Northwest Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Ethnocide Education
Noémi Ban's Past Events
Audience members had the opportunity to ask Noémi questions during her presentation at Western Washington University on April 21st, 2009. These questions are a compilation of answered questions at the event, as well as the remaining questions that we were unable to answer at the event.
Q: You said your father was deported
before you, your mother and grandmother even left the ghetto. What did
you father say to you before he left and what were your
thoughts/emotions at that time?
Noémi: When my father left he gave us a warm hug then he
blessed my mother, the baby, me, and my sister. When he turned to my
Grandma to bless her, she blessed my father first, with tears in our
eyes.
Q: After a person has been degraded to
the point you were at in the camp, what gave you the ability to move
towards peace? How did you forgive?
Noémi: This is very hard to explain. The degradation from
the Nazi’s were horrible, also as you remember we were dying. I luckily
was with a group of people who had strength and a will to survive, who
had hope, and who didn’t think of ourselves as the Nazi’s described us.
I don’t hate but I am still working on forgiving.
Q: How did you first feel when Hitler
came to power?
Noémi: Confused. I didn’t really know what was happening;
I was a very young child in Hungary.
Q: What did your sons say after seeing
where you lived in the concentration camps?
Noémi: They were devastated. Very hard for them to
imagine that I was in these camps.
Q: Why did you move to Washington?
Noémi: My oldest son lives in Bellingham, Washington.
Q:
How did people treat you when you came to America?
Noémi: Welcoming, loving, and helpful.
Q: How did you get to hide in giant balls
of yarn? Could you move? Did anyone see you getting out of the balls of
yarn?
Noémi: We couldn’t move at all in the balls of yarn. I
had my youngest son in my lap, and my husband had my oldest one is his
lap. The only person that saw us getting out of the balls of yarn was
the manager of the factory, because he knew we were in there.
February 25th,
2009
Audience
members had the opportunity to ask Noémi questions during her
presentation at Western Washington University on February 25,
2009. These questions are a compilation of answered questions at the
event, as well as the remaining questions that we were unable to answer
at the event.
Q: What is the first word that comes to
mind when you think of your life in the Holocaust? What events have
made this word so important and meaningful for you?
Noémi: The first word I think of is horror. I lost my
brother, my sister, my mother, and my grandmother.
Q:
Were any of the guards sympathetic to your situation?
Noémi: One guard in Germany. There was a woman
guard in the camp of Munchmuhle. When we had the break for lunch and had
our food, or what was considered to be food, this woman guard sat next
to me with her tray and on it was a potato and good food. She would talk
to me and ask me where I was from and what school I went. It was very
unusual for guards to talk to us as human beings. Then she looked at me
and she said take some of my food. I was afraid to take it because I
didn’t know if she really meant it. I asked could I share it with my
friend, she said “NO! I would get in trouble”. I took a piece of potato,
and I almost choked because I wasn’t used to real food. She came back a
couple of times, but then I didn’t see her again.
Q:
Did you ever have to change your identity to survive? Was there ever a
time when you made a sacrifice for a friend or family member?
Noémi: No, but there is a story behind this. When I was
in the ghetto, I would have been able to escape and as a cover I would
be a “maid” in a Christian home. I didn’t take that opportunity because
I didn’t want to leave my family. Yes, I did sacrifice for my family,
because I was the strongest. There was my grandmother, mom, my baby
brother and my little sister, so I chose not to leave them. In the end,
it didn’t help because they were killed.
Q: As time goes on, do you think the
impact of the Holocaust will be lessened?
Noémi: I hope not. Of course, survivors are dying, there
are less and less of us who remember it and can talk about it.
Q: Did you ever think about an escape
attempt?
Noémi: Yes I did make an escape, when I stepped out
of the death march and went into the forest.
Q: What do you say to people who do not
believe that the Holocaust happened?
Noémi: My answer is that I am a witness to the
Holocaust as long as I am alive.
Q: Why was your life spared and not
your family?
Noémi: I was young and able to work. That’s why Mengele
selected me work.
Q: What is the most emotional or
physical pain you have went through?
Noémi: Emotional pain- the separation from my family.
Physical pain- when I first arrived in Auschwitz and my whole entire
body was shaved.
Q: We were at Auschwitz/ Birkenau
in Spring 2007. The grass was green. Do you ever remember seeing grass
growing? We were told so many people trampled the grass.
Noémi: I didn’t see any grass while I was in
Auschwitz Birkenau.
November 10th, 2008
Audience members had the opportunity to ask Noémi questions during her
presentation at Western Washington University on November 10th, 2008.
Dr. Ray Wolpow read the questions aloud to Noémi.
Q: Where were these pictures found?
