Victor Lewis, Holocaust Survivor, Dies At 90

by Steve Lipman
Staff Writer

Victor Lewis, a Polish-born Holocaust survivor who escaped a train transport headed to a death camp and ended up as one of the protected workers on the famed Schindler’s List, died of cancer Oct. 5 in Jamaica, Queens. He was 90.

Mr. Lewis — born Wiktor Lezerkiewicz — was a native of Krakow who documented his Holocaust experiences, including internment, his time in a partisan unit and his testimony at the 1965 trial of an accused war criminal, in his 2000 self-published memoir, “Hardships and Near-Death Experiences at the Hands of the Nazi SS and Gestapo.”

Owner and president of a tool-and-die manufacturing company, he retired in 1989.

Working in an auto repair shop in the Krakow Ghetto in 1942, he stole a hacksaw and hid it in his boot after witnessing an execution of Jews in June 1942. Rounded up with his family in October 1942, he was herded with them on a train going to the Belzec death camp. With his hidden saw, he managed to cut through a pair of steel bars on the wagon’s window.

His parents and his sister Greta declined to escape with him and his brother Leszek.

“When I was ready to jump, my whole family had tears in their eyes,” Mr. Lewis wrote in his autobiography. “My father gave me money and his golden Shafhausen pocket watch and chain, and told me to sell the watch if I needed the money. Leszek received mother’s and sister’s jewelry to exchange for cash.

“It was a very painful decision to jump, which still haunts me to this day ... knowing that I probably would never see them again,” he wrote. “I never again saw or heard from my parents or sister. Apparently, they were among the 600,000 Jews who perished in Belzec.

Mr. Lewis and his brothers separately made their ways back to the Krakow Ghetto, where they joined a forced labor unit building the Plaszow concentration camp.

Eventually, Mr. Lewis was sent to Oskar Schindler’s ammunition factory in Brinnlitz, Czechoslovakia, where he became prisoner 68940 on the lifesaving “Schindler’s List” that was given cinematic fame by Steven Spielberg.

“Schindler’s motive to save Jews remains a mystery,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “In my opinion, his main concern was to avoid army combat. By operating successful ammunition factories, Schindler was able to find a non-military solution to make himself useful to the Nazi war machine.

“No matter what was Schindler’s motives, it cannot be denied that he and his wife saved more than 1,200 Jews,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “I didn’t have a chance to thank Schindler for helping me. I wasn’t able to speak with him until after the end of the war.”

Liberated in 1945, Mr. Lewis immigrated to the United States.

One of his brothers, Jacob, he discovered later, died from food poisoning a few days after being liberated from a concentration camp in Austria.

Active in survivors’ circles, Mr. Lewis was a founder of the New Cracow Friendship Society, a board member of Beit Halochem (Friends of Israeli Disabled Veterans), and represented Krakow in memorial ceremonies sponsored by the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

He is survived by his wife Regina, a fellow Holocaust survivor; a daughter, Ida; a son, Alvin; and a granddaughter, Jennifer.

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