Henia Lewin

Henia Lewin entered the Kovno Ghetto with her parents when she was eighteen months old. Her parents, Gita and Yona Wisgardisky, hid her in a disguised walk-in pantry. Two years later, and following the death or deportation of her grandparents and other family members, her parents smuggled her to the safety of Lithuanian Christian acquaintances. Henny, as she is affectionately known, was later reunited with her parents, both of whom miraculously survived the Holocaust. Together they made their way through Poland to a Displaced Person’s Camp in Saltzheim am Main, Germany. There, under American auspices, Henny began her Jewish education, in the first grade. The family immigrated to Israel in 1949, which became home both physically and emotionally. That connection has remained unbreakable. Her family subsequently emigrated to Montreal, Canada, in 1953, due to her mother’s inability to tolerate the hot Israeli climate. Henny studied at the Adath Israel Academy and at the United Jewish Teachers Seminary while concurrently attending Sir George Williams College, where she majored in psychology. She was Hebrew valedictorian upon graduation from high school and Yiddish valedictorian when she graduated from the Teachers Seminary.

After graduation, Henny taught Hebrew in Montreal and at Ramah summer camps. In 1963 she was “imported” to Atlanta, Georgia, by its Hebrew Academy to teach in its day school. Her range of responsibilities included teaching first graders to read and write Hebrew, seventh graders to chant the blessings for their haftorahs, and older teenagers to appreciate Israeli culture and Jewish heritage. She subsequently moved to New York and married a fellow child survivor of the Holocaust.

In 1968 the couple moved to Burlington, Vermont. Henny has taught at the Ohavi Zedek Hebrew School ever since. She teaches all levels of Hebrew, tutors children, and helps prepare them for bar and bat mitzvah. After earning a Masters in Teacher Education from the University of Vermont (UVM), she began teaching Hebrew there as part of the Department of German and Russian. In 1983 her students started The Jewish Action Coalition, of which Henny has served as faculty advisor for the past fourteen years. In addition, she has served as the Director of Hillel at UVM for the past five years, becoming, in effect, the “Jewish address” on campus. Henny also serves on the Burlington Chevra Kadisha (Jewish Burial Society) and has been president of the Burlington chapter of Hadassah. In 1997 she will be on a year’s leave from UVM, having been recruited by the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, to be their in-house “Yiddish educator” and to teach Yiddish at Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.