A crowded auditorium with loud voices filled Ball State University's Pruis Hall on Tuesday while students waited for speaker Marion Blumenthal Lazan.
As soon as Lazan arrived, though, the crowd quieted as she told her experience of being a young girl in a concentration camp.
"Mine is a story that Anne Frank might have told if she had lived," Lazan said.
Starting off with the Nuremberg Laws, Lazan told of her experiences from the Kristallnacht to her life today.
Lazan said when she was four years old and things started to get bad for Jewish people in Holland, the place where she lived, her parents decided to go to America.
One month before their departure to America, the Germans invaded Holland and her family was taken to another place to live, Lazan said.
"We lived a very dull, stagnant life," Lazan said. "Just years before my father had been awarded and iron cross for his military service in World War I."
In 1944, when she was nine years old, her family was shipped out to a concentration camp and could only bring with them one knapsack, Lazan said.
Lazan said she lived in a place with 600 other people made for 100 but was able to share her bunk with her mother instead of a stranger.
Lazan said one day a wagon came by carrying what she thought was firewood but was really dead, naked bodies thrown on top of each other.
"There were no trees, flowers or any blades of grass," Lazan said. "Once a month we were taken to get showers but we were never sure whether water or gas would come out."
Although everyone has seen, heard, read and watched documentaries on the Holocaust, nothing can describe the smell and fear of death surrounding Jewish people. Lazan said.
"Bodies could not be taken away fast enough," she said. "There is no way this could be put accurately into words."
Lazan said in April 1945 she and her family were among 2,500 people on the third transport to an extermination camp without food for two weeks straight.
"It is truly remarkable any one of our people survived such horrendous conditions," Lazan said.
Lazan said the transport was eventually taken over by Russian troops that took them to nearby farm houses to live.
When she was freed, Lazan was 10 years old and weighed 35 pounds and her mother was 37 and weighed 65 pounds, she said.
Lazan said her father died of Tiphus not long after they were rescued but she, along with her mother and brother, survived, all of whom are still living today.
"I am so grateful this story has been written down so it can be passed on to future generations," Lazan said.
Her family eventually used the tickets they had purchased 10 years earlier to America and arrived in New Jersey in 1947, Lazan said
Lazan said she has been married for 54 years and has three children and nine grandchildren.
Her mother will be 100 on Feb. 7, Lazan said.
"No matter how many times I've spoken, it does not get easier," Lazan said. "I understand it is important to pass the story along."
Lazan said people should always respect each other, never generalize and not blindly follow someone.
Lazan received a standing ovation from the audience after her story and answered questions anyone had.
She said she has returned to Germany three times, and the camp looks like a park except for mounds which are mass graves.
"I have no regrets having gone back," Lazan said. "I never graduated college, but I think I should receive a doctorate in life experience."
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