Background
Ban was born Schönberger Noémi (sometimes rendered Schoenberger) to Schönberger Samu and Schönberger Juliska in Szeged, Hungary.
Ban was born Schönberger Noémi (sometimes rendered Schoenberger) to Schönberger Samu and Schönberger Juliska in Szeged, Hungary.
Today she is a Golden Apple Award-winning lecturer, public speaker, and teacher residing in Whatcom County, Washington. All of Ban"s family members in Auschwitz were killed, but Ban herself was transferred by Doctor Josef Mengele to the Buchenwald concentration camp to work in a bomb factory, where she intentionally constructed faulty bombs. On April 15, 1945, the campmates of Buchenwald were forced to march to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
On the way, Ban and eleven of her campmates escaped and were discovered by the United States. Army, who had just liberated the Bergen-Belsen camp.
After the Communist occupation and takeover of Hungary between 1947 and 1948, Ban became a 7th and 8th grade teacher herself. On December 29, 1956, less than a month later, the Bans again tried to cross, this time hidden in a shipment of giant balls of yarn.
The attempt succeeded and they ended up in Sopron, Austria. In 1957, Noémi and her family moved to Saint Louis, Missouri.
She and Earnest learned English and earned degrees in education.
Their son Steven moved to Bellingham, Washington, prompting Noémi and Earnest to move in 1982. In 1994, Earnest died of Alzheimer"s disease. After Earnest"s death, Ban became a public Holocaust speaker, giving lectures nationally and internationally (in Hungary and Taipei, Taiwan).
In 2003 she wrote Sharing Is Healing: A Holocaust Survivor"s Story, an autobiography of her experiences during the Holocaust and as a public speaker.
In 2007 her life was made into the documentary film My Name Is Noémi.