SPOKANE — The Riverpoint Diversity Committee at WSU Spokane will host a free public presentation and book signing by Noémi Ban, an award winning teacher and Holocaust survivor.
On Friday, May 30 she will share her personal story of surviving the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the slave labor camp at Buchenwald and the 1956 Soviet repression of the anticommunist uprising in Hungary.
The lecture is slated from 10:30 a.m. to noon on the Riverpoint Campus in the Academic Center room 20 at 600 North Riverpoint Blvd.
“As a university campus and a home to learning, we strive to model and teach inclusion and acceptance, and to learn from the past to change our future together,” said Diane Wick, director of Human Resources at WSU Spokane.
“The lessons we can learn from hearing what Noémi Ban has lived through should make a lasting impression on everyone who attends this incredible presentation.”
Ban was born in 1922 in Szeged, Hungary. She grew up in Kushkanhalas and moved to Debrecen with her family when she was 18 years old.
On March 19, 1944, the Nazis took control of Hungary, and a ghetto was formed in Debrecen where the Jews were forced to live.
Within weeks of the formation of the ghetto, her father was deported, along with other work-able men, to a slave labor camp.
Two months later, Ban, her mother, sister, six-month-old baby brother and her grandmother were deported to Auschwitz, where they arrived on July 1, 1944. Ban and her father were the only members of her family to survive the war.
She is the winner of the 1997 Golden Apple teaching award, the 2001 recipient of an honorary doctorate from Gonzaga University, the winner of the 2003 Washington Education Association Human and Civil Rights Award in the category of International Peace and Understanding, the 2004 Washington State Holocaust Resource Center’s Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education, and a 2006 inductee in the Northwest Women’s Hall of Fame.
Prior to the presentation, Ban will be available for media interviews from 9:30-10 a.m. at the Academic Center room 24. Following the presentation, she will be signing copies of her book—“Sharing is Healing”—also available for purchase at $14 each.
To RSVP and request special accommodations, please contact Debra Myhre at dmyhre@wsu.edu or 509-358-7740.
For more information about Sharing is Healing visit: www.sharingishealing.com
