Hannah Lewis talks about how she survived the Holocaust, which saw her lose the vast majority of her family (Picture: Hannah Lewis)

On the concrete steps of a farmhouse in the middle of a bitter Polish winter, six-year-old Hannah ‘immediately grew up.’

Her beloved mother Chaya was executed in cold blood in front of her – one of six million Jewish victims of Adolf Hitler’s murderous regime.

Hannah and her father Adam were the only members of her family to survive the genocide of World War II. Afterwards, she rebuilt her life in England but is headed back to Poland to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

Now 82, Hannah Lewis has shared her story with Metro.co.uk as a ‘lesson of man’s inhumanity to man.’


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Hannah was born into a prosperous family in Wlodawa, a small market town on the river Bug, now on the border with Ukraine.



She was the only child of Adam and Chaya and lived alongside her extended family, including Uncle Shulka and ‘adored’ cousin Szlomo, who were both deaf and mute.

It was a happy and uneventful childhood until war broke out in 1939 and the German Nazis occupied Poland.

Hannah’s trader grandfather Jankel heard news of camps elsewhere in the country and told the family they needed to leave.

His wife told him it was ‘scaremongering’ and they stayed.

Hannah said: ‘It was a far-reaching decision because by the end of the war, only my father and I survived.

‘Everyone else had been murdered.’

Hannah saw her mother and cousin die at Adampol labour camp during World War II (Picture: w8media)

Soon after, the Polish borders were closed and Wlodawa began to fill up with Jewish refugees trying to find a safer place outside the large cities.

Hannah’s family welcomed them into their home and recalled: ‘They told stories about camps being built and what the Germans were doing.

‘It was terrifying. Before, who knew about forced labour camps, concentration camps and extermination camps?’

In 1942, the Germans began rounding up the Jews of Wlodawa and sent them to either the nearby Sobibor extermination camp or various labour camps.

The following year, Hannah and her family were forcibly marched to the labour camp at Adampol.

She recalled: ‘We were given an hour to pack our suitcases. I remember my father being terrified that his father was not going to make the journey. So he decided to find a wheelbarrow, so he could wheel his father so that he survived at least the journey.

‘I walked a lot of the way and I was carried sometimes. We arrived and it was a little hamlet, surrounded by woods and fields.

‘There was no water or electricity. There was a camp, there was barbed wire and a watchtower and sheds where we slept.

‘Life was cheap. My Uncle Shulka was taken out immediately and never seen again. They could see he had problems and he was disposed of.

‘My grandfather made it to the first Einsatzgruppen. They were specially trained squads who came and did executions when it wasn’t worth doing a transport.

‘They were greatly feared and very accurate.’

Hannah’s family took a picture of her as they set out to walk to Adampol. She remembers fighting back tears and pursing his lips as she did not want to leave her home (Picture: Hannah Lewis)

The men were often rented out for work and, during a placement, her father managed to escape.

He joined the Partisans, a guerilla fighting group who tried to sabotage the Nazis and pass on any information about imminent action by the regime.



Hannah spent the next year working at Adampol alongside her cousin Szlomo and her mother, who was given a job at the home of a village elder who owned the camp’s land.

The little girl washed the steps and tended to the vegetables and the hens.

She said: ‘If I was next to my mother, I was fine. Looking back at it, life couldn’t have been great but you get used to it.

‘I had my mother and I had Szlomo, who was the brother I never had. I adored him.

‘I think the war really got to me the day I lost Szlomo.’

One day, the children were on their own and Hannah heard the killing squads ride into the village on horseback.

As Szlomo was deaf and mute, she grabbed his hand and they raced into a nearby barn to hide.

Fighting back tears, she said: ‘I dived into the hay and had a little feel but he wasn’t there.

‘I could hear them [the Nazis] outside but I didn’t know what to do.

‘I couldn’t call him because he couldn’t hear.

‘There was this whack on the door, they always used their rifle butts.

‘The door of the barn flew open and through a peephole in the hay I looked. Szlomo was cowering behind the door.

‘They picked him up by the scruff of his neck. He didn’t even have a voice to protest.

‘I saw his feet kicking and I never saw him again.


‘I missed him and, I don’t think it was a knowing thing, but I think I felt guilty. And I was lonely.’

Hannah and her adored younger cousin Szlomo (Picture: Hannah Lewis)

In the winter of 1944, Hannah – whose family called her Heneczka – fell dangerously ill with suspected typhus.

The village elder agreed to let Hannah and mother Chaya stay for one night in his house to keep her warm.

As they lay by the oven, curled together on a makeshift bed of hay, there was a knock on the window.

Hannah recalled: ‘I sat up and there, in the moonlight, was my father wearing a black beret. It was a very quick conversation.

‘He said: “Chaya, you must come. Tomorrow there is an action.”

‘She said: “I can’t. Haneczka’s not well.”

‘He said: “Bring with her with” and she said “she’ll never make it.”

‘I don’t know whether it was a search light or patrol going around but she closed the window and he disappeared.’

Hannah’s mother Chaya before World War II broke out (Picture: Hannah Lewis)

Hannah said she is still haunted by how her mother survived the night, knowing she would be murdered in the morning.

She also believes her mother’s actions saved her from being found and killed by the Einsatzgruppen as well.

Hannah recalled: ‘I think one of the things that really troubles me is how she made the decision she made and how she coped with that night.

‘But she was always calm. First thing in the morning, there were the usual sounds of an Einsatzgruppen.

