Survivor warns against war's destructive nature on Holocaust Memorial Day

Hannah Lewis and her father Adam were the only members of her family to survive the genocide of the Second World War.

Now 86, Mrs Lewis has warned future generations to stay vigilant because “human nature is the same”.

Mrs Lewis, who grew up in Poland, was rounded up with her family and forcibly marched to a labour camp in 1943.

Towards the end of the war, her mother was lined up with other people and shot dead by German police.

Speaking at her home in north London ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Saturday, she said humans have a self-destructive nature.

“By the end of the war, only my father and I survived, everyone else had been murdered,” she said.

Asked about the importance of remembering the Holocaust today, she told the PA news agency: “Look what’s happening in the world. We don’t learn.”

“Climates may change, places may change, but human nature is the same.”

“We’re sort of self-destructive almost.”

Mrs Lewis was born in the small market town of Wlodawa, and was the only child of Adam and Haya.

She had a happy and uneventful childhood until war broke out and the Nazis occupied Poland.

In 1943, Mrs Lewis and her family were forcibly marched to a labour camp in a village called Adampol a few miles away.

She recalled: “My father was very, very concerned, because my grandfather was quite fragile, and he heard that when there were these marches, if you stumbled, if you fell, they had absolutely no compunction taking out a revolver and shooting you.”

“He was determined that his father was going to be wherever we were safely.”

“He ran around like a lunatic, and all he could find was a wheelbarrow. He and his cousins and everybody took it in turns to wheel my grandfather.”

Over time, most of her family disappeared. Her father and his cousin managed to escape to join partisans, leaving only Mrs Lewis and her mother in the camp.

She worked at Adampol alongside her cousin Szlomo and her mother, who were given jobs at the home of a village elder who owned the camp’s land.

She recalled the tragic day Szlomo was taken away by the Germans.

She said: “Szlomo was deaf and mute and I absolutely adored him. We did everything together as far as we could.”

“This particular time, I could hear them on horseback and I could hear the cars as well.”

“I got hold of his hand and squeezed it so he knew he had to follow me and we ran to the nearest barn.”

“I pulled his hand and started going into the hay, but he let go of my hand.”

“I couldn’t call him because he couldn’t hear, and the Germans were outside.”

“The door was flung open, they walked in, and they saw him there.”

“My last sight of my lovely cousin was him being held by the scruff of his neck, his feet kicking, and he couldn’t even have the voice to scream.”

“I think that’s when the war actually came to me.”

During the last winter of the occupation, Mrs Lewis fell ill with suspected typhoid, and when her father came to warn them of planned German action the next day, her mother refused to leave knowing her daughter would not have survived the journey.

The next morning the German police arrived and her mother – with other people – was taken and lined up by the village well, where she was shot.

Mrs Lewis recalled: “She didn’t look at me at all, so I decided I would go and hold her hand, the way I’ve done lots of times.”

“Before I could do it, someone yelled a command.”

“They started to shoot, and I saw her fall. I saw the blood on the snow, and that’s when I grew up.

“I knew why she wasn’t looking at me, and I knew that I mustn’t make a sound.”

Mrs Lewis remained in the camp and survived as best she could until being liberated by a Soviet soldier who picked her out of a trench dirty and very hungry.

After the war, her father found her, and in 1949 she was brought to live with her great aunt and uncle in London while her father eventually left Poland to go to Israel.

Describing the moment she was reunited with her father, she said: “Suddenly, out of nowhere, there was my father, skinny, slightly dirty, but my father, and when he saw me, he put me in his arms and he started to cry.

“He couldn’t believe that I was still alive.”

Mrs Lewis now lives in London having married in 1961 and had four children and eight grandchildren.

She has been sharing her experiences in schools and universities through the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Outreach Programme for several years so that young people can seek to understand the impact the Holocaust has had on the contemporary world.

She continued: “People say to me ‘do you tell us this because you hate the Germans so much?’”

“I say ‘no, I’m telling you this because I like you so much and I want you to be vigilant’.”

“We shouldn’t be horrible to each other. We shouldn’t want to kill each other.”

“There’s plenty of room for everything and everybody.”

“I think understanding is very important. And I think we need to be kinder to each other.”

“There are no winners in war. There’s the damaged and the less damaged, but there’s no winners.”