Hannah Lewis was just six when she watched her mother being shot dead. She is giving a talk at the University of Sussex next week

I DON’T think of myself as a victim. I’m a winner. I’m still here” says Holocaust survivor Hannah Lewis who will be telling her amazing story at the University of Sussex next week.

Hannah was just six years old as she watched her mother being shot by Nazi soldiers at a labour camp in war-torn Poland.

“I’ll never forget the sight of my mother’s blood in the snow,” she says.

The sprightly 82-year-old will be telling her astonishing story of courage and survival as part of the university’s Holocaust Memorial Day on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 5, at the its annual Holocaust commemoration event which is open to the public.

Murdered

Hannah grew up in Wlodowa, a small town near the Polish/Ukrainian border.

In 1942 Nazi soldiers arrived and began rounding up the Jewish families.

Hannah and her family narrowly escaped being sent straight to the Sobibor death camp.

It is where an estimated 200,000 Jews were murdered.

Instead, thanks to the intervention of a local farmer, Hannah and her family were sent to Adampol labour camp where they were set to work.

But after a year at the camp an SS death squad turned up.

Her father had earlier escaped and joined local partisan fighters.

The night before her mother was murdered he secretly returned to the camp to warn her mother that the death squads would be coming the next day looking for Jews.

But her mother refused to leave because her child was ill and her mother didn’t think Hannah would survive life in the forest.

“When the knock at the door came, she got up and she gave me a big kiss.

“Very unhurried, she walked to the door, opened it and closed it behind her,” she

recalls.

Hannah believes she was only saved because her mother didn’t look back as she walked out.

Therefore she didn’t arouse any suspicions that there was anyone else there.

Hannah watched from a window as her mother was shot and fell.

“I saw the blood on the snow,” she remembers.

In 1945, after the Nazis were forced to retreat from Poland, eight-year-old Hannah, starving and covered in dirt, was found by a Soviet soldier.

Somehow she had managed to survive.

She was reunited with her father and although she gained permission to come to England in 1949 her father was refused.

Not speaking any English and alone, her first impressions were not good.

“It seemed to rain all the time and I missed my home,” she says.

But gradually, by listening to the BBC radio, she taught herself English.

She made a life for herself in London, married in 1961 and had four children and eight grandchildren.

Educational

She was awarded an MBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours list for her work with the Holocaust Educational Trust.

Hannah only started talking in public about her wartime experiences ten years ago.

“I thought I was very lucky,” she says.

“I really didn’t think I had a story to tell.

“But now when I hear people deny that the Holocaust ever happened, I think it is very important that people like me speak out and tell the truth, that we tell our stories.”

Hannah will not be the only speaker at the university event.

Professor Ruth Wodak will be speaking about “voices from the past and present” and film-maker Katya Krausova will be showing her new documentary about the wartime fate of the Jews in Slovakia.

The event will be taking place at 2pm on Wednesday, February 5.

Admission is free but registration is required.

To do so visit https://alumni.sussex.ac.uk/hmd-booking