Survivor's story: Hundreds hear woman describe the horrors of the Holocaust

For nearly two hours Tuesday at Glacier High School, Holocaust survivor Noémi Ban held nearly 450 people spellbound as she transported them through the horrors of the Nazi invasion of Hungary in 1944 and her life at the concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland.

Except for the occasional slamming of a locker outside the auditorium, silence reigned as Ban recalled the day she and camp inmates listened to what had happened to their families from an angry female guard.

  “‘Do you really want to know? Look at that gray cloud.’ We did see a gray cloud. ‘Do you smell that horrible smell? Do you see the fire going on day and night?’ She pointed to the cloud. ‘They are your relatives.’”

Ban did not want to believe her mother, sister, infant brother and grandmother were exterminated but later learned it was true. As she was sent to a real shower, her mother, tiny brother, 12-year-old sister and grandmother went to a shower room renovated into a gas chamber with a window in the door.

When gas pellets exploded, the people huddled together, clawed over each other to escape the choking gas as a guard watched through the window to see when the last quit moving.

“I think of my dear mother. Did she see her own mother and her own children die that way as she suffocated?” Ban said. “It’s hard.”

Ban’s visit was sponsored by Community Congregational Church, Bet Harim, Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Flathead High School International Baccalaureate program, Love Lives Here Kalispell, and the Montana Human Rights Network. She is the subject of a documentary “My Name is Noemi,” that was shown on Wednesday at Central Christian Church.

 Speaking at Glacier High School, she stood surrounded by photos of her “dear ones” whom she honors by refusing to let the world forget the lessons learned through their deaths, along with those of six million other Jews and millions of other condemned people, like gypsies.

“I hope you will see what hate, bigotry and prejudice can do,” she said with her accent still strong.

Ban said she became motivated to speak out when she began to hear people denying that the Holocaust took place. She said she got angrier and angrier.

“What are you people talking about? My whole family was killed,” she said. “ I was a witness and I’ll be a witness as long as I’m alive. When I speak about this, I feel I’m giving my love for them and honoring them.”

Since 1957, Ban has lived in the United States (and now lives in Bellingham, Wash.) after fleeing communist rule in Hungary with her husband and two sons. She became an award-winning teacher and has been a sought-after speaker with her riveting memories of “that horrible time.”

A native of Hungary, Ban was 21 in when the Nazi soldiers invaded her country on March 19, 1944. Her family was forced to obey “Jewish laws” enforced by Hungarian Nazis.

“We had to go to the store and we had to spend our own money to buy yellow stars. It had to be right here, above our hearts,” she said. “I remember the first time I stepped out with that big star. I felt embarrassed — people looked at me differently.”

A week later, the Nazis ordered all Jews to live in a ghetto. Soon, another order forced every man from 18 to 55 to report to forced labor camps, including her 48-year-old father.

She tried to tell her mother that she would be reunited with him. But her mother had a prophetic vision.

“She said ‘No Noémi. I have a terrible feeling I’m never, ever going to see him again,’’ Ban recalled.

After three months, a new law forced everyone in the ghetto to pack one pillow, one sheet, one small package of dry food and one change of underwear, but no valuables. Next, they were forced to march through the city past people lining the streets, bearing their yellow stars and carrying their packages.

“As we marched, some had tears in their eyes but most said ‘good riddance,’” she said. “Finally they told us we had to go to the second floor of a factory.”

They were herded into cattle cars, 85 people to a car.

“The next order was to sit down but it was impossible,” she said.

The cars had no ventilation and two buckets at each end. One held water and the other was for sanitary purposes with no privacy provided.

“Whenever I speak about it, I almost smell the stench in that cattle car,” Ban said. “It was the end of June and it was hot.”

When the train stopped at the Auschwitz station, Ban and the others were happy to get out into the fresh air. They lined up two by two.

She stood by her mother who held her little brother while her sister and grandmother were behind them. Ban noticed the line separating at the top.

“We didn’t know why. I can see myself standing there. I did see an SS officer in his shining uniform — he had on white gloves and a horse whip,” she said. “He raised his arm and signaled my mom, my baby brother, little sister and grandmother to his left. He looked at me and sent me to the other side.”

Inside of about five seconds, the officer — Dr. Joseph Mengele — issued a death sentence to her family and a living death to Ban. She can still see her mother turn to her with the baby in her arms and speaking to her with her eyes.

“‘Noémi, take care of yourself. I love you,’ she said. That was the last time I ever saw her.”

The audience at Glacier remained transfixed as Ban shared the horrors of the camp, from having their heads and all body hair shaved to surviving on meals of a slice of bread and coffee and soup from a community bowl.

“Half of the bread was sawdust — it was documented,” she said.

With no running water, they used coffee to wash their faces. Once in a while, guards brought water that they poured in a small basin in front of hundreds of thirsty people who trampled each other to reach it.

Ban remembers the guards mocking them, calling them animals.

“They said ‘They’re worms, killing each other for water,’” Ban recalled.

At that moment, she determined never to fight for the water again and had none for four months, living on the liquid from coffee and soup. Just telling that story, Ban became thirsty and drank from a tall glass on the stage.

“Whenever they ask me what I want to drink, I tell them one glass of water,” she said. “That is the best.”

At the camp, the inmates had nothing to do. She said they had one job — to die. The adults weighed an average of 58 to 62 pounds.

Each day, they lined up to be counted. Many passed out and were carted away alive in trucks, but never returned.

One day, she was very sick and fainted.

“How come I didn’t get on that truck in that terrible place?” she said. “I had some treasure. I had friends — one left, one right and one behind.”

They risked their lives holding her upright so the guards did not notice until she regained consciousness. Ban recalled visiting one after they were liberated.

They ran to each other, hugging, laughing and crying.

“We were celebrating life,” she said. “I learned in that horrible place what a gift it is to be alive.”

Ban survived a transfer to a bomb factory in Buchenwald, Germany, where she and the other workers wired bombs wrong to help the war effort. Ban learned later from a soldier in Bellingham, Wash., that German bombs dropped in the final days of the war but never exploded.

“I hope one of them was mine,” she said, triggering a large laugh from the audience.

After seven months, Ban and the others were ordered on a death march away from the factory. When the SS officers changed to civilian clothes, the prisoners knew the allies were coming so a group of 12 stepped out of line, one at a time, and escaped into the woods.

They hid for a time before being discovered by an American soldier who returned for them the next day.

“I will never forget his face. I will never forget his voice,” she said. “He said ‘You are free.’”

She was reunited with her father in Hungary then married Earnest, a union that lasted 45 years. Ban said she feels victorious because she lived to have two children and numerous grandchildren compared to Hitler, who died.

“People ask me if I have hate in my heart — I say a big no,” she said. “I learned at Auschwitz that hate is wrong. So is bigotry and prejudice. If I have hate in my heart I’m not free. I’m being a prisoner of my own heart.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com .