HELGA LEWIN. PAPERS RE COMPENSATION, 1938-1985

The papers in this collection document the attempts made by Helga Lewin to gain compensation for suffering caused by the Nazi regime. They include settlements and decisions made by the Entschädigungsamt, Berlin and the Berlin district court along with affidavits and numerous expert witness statements. They were previously in the hands of her solicitors.

The papers are arranged in chronological order, including copies by date of the original.

July 1995

Helga Lewin (née Krebs) was born in 1916 in Berlin of Jewish parents. From the age of 6 she took private piano lessons and it became apparent early on that she was very talented. She went on to study the piano more intensively, later becoming a piano teacher from 1937 to 1939. She fled Nazi Germany in April 1939 to England where she worked as a servant until she interned as a German citizen in June 1940. After her release she worked as waitress in a café in Manchester. In 1946 she began work as a accordion player but had to give this up on account of the pain it was causing her back.

During the course of the next few decades she was awarded compensation for loss of potential earnings from the Entschädigungsamt (1229/16-17), succeeding in her attempts to claim compensation for physical disability and mental illness.