Contact:  Jim Lortz, WWU associate professor of Theatre Arts, at james.lortz@wwu.edu.

BELLINGHAM - "My Name is Noémi," a film biography of Holocaust survivor Noémi Ban by Western Washington University Associate Professor Jim Lortz, will have its debut screening at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 20, at WWU's Performing Arts Center Mainstage.

A young Noémi Schönberger, second from left, poses for a family portrait with her mother, father and younger sister. Her mother, sister, infant brother, and 18 other members of her family perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during World War II.

photo courtesy Ray Wolpow

Begun by Lortz almost three years ago as a sabbatical project, "My Name is Noémi" tells the story of 86-year-old Noémi Schönberger, who was taken, along with her mother, grandmother, younger sister, and baby brother Gabor, who was only six months old at the time, from her home in Debrecen, Hungary, to the infamous Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. Her mother, grandmother, sister, baby brother and 18 other members of her immediate family never left the camps. Samu, her father, was sent to a forced-labor camp, but survived the war; he would later change his last name to Gabor in honor of his infant son.

"She's an amazing person with a remarkable story that needed to be told," said Lortz. "I first met Noémi when she came to talk to one of my Summer Stock casts that was preparing to do ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,' and it didn't take me long to know that I wanted to help tell that story somehow."

More than 100 hours of video were shot in the making of "My Name is Noémi," with the final project coming in at just under two hours in length. Lortz said the decisions to cut footage were often very tough to make, especially with some of the video shot during two trips back to Auschwitz with Ban.

Noémi Ban, inside the gates at Auschwitz II.

photo courtesy Ray Wolpow

"It was overwhelming at times to be there, with her, to know the horrible truth about what that place was built for and designed to do," he said. "Filming her saying Kaddish (a Jewish ritual of mourning) on the grounds of Birkenau was an incredibly powerful moment."

"In the end, if nothing else, I want this movie to be a legacy for her family. After she saw it for the first time, she looked at me and said, ‘I feel like you have introduced me to myself,' which was fabulous, because I know the film rings true to her," said Lortz.

This event is sponsored, in part, by Western's Northwest Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Ethnocide Education (http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/NWCHE/). 

Tickets for the screening of "My Name is Noémi" are $2 for seniors and students, and $3 for general admission; the PAC box office can be reached at (360) 650-6146.

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