Helen Lewis (4) (1916–2009)

Helen Lewis was born Helena Katz to a German-speaking Jewish family in Trutnov, Czech Bohemia. She graduated from Charles University in Prague and studied dance with Milča Mayerová. She was teaching and working as a dancer and choreographer, living a pleasant life of the arts with her husband Paul Hermann, when Nazi Germany annexed her country in the prelude to World War II. The terror began when the Nazis arrived Prague in March 1939. Helen and her family and friends fell rapidly from their middle-class existence and found themselves barred from most public accommodations, forced to wear the yellow star, placed under curfew, stripped of jobs and belongings, and finally transported to the ghetto at Terezín (Theresienstadt). From there, they were deported to Auschwitz in 1942. Separated from her husband, Helen struggled with health problems that threatened to speed her to the gas chambers. Paul died in Schwarzheide concentration camp, her mother in the Sobibór extermination camp. Helen was in three different camps during the war. On one occasion, she survived in an almost surreal way by using her skills to choreograph a ballet for a brutal commandant's Christmas party. After the war, Harry Lewis, a former beau of Helen's from her teenage years in Czechoslovakia, saw her name on a survivors list issued by the Red Cross. He tracked her down and they married and moved to Belfast. The couple had two children. Helen worked again as a dancer/choreographer and helped introduce modern dance to Northern Ireland. In 1992, encouraged by family and friends, she published her memoir A Time To Speak. It was reprinted posthumously in 2010, and her life and artistry inspired both stage plays and art projects.