Sharing is Healing:  A Holocaust Survivor’s Story by Noemi Ban with Ray Walpow
reviewed by Cathy Belben

            In the first chapter of her story of surviving Auschwitz, Sharing is Healing, author and speaker Noemi Ban recalls perhaps the most pivotal day in her life.  “On March 19, 1944,” she writes, “Hitler’s SS troops took over Hungary.” Her little sister ran home from school crying, she recalls, and asked if the family would be killed.    In the days and months that followed, Ban writes, her family’s home became part of the ghetto, they were forced to sew yellow stars to their clothing, her father was taken away for “work service,” and eventually, she, her siblings, her mother, and her grandmother were transported to Auschwitz in cattle cars, were they joined a long line that divided with the flick of a Nazi soldier’s whip.  “[He] signaled my grandma, my mother, my sister, and my little brother to his left… It took not a few seconds and I was separated from my dear ones… I never saw them again.”

            Noemi Ban, who was born in Szeged, Hungary, in 1922, emigrated to the U.S. in 1957, and now resides in Bellingham, has spent years visiting schools and churches to share the story of her internment and escape from the concentration camp during World War II.  Ban has now recorded her memories and message in Sharing is Healing: A Holocaust Survivor’s Story.  Written at approximately fifth grade level, Ban’s intention and hope is that her book will be understandable to a wide range of readers.  “Noemi wrote this book thinking of the many students she has taught,” explain co-author Ray Walpow in the introduction.  “Some of them were good readers. Others were learning how to read better. Noemi wanted to make sure than all students could read it.”

            Simple language, reader-friendly subtitles, and helpful footnotes that define or explain unfamiliar terms make Sharing is Healing highly accessible, but no less powerful.  Ban’s horrific loss—her mother, grandmother, siblings, and many friends were killed in concentration camps—will move readers of all ages.  Her story unfolds simply and steadily, from the initial Nazi invasion of her hometown to her final, triumphant escape from a death march.  The spare language makes the horror Ban witnessed and experienced even more shocking. “[There] were mountains of human hair,” Ban writes of her first day, when she and others were forced to have their heads shaved. “There was one mountain of brown hair, another of black hair, and yet another of red hair. The hair was piled up two times as tall as I was.” This segment, along with many others in the book, is illustrated with a picture drawn by a school child who heard Noemi speak.

Throughout her book, Ban refrains from resorting to hate or anger, emphasizing instead the need to share her story and educate others about the terrible consequences of unchecked prejudice.  “Sometimes I am asked if I hate the Nazis for what they did to my dear ones. No, I do not hate anyone. I feel pain. But I do not feel hate. When you hate someone you become a prisoner.” Ban continues to tell her story—as a speaker, and now, in her book—because she believes that sharing truly is healing.   “When I tell my story,” she says, “I look into the eyes of the people who are listening to me. I see respect, sympathy, and love.  Seeing this is healing. The pain is still there. But each time I see the respect, sympathy, and love in their eyes, the pain gets less and less.”

            Regardless of how much readers think they already know about the Holocaust, reading and sharing Noemi Ban’s story will remind them yet again, of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime, of the importance of remembering what happened in the concentration camp, and in the necessity of using those memories, and the stories of survivors like Noemi, to assure that it never happens again.