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.”
Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts
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.”
Humanitarian aid must be allowed into Gaza “at scale” by Israel to avoid a “generation of children that won’t have a chance in life,” the director of the UN’s World Food Programme has told Sky News.
In early March – before Israel resumed its military operations in the Gaza Strip – all aid was blocked from entering the region.
Despite limited aid now being distributed to Gaza through a US and Israeli-backed organisation, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire near one of the sites.
Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), has urged Israel to allow international aid to “get in and get in at scale”.
“We can’t wait for this,” she told The World with Yalda Hakim. “We need safe, unfettered, clear access all the way in and we’re not getting that right now.”
Ms McCain said people in Gaza were “starving, they’re hungry, they’re doing what they can do to feed their families”.
She added: “It’s very, very important that people realise that the only way to stave off malnutrition, catastrophic food insecurity and, of course, famine would be by complete and total access for organisations like mine.”
Ms McCain said the WFP team was “talking every day” to the Israeli government to try to resume aid deliveries.
Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis on Monday. Pic: AP
“We’re not going to give up, we do believe that it’s not only necessary but it’s urgent that we get in and get in at scale,” she said.
“We’re looking at a generation of children that won’t have a chance in life because they haven’t had the proper nutrients.
“Right now, we’re looking at over 500,000 people within Gaza that are catastrophically food insecure.”
Ms McCain added: “I try and put myself in their situation: I’m a mother and grandmother, and I cannot imagine having my children ask me for food and me not being able to give it them.
“I don’t know what that does to a human spirit but I don’t want to see any more of that as a humanitarian aid worker.”
Ms McCain, the widow of the late US presidential candidate John McCain, said she believes in “principled, humanitarian distribution” of aid.
Asked if she thought Hamas was taking aid, she replied: “I have not seen anything like that. I have no way of knowing because I’ve not been there in person.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
How Israel’s aid plan unravelled
Aid distribution centres in Gaza were closed on Wednesday after Palestinians were reportedly killed by Israeli gunfire near one of its sites.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – which is endorsed by Israel – said the centres would be shut “for renovations, organisation, and efficiency improvements”. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) warned nearby roads would be considered “combat zones”.
It came after 27 Palestinians were killed while waiting for aid to be distributed in the Rafah area of southern Gaza on Tuesday, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The IDF said it fired “near a few individual suspects” who left the designated route, approached its forces and ignored warning shots, about half a kilometre from the aid distribution site of the GHF. It denied shooting at civilians at the aid centre.
Read more:
How Gaza’s aid rollout system collapsed into chaos
Israel ‘without doubt’ committed Gaza war crimes, says ex-Biden official
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
That incident came two days after reports that 31 people were killed as they walked to a distribution centre run by the GHF in the Rafah area.
However the IDF said its forces “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site and that reports to this effect are false”.
It’s only been ten days since Donald Trump called Vladimir Putin crazy following a series of Russian attacks on Ukraine.
But now the attacks have been flowing in the opposite direction, it feels like the Russian president has seen an opportunity to win back Washington’s affections.
It involves playing the victim.
Ukraine war latest: Putin wants revenge for airbase attacks, says Trump
The Kremlin, for example, said the leaders’ call was focussed on Ukrainian attacks “on Russian civilians”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Ukraine drone attack: new video analysed
Putin accused Ukraine of relying on ‘terror’. Pic: Reuters
And before it, Putin accused Ukraine’s leadership of being a “terrorist organisation”, in his first comments since the spate of assaults began.
He was referring to Saturday’s bombing of a highway bridge in the Bryansk region, which left seven dead and dozens injured after part of a passenger train was crushed.
No one has claimed responsibility but Russia blames Ukraine.
“The current Kyiv regime does not need peace at all,” said President Putin.
“What is there to talk about? How can we negotiate with those who rely on terror?”
It’s exactly what Ukraine has been saying about Russia for the last three years, but there was no mention of that. The Kremlin is in full-on victim mode.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Will Putin go nuclear?
The aim, I think, is to turn the tables on Ukraine, cast itself as the injured party and make Donald Trump believe that Russia has a right to respond to the drone attack on its long-range bombers.
The tactic may well have worked.
“President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields,” Trump wrote on social media after the call.
Did he try to talk Putin out of responding? We don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like it. If anything, Trump actually announced Russia’s retaliation himself.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Read more:
Underwater explosives strike bridge linking Russia to Crimea
Russia mercenary group ordered London attack, court hears
And even though Putin discussed the drone attack with Trump, he still hasn’t commented on it in public – four days on.
Russia wants to be seen as the victim, but it doesn’t want to look weak, so an embarrassing episode like that is kept out of the headlines.
World
Putin ‘very strongly’ vowed revenge against Ukraine for drone strike on airbases, Donald Trump says
Donald Trump has said Vladimir Putin “very stongly” told him he “will have to respond” to Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russia’s airfields.
More than a hundred Ukrainian drones were deployed inside Russia over the weekend, destroying more than 40 warplanes in an attack Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “will undoubtedly be in history books”.
Posting on Truth Social on Wednesday, the US president said that he discussed the attack with Mr Putin during an hour and 15 minute long phone call.
“It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace,” he wrote after their first call since 19 May.
“President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”
Read our Q&A: Would Putin go nuclear after Ukraine’s daring attacks?
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Will Putin go nuclear?
The Russian president’s foreign affairs adviser added Mr Trump told Mr Putin that the US did not have advance notice of the operation.
Analysis: Putin is playing the victim to get the US back onside
An aide to Mr Putin also told reporters that they vowed to stay in constant contact, with the Russian president telling Mr Trump that recent talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul were useful.
The US president added that he and Mr Putin also discussed “the fact that time is running out on Iran’s decision pertaining to nuclear weapons, which must be made quickly,” before accusing Tehran of “slow-walking their decision”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
New Ukraine drone attack video analysed
Russia ‘giving the finger’ – Zelenskyy
Later, Mr Zelenskyy, in a social media post, called for more pressure on Russia to end the war, saying: “Many have spoken with Russia at various levels.
“But none of these talks have brought a reliable peace, or even stopped the war. Unfortunately, Putin feels impunity.”
The Ukrainian leader added that “with every new strike, with every delay of diplomacy, Russia is giving the finger to the entire world – to all those who still hesitate to increase pressure on it”.
👉Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim on your podcast app👈
It comes after Russia’s foreign minister claimed that Mr Zelenskyy refused a proposal for a pause lasting two to three days to pick up the bodies of dead servicemen.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Earlier this week, the Ukrainian president said the proposal was not “a real ceasefire”.
He added: “I think they’re idiots because a ceasefire is meant to prevent people from being killed.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway