NAOMI BON

Naomi Bon spoke of the many German people who were against Hitler and what he stood for, and their inability to stop the progress of the Nazi party.  She recalled Jews having to wear a yellow star on everything they wore to set them apart, then being herded into ghettos  where they could be more easily supervised.  Persecution grew in earnest.  Eight more families were moved into the house she shared with her family.  All able bodied Jewish men up to the age of fifty-five were forced into labor camps to support Germany's war machine. 

She and the other women of her family, including a baby sister and an aged grandmother, were ordered to railroad cars and were permitted only one change of underwear and no valuables at all.  They were given numbers and eighty-five of them were shoved into a cattle car with only a bucket to serve as a toilet for all of them. 

"We didn't know what was happening," she explained. 

When they finally reached their destination she was separated from her family by the wave of a stick in the hand of a German officer.  She never saw any of them again, but learned later they had been sorted out to go to the gas chamber, or killing factory.  Her female family members were considered too old, too young, or too weak to work for the Third Reich.

After a long time in a crowded flea-infested prison camp, Naomi eventually was forced to work in an explosives plant, a life or death experience every day.  She and other Jewish women agreed to put their lives on the line by deliberately building bombs that would not explode.  Their lives were preserved by a woman who worked in the Nazis' kitchen.  She would put edible food out in the kitchen garbage cans so Naomi and her friends could sneak out at night and retrieve those life-sustaining leftovers.  Years later Naomi found that very woman and was able to thank her for her kindness to a few starving Jews.

She lived to be liberated by the Allies in the spring of 1945 only to eventually be imprisoned by the Russian forces.  Finally free, she immigrated to the United States where she and her husband raised a family.

Naomi Bon now spends her time touring all over America, going to schools wherever they will make time and room for her to speak to deliver her message.  That message is: yes, it really happened.  She believes her life remains proof that America was morally obligated to join the battle against Hitler and the world domination he planned at the expense of innocent lives.