By Nicole Ciridon, Special to JTNews
Jim Lortz first met Holocaust survivor Noémi Ban when he invited her to speak to his summer stock cast, which was preparing to do a production of The Diary of Anne Frank.
Lortz, 53, an associate professor of theater arts at Western Washington University, was intrigued by Ban’s story of being in the infamous Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, where she lost 22 family members.
He began to set the stage for his first film, which he titled My Name is Noémi.
“I had applied for a sabbatical, and I wanted to do something that was a little bit more important about somebody,” Lortz said. “After talking to Noémi I set out to make the film, first as a record of their family and as a record of their great grandma.”
Ban, a Bellingham resident, clearly remembers the day when she got the phone call from Lortz asking if she would agree to his making a documentary about her life.
“I said yes, and he came and met my son,” the former teacher said. “That’s how we got started.”
Prior to filming, Lortz spent time with Ban, listening to her recount her life inside the Nazi camp and afterward, including her escape — she hid in large balls of yarn — from Communist Hungary in 1956.
“He was very easy to talk to, and I opened up to him,” Ban said. “It was so easy to tell what happened and how it happened because he wasn’t pushing, he let me be. He was a good listener and this encouraged me to say more and more. People trust him and I trust him too. He is a master of whatever he does.”
The film chronicles two trips the duo made to Debrecen, Hungary, the city she called home, and Birkenau, where Ban was a prisoner from July through October of 1944. During the first trip, accompanied by 32 Washington State teachers and her son Steven, Ban led Lortz to the ruins of Gas Chamber 5, the place where her grandmother, mother, sister, baby brother and other relatives died.
Their second trip, in May of 2007, focused on Ban taking her other son George to see the camps for the first time.
“We visited her father’s grave and other graves,” Lortz said.
Ban’s father had been sent to a forced-labor camp and survived the war.
“Our return trip allowed us to visit the International Tracing Service [located in Bad Arolsen, Germany] which houses all the records of all the prisoners,” Lortz said. “The film shows the card she signed.”
Visiting Birkenau, which he describes as being as large as 500 football fields, and the Buchenwald sub-camp, Münchmühle, was a huge eye-opener for Lortz.
“I had rudimentary knowledge, but I was really interested in it,” he said. “Once you start studying you realize you have more to learn.”
Ultimately, Lortz was able to edit down “100 hours worth of stuff” into a manageable one-hour, 52-minute film, which debuted at WWU’s Performing Arts Center main stage on Jan. 20.
“We just wanted to premiere the film on campus since I work here,” he said.
Shot using a $500 digital video camera and edited by Lortz, the production cost $5,000 to make. His experience, however, more than paid for the cost of the film.
“I’m humbled and perplexed that [the Holocaust] was allowed to happen,” Lortz said. “It still overwhelms me.”
When asked if he would ever go back to Hungary and Germany, Lortz replied, “Yes, in a heartbeat.”
In reflection, Ban offers praise for a man who became her good friend.
“I see him like a son,” she said. “He is not only talented as a director and professor, but he is a good man who understood the sorrow I had. He even said that he still can’t really imagine that people built something for the reason to kill people. He learned a lot and he appreciated what he learned, and he made a very wonderful film out of it.”
Lortz’s work has touched many people — Ban said it has changed her own outlook on life.
“I was close to the bay and saw three eagles flying,” the 86-year-old said. “That’s beautiful and great and it’s important to notice that. Don’t bury yourself in your problems all the time. Appreciate life and the longer you will be healthy and the longer you can go and teach people how important life is.”
Ban takes these messages everywhere she goes. On Feb. 25 she was sponsored by the Northwest Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Ethnocide Education to speak at WWU about her Holocaust experience and the lessons she has learned.
“He introduced me to myself, because as a teacher and as a survivor, whatever I did I didn’t have a mirror to look into,” Ban said of Lortz. “I was able to see myself and how I was reacting to certain things. I was very lucky to have Jim Lortz willing to do that.”
Nicole Ciridon is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.