Noémi:
My father came home from the war, he survived, and went to the
city where we were living before and our house was gone, nothing
left. And he started to look in the rubble, and he found
pictures tossed and turned and all about. He gathered whatever
he found, and on
the back of the pictures he put down when he found it and then
he put down what it was. After he passed away, I got the
pictures. I took them to an artist in Bellingham, and then
Professor Jim Lortz took those little bitty pictures and made
these beautiful enlargements of them.
Q: Who is the first family member you saw upon your return
to the camps, and what was that like?
Noémi:
I remember I came back to Budapest, the capital of Hungary. I
knew that one of my uncles, my father’s brother, was teaching in a high
school before. I didn’t know if he was still alive or still teaching or
not. I started to walk through the new city, my hair was coming out and
my outfit was made of a tablecloth - a checkered tablecloth. They
gave us scissors and not everyone knew how to cut or make a dress but we
were happy to get rid of the prisoner outfit. But I got to
the school and asked the secretary if he was still teaching there. “Who
are you?” she asked, and I told her “I am his niece”. She started
screaming and ran into the classroom, grabbed my uncle out, and he was
the first one I met. He told me that my father was still alive.
Q: You spent a long time in the camps. Did you wonder why it took the US so long to enter into the war? What was that like for you? Did you wonder where the US was during the war?
The second half of that question is really pertinent in terms of the times we are living in today. What are the barriers for all of us who are learning to heal through the catastrophes of war?
Noémi: In the camp, we didn’t know a thing about the war at all. We didn't have telephones, we didn't have television, we didn't know what was going on in the world. Everything we learned was learned when we came home. We were completely isolated from human beings. And so the first thing was, the first feeling was, to get used to being free. When you are for so long a prisoner, and going through all those horrible things, nothing else...you just learn how to live, how to eat, how to sleep, how to wash yourself, everything. I was so lucky that I got married; I came back in September, and I got married in October, 1945. But I knew him before! He was 10 years older than I. I slowly, slowly got back among the living. In the camp, I wondered how come, how come the whole world doesn’t do something? Thousands of people are dying, but we didn’t know what was going on in the world in other places, other duties, we have excuses and I was then not in the United States. I went back to Hungary, I got married there, I had two boys, and slowly, slowly I learned what the political situation was, why people didn’t come to help. We did see and hear that Eisenhower was the President and he visited the concentration camps. But we didn’t know a lot until we came to the United States, where we learned everything.
The other part of the question is how we remember after we were for so long prisoners and not human beings. It was very hard to be a human being again. But I realized that I was not afraid because I always...I left all fear in Auschwitz, but I still felt uneasy. I already began remembering other human beings. I thought: may I love and learn and play the piano and read books, it took a long time. I had to teach myself to return back to normal, all the things I loved to do were taken away from me, and all those things taken away from me slowly came back. And then, finally, I had my sons, and my younger one was 2 years old, I went to college. I became a teacher in Hungary and I started to teach, and that gave me back the right to be human. And then, in 1948 the Soviet Union occupied Hungary, in 1956 the revolution broke out and during this time, my husband, two sons, and I escaped to Austria. We arrived in the United States in 1957.
Q: From the perspective you have as a survivor of the Holocaust, why do you think there is so much hate in the world? Either directed towards Jews, or hate directed towards others. Could what happened in Eastern Europe happen in the United States?
Noémi:
Why this hate? This is what bothered us even in the camp. Why this
hate? We were a minority, and many were against Jews. Why this hate against
us? Why is there hate against Black people? Why? It’s hard to explain to
ourselves without losing hope. In any way when we heard the news, I myself I
always had the hope that one day I would be able to get away from them, and
become a human being. But I also knew it should happen both ways. That ones
who hate have to be taught what hate is. Those who have been hated should
also learn how to educate themselves, how to try to be more loving, more
giving. I learned that finally when I became free this was my duty to
first of all tell what happened when people hate, and then encourage people
to talk about it even if it you were not hurt personally. I know that we
cannot go to Darfur, I know that we cannot go there, but at least when I
speak I hope I make clear what hate does. I cannot say what will
happen here, and I hope and I feel that this the only country where I feel
free and I hope that it will not ever happen again, what happened in eastern
Europe. But I won’t mislead myself, because I know that anti-Semitism, and
bigotry, and hate do exist.
Q: So if President Elect Obama were to call you on the telephone to ask you for some advice, what would your advice to President Elect Obama be?
Noémi: Oh!! Already? Tell him to call me! But you know what? I will tell you that when Obama became President Elect, I was crying because I was saying to my friends, that this is a free country. I know what it means to be abused, to be hated, to be kicked around, to be taken to Auschwitz. And I know this. Many Americans felt happy when Obama won but I felt doubly happy, because I know how it feels to be hated, and I was a minority too. I feel like that he who was a minority, will feel as I feel now. Tell him he can call me. I even have a cell phone!
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