Nonna Bannister

Nonna Bannister (née Lisowskaja; 22 September 1927 – 15 August 2004) was a Russian-American author and Holocaust survivor. She is best known for her memoir, The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister (2009, Tyndale House: ), a collection of diary entries and memoirs she wrote before, during, and after her time in a World War II German labor camp and kept hidden in a pillow.

Biography Bannister's father was Polish and her mother, Russian and she grew up in the Russian Orthodox faith. Her wealthy family lost everything when World War II broke out. In 1942, Bannister and her mother, Anna, had few options available and so they voluntarily left to work in Germany. She hid the notes in a pillow which she kept strapped to her body during WWII.

Her mother was later taken to a concentration camp where Bannister thought she had died some two years later. Bannister was the only one of 35 relatives to survive. They married in 1951.

Bannister was reluctant to share her past with Henry, but in the 1980s, Henry persuaded her to draw up a family tree for her children. After she died, Henry began typing up her story as a memoir. He asked a neighbor, Carolyn Tomlin, in 2007 to help him with the manuscript.