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During a 1944 Passover seder in a small Hungarian shtetl, 15-year-old Margit Feldman's world ''went up in flames.''

That evening the Hungarian police knocked on her door and ordered her family to congregate in the courtyard of the local Jewish school. This was the beginning of a nightmare in which 65 members of Feldman's family died, but she survived to tell her story.

Feldman, who endured five incarcerations including at the concentration camps Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, shared her harrowing account at a Yom Hashoah service at the Marlboro Jewish Center on April 11.

''This day is engraved in my brain for ever and ever as long as I live,'' Feldman said of that night her family was rounded up.

Feldman was born in Budapest on June 12, 1929 and grew up in a small village on the border of Czechoslovakia that was the home to approximately 200 other Jewish families.

She recalled a relatively happy childhood with the love and affection that was showered upon her at home. Yet, she also experienced the anti-Semitism and hatred of the surrounding community.

''I remember being called dirty Jew, filthy Jew,'' she said, adding that her father used to walk behind her on the way to school to make sure she was alright.

On the night her family was arrested, all the area's Jews were collected together before being marched to the ghetto.

Feldman remembered how she was struck when the head of the local police, who had served along with her father in World War I, told her father to give him his money and jewelry because, as he put it, ''you will not need this where you're going.''

Still to this day Feldman said she does not understand how everyone else seemed to know their fate, yet Hungarian Jews remained unaware of the horrors that were about to befall them.

Even though life was difficult in the ghetto, Feldman said men continued to put on their tefilin and daven daily. Though many appealed to God for rescue, others committed suicide, according to Feldman.

One day, the police came to inform the ghetto population that they were going to leave, and they were subsequently loaded into cattle cars.

Feldman recalled the grueling five-day trip, in which 80-100 people were loaded into each car, with only a bucket in the corner for a toilet. On this journey, many people died, others committed suicide, and even some parents killed their children to silence their cries, she said.

''At the age of 15 to see this, it stings you for the rest of your life,'' she said.

When they arrived at Auschwitz five days later, Feldman recalled seeing the infamous sign suspended over the camp's entrance: ''Arbeit Macht Frei'', meaning ''work will set you free.''

''This was one of Hitler's biggest lies,'' she said. ''You could work you bum to the bone and you would never become free.''

After stepping off the train, the prisoners were separated by gender. Feldman remembered her father running over to her, putting his hand on his daughter's head, and blessing her like he had done each Friday night.

''He then said the last thing he ever said to me, 'be a good girl and take care of yourself,''' she said, after which she watched her father grabbed by SS soldiers, dragged back to the men's side, and beaten.

At this point, Feldman's mother was dragged away too, and she remained with her aunt who lied about her niece's age to the German soldiers, telling them she was 18, and with that lie most likely saved her life.

After two to three months in Auschwitz, Feldman was taken to Krakow, where she was forced to chisel stones from the side of a mountain. Below them, the Germans would hang political prisoners, and each evening she had to clean the mess resulting from the executions.

Several months later, she was sent back to Auschwitz at which time she was given her tattoo, which she has vowed never to get removed.

That time in Auschwitz, Feldman worked in the kitchen and she recalled how due to her hunger, she would lick every drop of the soup remains, despite the fact that it was largely composed of garbage.

As the Russians were encroaching from the East, the Germans, in an attempt to cover their tracks, marched the prisoners to Bergen-Belsen. On the long, winter march, those who fell by the wayside out were quickly shot by the German soldiers.

Feldman described the scene of the concentration camp as the war was coming to an end.

''All you saw in Bergen-Belsen was piles and piles of corpses,'' she said. ''People walked around half-dead, walking around with body lice.''

Soon after, the camp was liberated by British forces, only two days after Feldman's aunt died.

When the British came, Feldman said she had only one wish: ''That it was all a dream and I would close my eyes and open them and my mother and father would be there.''

Despite the camp's liberation, Feldman's trouble were far from over, as the bomb that the German's had planted under the camp exploded after a survivor lit a fire.

''My liberation was short-lived,'' Feldman said, describing how a piece of shrapnel remains logged in her head due to the explosion.

After she recovered in the hospital, a Swedish woman adopted her along with a group of other child survivors, and she relocated to Sweden.

Feldman was prepared to move to Israel until relatives of her parents, who resided in the United States, sent her a telegram inviting her to come to America. In 1946, Feldman arrived in the United States, where shortly thereafter her right lung collapsed. In America, she met her husband of 56 years and is today a grandmother.

''Every one always asks how did you survive and I say it was God's will,'' Feldman told the crowd. Yet when she told her 14-year-old grandson her story, Feldman said he had an alternate theory.

''You know why you survived,'' she recalled her grandson telling her. ''It was because your daddy blessed you.''