Holocaust Memorial Day: Survivor describes horror of watching Nazi death squad kill her mother
Hannah Lewis was just seven years old when she watched a Nazi death squad execute her mother.
Her family was rounded up by Adolf Hitler’s forces and forced to march to a labour camp in the Polish village of Adampol in 1943.
Hannah’s father Adam escaped the camp to join the partisans – a Jewish resistance movement during the Second World War – and returned to warn of an imminent Nazi raid, the night before his wife’s death.
Hannah’s mother Haya refused to flee, fearing her daughter – who had fallen ill with a high temperature and suspected typhoid – would not survive.
“For as long as I live, I will always wonder how she got through that night,” Hannah tells Sky’s Sophy Ridge.
“How she made the decision she made? Was it right?”
The next morning, Hannah heard “yelling” and “screaming” following the arrival of the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazis’ mobile killing unit responsible for the mass shooting of Jews.
“Suddenly there was a whack on the door and my mother – with great dignity – got on her knees, took me in her arms, and gave me a hug and a kiss,” Hannah says.
“She didn’t run, she didn’t make a sound. She walked to the door, opened the door and closed it firmly behind her.
“I waited for her to come back… but she didn’t come back.”
Hannah Lewis’s mother Haya (pictured) was shot dead in front of her
‘Blood on the snow’
Hannah, an only child, went to look for her mother and watched as Haya and others were “shoved” in front of a well in the village.
She remembers her mother appeared calm but wouldn’t give eye contact to her.
“I decided that I would go down and take her hand, the way I always did,” says Hannah, fighting back tears.
“As I was about to go in bare feet, somebody shouted an order and they started to shoot.
“I saw her fall… and I saw the blood on the snow.”
As well as her mother, Hannah’s grandfather, her uncle and her younger cousin Shlomo were also murdered at Adampol.
Now aged 85 and living in north London, Hannah is sharing her experience to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, the anniversary of the liberation of Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust. In her family, only Hannah and her father survived.
Hannah pictured before she was forcibly marched to a labour camp
‘I never forgave myself for losing my cousin’
Hannah described her cousin Shlomo – who was deaf and unable to speak – as “the brother I never had” and “the one person that I absolutely adored”.
She recalls being outside at the camp with the little boy, who was aged about three, when she heard the sound of Nazi vehicles pulling up.
“He couldn’t hear and he couldn’t speak so I took his hand,” Hannah says. “I pulled it so he knew he had to come and we ran in to the nearest barn.”
Hannah says she dived into a mound of straw where she and Shlomo would often hide but she realised he wasn’t there.
She was about to leave her hiding place to find him when she saw her cousin standing by the barn door.
“The door swung open and (the Nazis) saw him and they picked him up literally by the scruff of his neck,” she says.
“My last sight of my lovely cousin was his back… and his legs kicking. I never saw him again.
“When I lost Shlomo I never forgave myself.”
Hannah pictured with her cousin Shlomo
Going into hiding
Hannah’s family had been living in the small market town of Włodawa in Poland when the Nazis invaded.
“Suddenly there was a curfew,” she says. “And suddenly my grandfather couldn’t trade. And suddenly you had to wear a mark.
“I remember my father, before it got really bad, putting me in a sled and taking me to a photographer.
“I’m standing there trying to smile and I’ve got tears in my eyes because I know that something horrible is happening and it’s not right.
“I was probably six.”
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The family initially went into hiding, staying in a barn which required a “special knock” to gain entry.
“There were two or three other families there and when they saw me, they were not best pleased,” Hannah says.
“They did not want to hide with children.”
After one night there, Hannah says “suddenly the barn door flew open” and “everybody froze”.
She recalls seeing “the tip of very shiny boots” and the peaked hats of Nazi soldiers as they “poked around”.
“We sat there like statues,” Hannah says.
Hannah Lewis spoke to Sky News about her experience during the Holocaust
‘Luck ran out’
While the family narrowly avoided being found that time, Hannah says eventually their “luck run out” and they were given an hour to pack up their belongings.
Aged just six, Hannah says she walked for nearly five hours to the labour camp at Adampol.
“If you tripped, or if you fell, no one helped hold you up,” she says.
“I remember them just shooting somebody.”
After arriving at the camp, there was no electricity or running water and the security measures included barbed wire fencing and a watchtower.
Then just a little girl, Hannah tried to cope with the trauma of witnessing her mother’s death, and initially refused to believe she had been killed.
