Death camp survivor speaks at Holocaust luncheon

  • Published
  • By Joe B. Wiles
  • 92nd ARW Public Affairs
“I’m not taking for granted I am alive,” said Noemi Ban, the guest speaker at the Holocaust Observance Week luncheon held April 28 at Club Fairchild. She is a survivor of the Nazis’ most infamous death camp during World War II – Auschwitz.
 
Ms. Ban told a crowd of more than 100 military and civilians about her experiences during her time in the concentration camp and later as slave labor in a munitions factory.

Her message for the luncheon attendees was simple: Love life and never, ever give up.
 
“I know that you don’t have to be in a concentration camp to know that life is full of problems,” said the petite former school teacher and grandmother of five. “But if you don’t give up and if you appreciate life, you can do anything you want.”
 
Ms. Ban was born in Szeged, Hungary. Europe was at war when she graduated high school. In 1944 she was taken along with her mother, grandmother, sister and brother, to Auschwitz in Poland. She was the only one that survived.
 
Later she was taken to Buchenwald, Germany, where she worked as slave-labor in a munitions factory. 

The U.S. Army liberated her in 1945. She returned to Hungary, found her father, and married a math teacher. 

“The first time I spoke at Whibley Island Naval Air Station (Wash.) about five years ago I realized it was the first time I was speaking to an audience of American soldiers,” said Ms. Ban. “I said, ‘I would love to hug you all.’
 
“I finished my speech and was looking for my purse. When I looked up there were 150 of them in line, ready for their hug.”
 
Since her education was interrupted by the war, Ms. Ban went back to school in Hungary and earned a degree in literature and history. 

Her most memorable instructor growing up was her fourth grade teacher, who was also her father and the principle of the school. “He was very strict with me in class and I had to call him ‘Mr. Teacher,’ not his name, or Dad. He really wanted the best of me to come out. If he had just let me be because he was my father, it wouldn’t have been any favor for me,” she said. 

In 1956, during the Hungarian uprising against the Communist government, Ms. Ban, her husband and two sons escaped to the United States and settled in St. Louis.
She enrolled in the University of Missouri at St. Louis and earned a degree in education and a certificate to teach grades K-12. For 16 years she taught in St. Louis, earning Teacher of the Year for her district in 1980.
 
When talking about her students over the years, Ms. Ban remembered one sixth grade boy vividly. “During recess, two boys were fighting. I asked them how did the fight get started? One of them, with the most serious face, looks and me and says, ‘Ms. Ban, the whole thing started when he hit me back!’” 

After moving to Bellingham, Wash., in 1982, she became active in lecturing about her experiences in the Holocaust to civic groups, churches and schools. 

“Everyone receives my message differently. Depends on your background, your beliefs, your political experiences,” she said. “People ask me if I hate. I say no because I learned the lessons of the Holocaust.
 
“Hate destroys not only the one who is hated, but the one who hates. If I hate I would be the prisoner of my own hate. Hitler is dead but he would still be winning if I hated. No way. I want to be free.”