‘The jeeps, the shouting orders, the dogs barking. There was a pattern to it.


‘Suddenly there was a whack on the door and she was extraordinary. She got on her knees, she took me in her arms.

‘She gave me a hug and a kiss and very calmly walked to the door, opened it and closed it behind her.

‘I was a bit befuddled, I thought she would come back for me. But she didn’t come back.’

She added: ‘There was yelling and shouting so I decided to go and look for her.

‘I stood on the concrete steps and it was so cold that the ice was grey.

‘Finally, I spotted my mother. She was with a group of other people and they were being marshalled to the well where she always drew water.

‘I kept trying to catch her eye because we always made eye contact. But she didn’t look at me.

‘I was standing there deciding whether I should go and take her hand as I had done so many times before.

‘Suddenly somebody barked an order and they started to shoot. I saw her fall and I saw her blood on the ground.

‘And in that moment, I grew up.

‘I knew I couldn’t make a sound. And I knew then why she wasn’t looking at me.

‘I don’t know how long I stood there but I went back and put myself on the straw.’

Hannah and her father Adam, her only surviving family member after the Nazi genocide (Picture: Hannah Lewis)

After falling asleep on the hay at the farmhouse, Hannah woke up to the village elder’s niece pouring warm milk down her throat.

When she recovered from typhus, she went back to the main camp and spent the next few months alone.

The Germans fled Adampol in 1945 and the emaciated and grieving survivors slowly wandered out and returned to what was left of their homes.

Hannah remembered: ‘You started to get news of who had survived and who was where.

‘People came out of the woods to collect their relatives but nobody came for me.

‘Then suddenly, one day, there was my father. Skinny, dirty – but my father.

‘He must have walked for days to see me.

‘He grabbed me, put me in his arms. He laughed, he cried. He hugged me and it was wonderful.’

The pair began the walk back to Wlodawa and Hannah’s world crumbled again when she realised she would never be reunited with her mother.

She said: ‘During those times, I convinced myself that maybe my mother wasn’t dead. Maybe she was injured and my father had taken her with him.

‘It kept me going.

‘I can remember turning to him and saying “Where’s Mama?”

‘And he said ‘Haneczka, you know Mama is not coming back. You saw what happened to Mama.”

‘He must have seen it too.’

Hannah said she did not utter a word for hours and her father thought the ‘deaf and mute curse of our family’ had struck her.

A memorial is all that remains of the forced labour camp at Adampol. It makes no mention of Jewish victims and only pays tribute to 183 people who died. Hannah said that number would have been killed monthly (Picture: Holocaust Research Project)

They returned to find their home full of Jewish refugees. Her father dug up some belongings they had buried in the garden at the outbreak of war and they headed to the city of Lodz to start again.

Hannah said she believed it was her ‘mother’s guiding hand’ that saw relatives from the UK eventually trace her father Adam.

Aged 11, Hannah was sent on her own to live with her great-Aunt Anni and Uncle Sam in north London.

She said she was ‘bereft, angry and almost past caring’ and knew neither the language nor anybody in the country.

Hannah’s father, still suffering the emotional and physical scars of war, spend the rest of his life dividing his time between Israel and Germany.

Hannah went to school, learned English and has been happily married since 1961.

She has four children and eight grandchildren but said she has only spoken of her experiences in the last 20 years.

She added: ‘I still had my memories and I still had my nightmares.

‘But they were mine and I didn’t really talk about them and nobody asked me.

‘I never tried to put it on my children because I didn’t want their lives to be overshadowed by what happened to me.’

Hannah was awarded an MBE in the 2018 honours for her work in schools and universities with the Holocaust Educational Trust.

She stressed the need to never forget, saying Hitler’s plan to eradicate the Jewish population of Europe is ‘a lesson of man’s inhumanity to man.’

‘The people who sat down with Hitler and did the blueprint to get rid of Jews were doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, captains of industry,’ she added.

‘It wasn’t done out of anger, it was done out of cold blood. It was priced, it wasn’t a fight for survival. The Jews weren’t at war.’

Hannah was awarded an MBE for her work for the Holocaust Educational Trust and will travel to Poland to mark Holocaust Memorial Day (Picture: w8media)

Seventy-six years after her mother’s death and Hannah says she finds the concept of forgiveness difficult.

She added: ‘I’m not empowered to forgive for the people they murdered. I don’t speak for them.

‘I don’t have forgiveness because for the life of me, I can’t understand why we were selected.

‘I don’t have forgiveness but I have acceptance. I can’t change it.

‘But I also don’t believe in the sins of the fathers. Each generation should be judged on what they do and not what they have inherited.’

The number of hate crimes in the UK against Jewish and other minority groups has doubled in the last five years, according to Home Office figures.

Hannah said: ‘It does worry me because I hope it’s not the beginning of a cycle.

‘I think there is increased prejudice and fear against “the other”.’

She added: ‘I think we all have to be vigilant and we all have to have a standard of behaviour. We should try to co-exist.

‘Genocide is appalling and it’s still happening. The location might be changing but people are not.’

Hannah’s trip to Poland for the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau will be only the third time she has returned to the country of her birth.

She has been back to Adampol and stood on the concrete steps overlooking the well where her mother and countless others were gunned down by the Nazi death squads.

Hannah said the trip ‘verified her memories’ but: ‘Poland holds nothing for me anymore.

‘England was the place that gave me a great life.

‘I’m going back to Poland for the ceremony but it was an extraordinary time and, looking back, I’m just grateful that I made it.’