Instead, she convinced herself that Haya was injured and pretending to be dead to save herself.
It was only after being liberated by a Soviet soldier, and reunited with her father – who had also witnessed his wife’s murder – that the reality dawned on Hannah.
“He got hold of me, he laughed, he cried, he cuddled me,” she says of her father.
“I said: ‘Where’s mama?’ He said: ‘Mama’s not coming back. Mama died. You saw it.’
“I remember him shaking me because apparently for a couple of hours I didn’t utter one sound.”
Hannah pictured with her father Adam
‘Children ask: Do you hate the Germans?’
After the war, Hannah and her father lived in the Polish city of Lodz and she admits she became “jealous” of other children who had both parents.
She moved to Britain in 1949 to live with her great aunt and uncle, while her father left Poland for Israel in 1953.
She married in 1961 and has four children and eight grandchildren, and now shares her experience of the Holocaust in schools and universities.
“Every now and again the kids say: ‘Do you tell your story because you hate the Germans?’,” she says.
“I say no, I tell my story because I care for you.
“Beware of people who promise you the world and actually don’t.”
Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has met Vladimir Putin for talks in Russia – as the US president called on Moscow to “get moving” with ending the war in Ukraine.
Mr Witkoff, who has been pressing the Kremlin to accept a truce, visited Mr Putin in St Petersburg after earlier meeting the Russian leader’s international co-operation envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
Mr Putin was shown on state TV greeting Mr Witkoff at the city’s presidential library at the start of the latest discussions about the search for a peace deal on Ukraine.
Before Friday’s meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov played down expectations of a breakthrough and told state media the visit would not be “momentous”.
Follow the latest updates on the war in Ukraine
However, Sky News Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett said he believes the meeting – Mr Witkoff’s third with Mr Putin this year – is significant as a sign of the Trump administration’s “increasing frustration at the lack of progress on peace talks”.
Earlier on Friday, Mr Trump issued his latest social media statement on trying to end the war, writing on Truth Social: “Russia has to get moving. Too many people ere [sic] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war – A war that should have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if I were President!!!”
Dialogue between the US and Russia, aimed at agreeing a ceasefire ahead of a possible peace deal to end the war, has recently appeared to have stalled over disagreements around conditions for a full pause.
Mr Trump, pictured at a cabinet meeting at the White House earlier this week, has called for Russia to ‘get moving’. Pic: AP
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Secondary sanctions could be imposed on countries that buy Russian oil, Mr Trump has said, if he feels Moscow is dragging its feet on a deal.
Mr Putin has said he is ready in principle to agree a full ceasefire, but argues crucial conditions have yet to be agreed – and that what he calls the root causes of the war have yet to be addressed.
The Russian president wants to dismantle Ukraine as an independent, functioning state and has demanded Kyiv recognise Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and other partly occupied areas, and pull its forces out, as well as a pledge for Ukraine to never join NATO and for the size of its army to be limited.
Zelenskyy renews support calls after attack on home city
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Children killed in strike on Zelenskyy’s home town
Meanwhile, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has renewed his appeals for more Patriot air defence systems after the deaths of 20 people, including nine children, who were killed when a Russian missile hit apartment buildings and a playground in his home city of Kryvyi Rih last week.
Speaking online at a meeting of the so-called Ramstein group of about 50 nations that provide military support to Ukraine, named after a previous meeting at America’s Ramstein air base in Germany in 2022, Mr Zelenskyy said recent Russian attacks showed Moscow was not ready to accept and implement any realistic and effective peace proposals.
Mr Zelenskyy also made his evening address to the nation, saying: “Ukraine is not just asking – we are ready to buy appropriate additional systems.”
The UK’s defence secretary, John Healy, has said this is “the critical year” for Ukraine – and has confirmed £450m in funding for a military support package.
A family of five Spanish tourists, including three children, have been killed in a helicopter crash in New York City.
A New York City Hall spokesman identified two of those killed as Agustin Escobar, a Siemens executive, and Merce Camprubi Montal – believed to be his wife, NBC News reported.
The pilot was also killed as the aircraft crashed into the Hudson River at around 3.17pm on Thursday.
New York Police commissioner Jessica Tisch said divers had recovered all those on board from the helicopter, which was upside down in the water.
“Four victims were pronounced dead on scene and two more were removed to local area hospitals, where sadly both succumbed to their injuries,” she said.
