Helen Lewis (choreographer)

Helen Lewis MBE (née Katz; 22 June 1916 – 31 December 2009) was a pioneer of modern dance in Northern Ireland, and made her name as a dance teacher and choreographer. A survivor of the Holocaust, she was also known for her memoir of her experiences during the Second World War.

Helena Katz was born in 1916 into a German-speaking Jewish family in Trutnov in Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now in the Czech Republic). After she completed study at the Realgymnasium of Trutnov in 1935, she and her mother moved to Prague; her father had died in the previous year.^[2]

In Prague, she studied dance with Milča Mayerová, who had trained with Rudolf Laban. Katz also studied philosophy at the German University of Prague, and took private lessons in French. In about 1936 she met Paul Hermann, a Czech from a Jewish family, and in 1938, after she had finished her dance training and her university exams, they were married. She taught as an assistant at Mayerová's dance school, and experimented with choreography.^[2]

Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the Hermanns experienced a progressive exclusion of Jews from public life. Italy's entry into the war in June 1940, dashed their hopes of an escape via Trieste for the refuge offered in Shanghai.^[3]

Deportations of Jewish families began in August 1941. Preceded by their parents, the Hermanns were sent in August 1942 to Theresienstadt/Terezín ghetto and concentration camp. Helen found work in a children's home where, with the rest of the staff, she "deliberately and actively disobeyed the 'no schooling' orders".^[4]

She also participated, including as a dancer, in the "rich and varied cultural life" in the ghetto which "flourished in the face of starvation, disease and the constant threat of deportation to the east". This, she recalls was first resisted by authorities but then used for propaganda^[5] (toward the end of 1944, plays, concerts and other cultural activities were staged under the close supervision of the SS to deceive visitors from the International Red Cross and were documented in a film depicting the camp as a spa town).^[6]

In May 1944, the Hermanns were transferred to the family camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau and separated. In August, Helen, who survived two "selections" by Josef Mengele,^[7] was sent in a group of three hundred women to Stutthof concentration camp in northern Poland.^[8]

They were assigned to a satellite camp outside Praust/Pruszcz Gdański where they had been preceded by a group of five hundred women from Poland, the Baltic states, Hungary and Romania. These women spoke Yiddish, rather than German, and "bitterly resented" both the newcomers' "lack of religious ardour" and the privilege they had enjoyed in retaining their unshaven hair. The gulf between the two groups was bridged when, in "battle of wills" with their SS overseer (Oberaufseherin), they held to fast in honour of Yom Kippur. Perversely, they were rewarded with a post-fast meal complete with sweet pudding^[9]

Unexpected rations were again available two months later when the Oberaufseherin encouraged Helen and fellow inmates to stage Christmas and New Year reviews featuring dramatic sketches, music, singing, and, with Helen as choreographer and performer, dancing. The "quirky" indulgences came to an end when on 27 January 1945 when the camp was evacuated.^[10]

With those surviving prisoners able to walk, Helen was driven west toward Lauenburg. It was a death march from which on 11 March 1945 she escaped into the care of the advancing Soviet forces.^[11] After a period of hospitalisation, she returned to Prague where she learned, first of her husband's death at the Sachsenhausen sub-camp Schwarzheide, and then of her mother's fate, deported early in 1942, and murdered at Sobibór extermination camp.^[8]

Helen began to correspond with Harry Lewis, a Czech with British nationality whom she had known at school and with whom she had had a brief romance before she met Hermann.^[2] She married Lewis in Prague in the summer of 1947 and in October moved to Belfast where Czech Jewish friends had, before the war, found refuge and employment.^[12]

After the birth of her two sons, Michael and Robin, in 1949 and 1954,^[2] Lewis began to work as a choreographer.^[8] In 1956, she created the choreography for the productions The Bartered Bride of Smetana at Grosvenor High School in Belfast, for a performance of Dvořák's The Golden Spinning Wheel at the Belfast Ballet Club, and for a Macbeth at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast.^[8] Lewis also taught modern dance, and in 1962 started the Belfast Modern Dance Group.^[8][13]

Her book A Time to Speak, about her experiences before and during the war, was published in 1992^[14] and was translated into several languages.^[12] It was adapted for the theatre by Sam McCready and performed at the Lyric Theatre during the Belfast Festival in 2009.^[15] It was also performed at Exeter Synagogue in 2010.^[16]

She died at her home in Belfast on 31 December 2009, aged 93.^[17][18]

A dance studio at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast is named after her.^[19]

In the 2001 Birthday Honours, Helen Lewis was appointed MBE for her services to contemporary dance.^[20] She was awarded honorary doctorates by Queen's University Belfast and by Ulster University.^[8]

• Helen Lewis, A Time to Speak, Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1991.
• Maddy Tongue, Helen Lewis: Shadows Behind The Dance, Belfast: The Irish Pages Press, 2022

• Keogh, Dermot (1998). Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Cork University Press, 336 pp. ISBN 1-85918-150-3
• Lewis, Helen (1992). A Time To Speak. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 132 pp. ISBN 978-0-8564-0491-7
• Jaffe, Steven (2022). "First Lady of Dance and Survivor: Helen Lewis". Jewish History in Northern Ireland. Retrieved 21 March 2022.
• Tongue, Maddy (2023). Helen Lewis: Shadows Behind The Dance. Belfast: Irish Pages, 184 pp. ISBN 978-1-8382018-9-0

• Helen Lewis Items From The Linen Hall Theatre and Performing Arts Archive, YouTube, 27 August 2020. Retrieved 21 March 2022.
• Lewis, Helen. I Remember the Holocaust (video made in 2000 by MediaAble Productions). Northern Visions Archive
• For educators: A Time to Speak – Helen Lewis. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust Archived 27 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine