A Time to Speak

by Helen Lewis

Overview

‘Helen Lewis survived the greatest nightmare ever dreamed by man. Her story is appalling, mesmerising, and one reads with increasing gratitude for her clarity, honesty and courage.’ Ian McEwan

Helen Lewis, a young student of dance in Prague at the outbreak of WW2 was herded, like Madeleine Albright, into the Terezin ghetto, then shipped to Auschwitz, in 1942. Separated from her family, she struggled to survive amidst the carnage of The Final Solution. How she did so, and what she did in order to survive, is a gripping story, told with wit, candour, and controlled anger.

Widely praised by many, including Jennifer Johnston, Michael Longley, and the Guardian, and hailed by the Independent for its ‘elegiac simplicity and lucidity’, A Time to Speak is an elegant memoir of the Holocaust, humbling in its freedom from bitterness, which will leave no reader unmoved.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780856408700
Publisher:	Blackstaff Press, The
Publication date:	11/24/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Helen Lewis was born in 1916 in Trutnov in Czechoslovakia. She completed her grammar school education, then successfully auditioned for a place at Milca Mayerova's School of Dance in Prague. While studying for her diploma, she also began a course in Philosophy at the German University. She married in 1938, and in 1942, together with her husband Paul, she was deported to Terezín, the Jewish ghetto sixty kilometres north of Prague, and then in May 1944 to Auschwitz, where they were separated. After the liberation 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, and settled there with him the same year. After the birth of their two sons, she became involved in dance again, choreographing for theatre and opera. Her teaching eventually led to the foundation of the Belfast Modem Dance Group, which introduced modern contemporary dance to Northern Ireland.

A Time to Speak was published in 1992 and brought her wider recognition as a writer, broadcaster and speaker. She often talked about her experiences to community groups and in schools, a responsibility she took particularly seriously. Her contribution to the life of Northern Ireland was recognized by the award of honorary doctorates by The University of Ulster (1993) and The Queen’s University, Belfast (1996) and by her appointment as MBE in 2000. She died on 31 December 2009.

Read an Excerpt

‘People ask if God protected me. Does that mean He didn’t protect those who died? I’m totally unable to answer that question. It was often a matter of timing: a fortnight later, I would not have been alive.’

It is March 1939. German troops enter Prague and for Czech Jews the terror begins. This is the story of one of the survivors.

Hailed as one of the most important testimonies in recent years, the latest edition of A Time To Speak by Helen Lewis is published with a new foreword by one of Ireland’s greatest poets, Michael Longley.

Originally published in 1992, this international best-seller is a remarkable true story with two acts; a tragic tale of unimaginable horrors experienced by Helen as a young Jewish woman incarcerated in the German concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and a story of survival as Helen went on to carve out an extraordinary career in modern dance in her adopted home city of Belfast.

Helen was awarded an honorary doctorate from The University of Ulster in 1993, and from The Queen’s University Belfast in 1996, in 2001 she was appointed an MBE in recognition of her work. Helen Lewis died on New Year’s Eve 2009, at the age of 93.

An unforgettable book, this true story of courage, fortitude, unbelievable sadness and joy is told without bitterness or anger. It is the timeless testimony, as novelist Jennifer Johnston said, ‘…of a woman who survived the unsurvivable.’

Editorial Reviews

This slender book is another worthy addition to the shelf of Holocaust memoirs. Lewis, a Czech Jewish dancer and choreographer, was living a pleasant life of the arts with her husband, Paul, when the Nazis annexed Czechoslovakia and introduced Germany's anti-Jewish laws. Lewis describes the rapid descent from middle-class comfort as she and her family and friends found themselves barred from most public accomodations, forced to wear the hated yellow star, placed under curfew, stripped of jobs and belongings (even pets), and finally transported to the ghetto of Terezin, a way station to the death camps. From her arrival at Terezin and later at Auschwitz to the end of the war, Lewis struggled with health problems that threatened to speed her to the gas chambers. Her talent as a dancer saved her life, attracting the eye of a brutal female camp commander. Much of what is here is not new, but Lewis's flat, dispassionate prose gives the book's grimmest moments an unholy power. This book is a useful reminder of what can happen if hatred runs unchecked in seemingly civilized societies. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Two women speak out in personal memoirs about their experiences during the Holocaust. Both led secure, assimilated Jewish lives before the war--Lewis in Prague and Bonin in Berlin. The coming of the Nazis shattered the worlds they knew forever. Lewis gives a vivid firsthand account of her life as a young married dancer in Prague. Her bliss ended the day German troops entered Prague (March 15, 1939). Lewis and her husband, Paul, were sent to the ghetto at Theresienstadt (or Terezin) along with the entire Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia. After Terezin came Auschwitz, where she was separated from her husband, who later died. She survived, in an almost surreal way, by using her skills to choreograph Coppelia for the commandant's Christmas party. After the war, Lewis remarried and became involved in dance again. Bonin's father told her for the first time that she and the family were Jewish in 1933, when she was 12. She escaped to Palestine, where she worked on a kibbutz as a pioneer; she went on to fight on the side of the British, based in Alexandria, Egypt. The narrative in this section of the book consists of letters to Bonin from her parents until the outbreak of the war and the diaries that she kept during the years she spent in the British Army, 1942-46. In 1947 she came to America, where she has been an academic. Both books are examples of extraordinary courage and defiance. Recommended for all libraries.-- Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.

Library Journal

Lewis and her husband, Czech Jews, were deported to Terezin, a Jewish ghetto, and then to Auschwitz, where they were separated. After World War II she returned to Prague; her husband did not survive. A professional dancer, Lewis survived because she was able to choreograph "Coppelia" for the camp commandant's Christmas Eve program. Lewis' eyewitness account of Terezin and Auschwitz relates the pain of watching members of her and her husband's families being deported; the horror of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst, and the fears of struggling with the problems of accomplishing daily tasks are disturbing evoked. Lewis' recollections are strikingly vivid and detailed, an incredible testimony of a survivor. A poignant foreword by novelist Jennifer Johnston adds to the book's value.

George Cohen