A Time to Speak. This item is unavailable.A Time to Speak

15 March 1939: German troops enter Prague and for Czechoslovakian Jews the terror begins. This is the incredible story of one survivor of the Holocaust.

HELEN LEWIS MBE was born in Trutnov, Czechoslovakia. As a young woman she moved to Prague to train as a dancer at Milca Mayerova s School of Dance. She married in 1938, and continued to live in Prague with her husband, Paul. They were only able to enjoy a few months of carefree marriage before the Nazis entred Prague. From 1939 onwards she was the victim of anti-semitism and anti-Jewish laws. In 1942, together with her husband, she was deported to Terezin, the Jewish ghetto, and then to Auschwitz in May 1944, where they were separated, never to see each other again. After the liberation in March 1945 she returned to Prague to learn that her husband had not survived. In 1947 she married Harry Lewis, an old friend who had escaped to Belfast just before the start of the war. The same year Helen settled with him in Belfast. After the birth of their two sons, she became involved in dance again, choreographing for theatre and opera, and her teaching eventually led to the foundation of the Belfast Modern Dance Group. Helen Lewis died on New Years Eve 2009, aged 93.