The helicopter was submerged upside down in the Hudson. Pic: Reuters
A crane lifted out the wreckage on Thursday evening. Pic: AP
The Spanish president Pedro Sanchez called the news “devastating”.
“An unimaginable tragedy. I share the grief of the victims’ loved ones at this heartbreaking time,” he wrote on X.
Rotor blade ‘flew off’
The aircraft was on a tourist flight of Manhattan, run by the New York Helicopters company.
Witnesses described seeing the main rotor blade flying off moments before it dropped out the sky.
Agustin Escobar and Merce Camprubi Montal.
Pic: Facebook
Lesly Camacho, a worker at a restaurant along the river in Hoboken, said she saw the helicopter spinning uncontrollably before it slammed into the water.
“There was a bunch of smoke coming out. It was spinning pretty fast, and it landed in the water really hard,” she said.
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Witness saw ‘parts flying off’ helicopter
Another witness said “the chopper blade flew off”.
“I don’t know what happened to the tail, but it just straight up dropped,” Avi Rakesh told Sky’s US partner, NBC News.
Video on social media showed parts of the Bell 206 helicopter tumbling through the air and landing in the river.
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New York mayor confirms six dead
The crash happened near Pier 40. Pic: AP
New York Mayor Eric Adams confirmed the six deaths and said authorities believed the tourists were from Spain.
He said the flight had taken off from a downtown heliport at around 3pm.
Pic: Cover Images/AP
The crash happened close to Pier 40 and the Holland tunnel, which links lower Manhattan’s Tribeca neighbourhood with Jersey City to its west.
Tracking service Flight Radar 24 published what it said was the helicopter’s route, with the aircraft appearing to be in the sky for 15 minutes before the crash.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have started an investigation.
Agustin Escobar.
Pic: Europa Press/AP
Thursday’s incident comes less than three month after 67 people died when an army helicopter and American Airlines jet collided over the Potomac River in Washington DC.
A former ballerina who spent more than a year in a Russian jail for donating £40 to a charity supporting Ukraine has returned home to the US after being freed in a prisoner exchange.
Ksenia Karelina landed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland at around 11pm, local time, on Thursday.
A smiling Ms Karelina was greeted on the runway by her fiance, the professional boxer Chris van Heerden, and given flowers by Morgan Ortagus, President Donald Trump’s deputy special envoy to the Middle East.
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Ksenia Karelina arrives at Joint Base Andrews. Pic: AP
Van Heerden said in a statement he was “overjoyed to hear that the love of my life, Ksenia Karelina, is on her way home from wrongful detention in Russia.
“She has endured a nightmare for 15 months and I cannot wait to hold her. Our dog, Boots, is also eagerly awaiting her return.”
He thanked Mr Trump and his envoys, as well as prominent public figures who had championed her case, including Dana White, a friend of Mr Trump and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
Ms Karelina, 34, a US-Russian citizen also identified as Ksenia Khavana, was accused of treason when she was arrested in Yekaterinburg, in southwestern Russia, while visiting family in February last year.
Investigators searched her mobile phone and found she made a $51.80 (£40) donation to Razom, a charity that provides aid to Ukraine, on the first day of Russia’s invasion in 2022.
She admitted the charge at a closed trial in the city in August last year and was later jailed for 12 years, to be served in a penal colony.
At a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Mr Trump, who wants to normalise relations with Moscow, said the Kremlin “released the young ballerina and she is now out, and that was good. So we appreciate that”.
Ksenia Karelina is hugged by her boyfriend, Chris van Heerden. Pic: Reuters
He said the release followed conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian security services accused her of “proactively” collecting money for a Ukrainian organisation that was supplying gear to Kyiv’s forces.
The First Department, a Russian rights group, said the charges stemmed from a $51.80 donation to a US charity aiding Ukraine.
Washington, which had called her case “absolutely ludicrous”, released Arthur Petrov, who it was holding on charges of smuggling sensitive microelectronics to Russia, in the prisoner swap in Abu Dhabi.
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Karelina was among a growing number of Americans arrested in Russia in recent years as tensions between Moscow and Washington spiked over the war in Ukraine.
Her release is the latest in a series of high-profile prisoner exchanges Russia and the US carried out in the last three years – and the second since Mr Trump took office.
White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said members of the Trump administration “continue to work around the clock to ensure Americans detained abroad are returned home to their families”.
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