An American Girl

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It is early March, just a few hours before Marion Lewin will be speaking to an audience in downtown Washington, D.C. Ready to be photographed, she wears a structured jacket that silhouettes her small frame and a large lotus-like necklace hanging around her neck. Her eyes fix on the camera. Lewin is quite used to having her photo taken, she says.

At first glance, the 87-year-old Dutch-born alumna, who lives right outside the city in Maryland, seems to have realized a lifelong dream of becoming a typical “American girl.” But her journey is one that few Americans could fathom. Lewin, along with her twin brother, Steven Hess, are among last survivors of Bergen-Belsen, the Nazi-run concentration camp.

That evening, Lewin joined her brother to share memories of their childhood experience in conversation with Patricia Heberer Rice, the senior historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Much of the conversation was inspired by Inseparable: The Hess Twins’ Holocaust Journey through Bergen-Belsen to America, by Faris Cassell, published last year by Simon & Schuster.

Throughout the discussion, Rice deftly guided the twins and the audience through unimaginable memories, including childhood play amid thousands of corpses. It was one among many that Lewin shared. “In that terror, we found games to play, and our chief occupation was killing lice, and we made long lines of that,” said Lewin. “That’s really how we learned a little math.”

Rice, an expert on children and the Holocaust, noted that children play wherever they are and no matter the situation.

“We may balk at the idea that mass murder and childhood play are hand in hand, and yet your testimony, the testimony of so many other children during the Holocaust and afterwards, show that it’s true and play is just simply a component of childhood,” said Rice.

Lewin recalled an ability to dive deep into the barrels from which camp food was served and scoop up leftover morsels without ever getting slop on her sleeve. She acknowledged that years later she still maintains a similar attention to the details of personal appearance.

“We were so filthy, and I guess I didn’t want to be thought of that way — though of course I was that way,” she said.

Lewin often highlights aspects of the resilience that allowed her not only to get through the camps but also, later, to get on with her life.

“I didn’t want to focus on the past; I always wanted to look to the future,” she says, days after the museum event.

For much of her life, Lewin rarely talked about her experiences. It wasn’t until she was approached about the book did she begin to discuss what happened. Many lifelong friends had no idea of her background.

“I felt that I was so privileged that I had survived and got a lot of lucky breaks,” she says. “Now, some people say, well, it’s not lucky. You prepare for it, etc., etc., but, you know, I always want to catch the magic ring.”

In the same breath, Lewin stressed her future-focused view is not one shared by many other survivors, such as her brother, who she says is the “quintessential Holocaust survivor.”

“I don’t think he ever got over the trauma of that time,” she says, adding that many survivors are “always looking around the corner for [where] the next sweep of evil is going to come from. Somehow that prevents you from, I think, enjoying life as much as you possibly can.”

One of the most extraordinary parts of Lewin’s story is that her mother and her father survived as well. Her parents made the decision to never separate the family. Her father had more than one opportunity to escape on his own. But he always chose to find them — even asking to be sent to the concentration camp so that he could reunite with his wife and children. He was once again separated from them on the trains leaving Bergen-Belsen during the chaos of evacuating the camps and their eventual liberation, which for them arrived on April 23, 1945.

The four eventually emigrated to America, settling with family members on Manhattan’s Upper West Side before moving to Queens. Lewin remembers frequently being pulled from class to be celebrated for her survival. She had tea with Eleanor Roosevelt, told her story on the Voice of America radio, and was greeted at the United Nations. It was during this time that her desire to live as just an American girl began to take hold.

In college, she was finally able to live a life independent from her past, she explains, in part because she wasn’t the only person on campus who had seen the unimaginable.

“Many at Barnard at that time were the first generation of people in their family going to college, and many of them were refugees or immigrants, so there were many people who I could relate to,” she says.

Once there, she soaked up culture, studying English, history, and music.

“I remember sitting in the library and listening to tapes of famous concerts and symphonies,” she recalls. “That wasn’t really a very good way of studying, but somehow made it more pleasant, and it exposed me to the world.”

Lewin realized a career in healthcare policy at the National Academy of Sciences and was recognized for lifetime achievement by the National Research Center for Women and Families.

She continues to live a full life that includes children and grandchildren. Every day, she keeps fresh flowers in her home. She explained why at the museum event. When the survivors were liberated, they were transported from the camps to an unscarred landscape in eastern Germany. It was spring and the first time she recalled seeing flowers.

“They were miraculous. I don’t think I ever remember seeing a flower,” she said, adding that while the blooms seemed familiar, she didn’t recall seeing them before, or even hearing birds chirp.

“It was so beautiful and made such an impression on me that to this day I never have a day when I don’t have fresh flowers,” she said, adding that her joy was tempered by recalling all who had died.

“But I remember the flowers.”