Remembering Helen Lewis on Holocaust Memorial Day
To mark Holocaust Memorial Day, we are remembering Helen Lewis, a pioneer of modern dance in Northern Ireland, who was one of “the First Eleven” creatives of the Lyric Players Company, and who was a survivor of the Holocaust.
Today, 27 January 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi concentration camps.
Helen Lewis was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Czechoslovakia during the First World War, and brought up with a great love of music. After finishing school, Helen moved to Prague, where she studied dance and philosophy at the German University.
During World War II she was one of the millions of Jews taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944, where she survived selection before being moved to Stutthof concentration camp, and finally escaping.
In 1947 Helen married a friend, Harry Lewis, who had escaped to Northern Ireland before the war and moved with him to Belfast.
Although no longer able to dance, Helen worked as a choreographer and dance teacher. In 1957 the Lyric Drama School started in Derryvolgie Avenue with Movement taught by Helen Lewis, Speech by Patricia Calderwood, and Acting by Sam McCready.
In 1961 a resident Lyric Players Company were formed of eleven creatives – deemed “the First Eleven” by Mary O’Malley. Among these were Sam McCready, Helen Lewis, Joan Carslake, and Alice Berger Hammerschlag. Alice was an Austrian artist who had moved to Belfast in 1938, as a refugee on a British government permit for graphic designers, to avoid persecution under the Nazi regime.
From the opening of the Lyric on Ridgeway Street, Helen choreographed many performances as resident choreographer, from the opening production, "Four plays from the Cuchulain cycle by W.B. Yeats" in 1968 through to "A Time to Remember" in 2000, many alongside internationally-acclaimed director Sam McCready. Sam considered that Helen's choreography ‘brought a whole European dimension to dance in the theatre’.
Helen published a memoir, "A Time to Speak" in 1992 that was adapted for the theatre by McCready and performed in 2009. Helen passed in December that year, survived by her two sons Michael and Robin.
