Time to Speak

Praised by Ian McEwan, Michael Longley, the Guardian and many others, A Time to Speak tells the story of Helen Lewis, shipped from Prague to Auschwitz at the start of WW2 as part of the Final Solution, and her struggle to survive the Holocaust.

'What singles this book out from other first-hand accounts of the Holocaust is Lewis's ability to see humanity where, in all fairness, she had no right to see it ... she refuses to dehumanise the very people who were trying to dehumanise her - a rare achievement for someone in her position.' Guardian 'To bear witness as she does - in wonderfully graceful language - to the very nadir of human experience is an heroic act ... a wonderful book.' Irish Press 'It is a story of almost unbelievable suffering, but it is told in such a way as to leave the reader almost exhilarated ... remarkable for its elegiac simplicity and lucidity, its irresistible momentum, its formidable integrity and its impressive lack of self-pity or rancour. It is short, approachable, gripping and patently honest ... everybody should read it.' Independent

Helen Lewis MBE, was born in Trutnov, Czechoslovakia. As a young woman she moved to Prague to train as a dancer at Milca Mayerova's School of Dance. She married in 1938, and continued to live in Prague with her husband, Paul. They were only able to enjoy a few months of carefree marriage before the Nazis entred Prague. From 1939 onwards she was the victim of anti-semitism and anti-Jewish laws. In 1942, together with her husband, she was deported to Terezin, the Jewish ghetto, and then to Auschwitz in May 1944, where they were separated, never to see each other again. After the liberation in March 1945 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. The same year Helen settled with him in Belfast. After the birth of their two sons, she became involved in dance again, choreographing for theatre and opera, and her teaching eventually led to the foundation of the Belfast Modern Dance Group. Helen Lewis died on New Years Eve 2009, aged 93.

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