A Belfast-based author and choreographer who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp recounts her harrowing story and has been remembered as remarkable, inspirational and brave. Helen Lewis, the Czech-born mother-of-two spent three months in the Nazi concentration camp and survived two so-called selections by the notorious Angel of Death‚ Dr Josef Mengele.
During one such selection Mrs Lewis, whose first husband Paul was killed in the camp, cheated death by stepping out of a line heading for Mengele’s table into a line coming back for their clothes. When Auschwitz was liberated in 1942 Helen, who was seriously ill with typhoid, was saved by her very own Schindler‚ a Russian major who provided safe passage in the form of a scribbled note which acted as a passport that got her to her native Prague.
In 1947 she moved to Northern Ireland and married an old friend Harry Lewis, who had made contact after reading her name on the Red Cross survivors‚ list. Helen died on New Year’s Eve at the age of 93.
Filmed in 2000 by MediaAble Productions.
