A Time to Speak

A resident of Ireland since the war, where she founded the Belfast Modern Dance Group, Lewis here recounts the Nazi takeover of her native Czechoslovakia, the onset of war and persecution of the Jews. Her own deportation in early 1944 to the relatively mild rigors of Terezin concentration camp was followed by the horrors of internment in Auschwitz. While she depicts sadists such as a ``blond, pretty, ferocious SS woman guard,'' she emphasizes the desperate friendships and unexpected acts of courage, dignity and mercy by both inmates and keepers, including several Russian officers and medical staff who saved her life while she was desperately ill just before repatriation. An eloquent Holocaust survival story. (May)