder every Jewish man, every Jewish woman, and every Jewish child."

Hilsenrath grew up in Hungary with very loving, hard-working parents. Her father was ordained as a rabbi, but in his heart wanted to be a doctor; however, very few Jews were accepted into medical school and he became a businessman. Her family was also religious and belonged to the Hassidic shul.

"There were two synagogues in our town; one large synagogue and a smaller a Hassidic synagogue," she said. "My mother recited Modeh Ani every morning with me and the Shema before going to bed."

Hilsenrath said her parents, along with the entire Jewish community, would listen to the radio in hopes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt would attempt to do something to stop the Holocaust. In Pesach of 1944, everything changed for Hilsenrath and the Jews in her community, because the Germans were being defeated by the Russians and retreated to Hungary where they pillaged, raped, and created mass chaos.

"Everything changed, even though we were loyal Hungarian citizens for many generations, our human rights were drastically denied," she said. "Every adult, every child, and every baby were forced to wear a yellow star of David with Jude, Jew written in black letters."

The Nazis closed all of the Jewish owned stores, forced Jews to walk in the gutter instead of the sidewalk, and doctors and lawyers couldn't practice anymore. They were forced to leave their homes and could only bring what could fit into a bed sheet, she said.

"Our Jewish community of peace and love was herded into the great synagogue," Hilsenrath said. "We slept on the floor, between the aisles, and between the seats."

The Nazis then transported everyone to a ghetto where four families slept in a small cramped room. She said her family and the people of the community thought these harsh conditions were only temporary and they would return to their homes. After a month, they left they ghetto and marched to the train station where Auschwitz lied ahead.

The train was unbearable and was like nothing she had ever experienced before, she said. There were cries of babies, screams of elderly people, and frightened children. The Nazis starved them and gave them no food or water. Hilsenrath said on the first night of the train her father told her something she will never forget.

"My dear child you and your siblings mean everything to mother and me," he told her. "Now remember when the Germans start shooting us, we should recite Shema Yisrael."

"How much soul searching my father must have experienced before conveying this ominous message," she said.

After four dark torturous days on the train, they finally arrived at death's door, Auschwitz. Immediately, they were forced to separate men and boys and women and girls.

She was a 12-year-old girl alone among women she didn't know, and was terrified. She then saw her brother holding her father's hand; that was the last time she would ever see her family alive.

"I found myself alone in the Auschwitz death camp," she said. "I saw evil. I lived through evil. The atrocities of the Holocaust were determined and a conscious act of a sophisticated and scientifically advanced society."

Every day the Nazis would wake them up a 4:30 a.m. and they would receive one large bowl, a cup, a spoon and then stand in line for a small piece of bread and coffee, which was their food for the day. She said they had to stand outside of the barracks for hours to be counted and couldn't sit at all. If a woman was too weak to stand anymore the Nazis would beat her mercilessly, she said. Every day she was taken to a pile of boulders with a hammer and had to break the boulders into small stones, she said.

"To be in Auschwitz in 1944 was to be a slave," she said. "Imagine you are locked in a cage and the gate opens only at the whip of a cruel master. You are ordered where to go, where to stand, where to sit. We would ask God, don't let us lose our mind don't let us lose our wills to live. Their goal was to dehumanize us, our goal was to survive."

In 1944, Hilsenrath was selected to leave Auschwitz and was transferred to a women's slave labor camp where she worked at an airplane factory. The first night in the camp was the first night of Hanukkah. The women were able to create a small menorah and light a candle, and as soon as they lit the candle a Nazi soldier entered the barracks; however, by the time he entered the candle had burned out.

"In April 1945, we were told the camp was to be emptied and all able bodied inmates were to leave the camp," Hilsenrath said. "The so-called death march began. We marched for seven days. It seemed like eternity."

There were days on the walk where their bodies were so numb that they couldn't even feel the rain, she said. Each day the amount of people decreased because anyone that couldn't walk anymore was shot.

Eventually the walk ended and the Nazis and the women slept in a barn, she said. Once everyone was asleep, Hilsenrath's cousin suggested they try to escape. She said at dawn, before everyone was awake, the two of them pretended they were going to the well for water, but instead made a run for the air raid shelter and hid.

"Our hearts racing faster than our feet, barely touching the ground," she said.

They reached the bunker and stayed there in silence until it was dark again and they realized that the Nazis had marched on and weren't looking for them. They then found an empty farmhouse, where they stayed for two days until the Russians liberated them, she said.

"We escaped from death to life, from slavery to freedom," she said. "It took us six weeks to reach our home and I soon discovered I was the sole survivor of my immediate family."