Victoria P. Lewicki Oral History

title:

Victoria P. Lewicki Oral History

creator:

Lewicki, Victoria (Pelc) | Lewicki, Jane C.

subject:

American Red Cross | Army

description:

This interview was conducted with Victoria Lewicki’s daughter, Jane Lewicki, about her mother’s experiences as a nurse during and after World War II. Victoria Lewicki (formerly Pelc) was born in Auburn, New York to Polish immigrant parents. She went to a Polish grammar school and lived in a mostly Polish neighborhood. After graduating high school, she went to nursing school at the Auburn City Hospital and completed it in 1928. She worked as a public health nurse, and in 1941 she was selected as one of 74 nurses, sponsored by the American Red Cross and Harvard Medical School, to staff a hospital unit in Salisbury, England to treat wartime communicable diseases. She was shipped out with 10 nurses and 37 crew members on June 5, 1941. On June 23rd there was nearby torpedo activity so the practiced lifeboat procedures in case. The following day, Nazi submarines torpedoed her freighter, and she was on one of the three life boats that shoved off before the ship sank. The Nazi sub surfaced and said they would take the women aboard, but they said no. Her lifeboat remained at sea for 12 days and 11 nights, mostly in the rain, and they survived on hard tack, canned meatballs, and 5 ounces of water each day. Her feet were swollen to twice their size while on the lifeboat, and she had trouble with foot pain for the rest of her life. She also refused to go on a boat and hated being near the water. When the lifeboat shot their last rocket flare, a US Navy convoy---the first American task force to enter the war zone---saw and rescued them. The convoy brought them to Greenland and they were shipped to the Walter Reed Medical Center for treatment. She stayed in the States after her treatment, but in 1943 she wanted to help the Poles devastated by the war and joined the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Agency. She was awarded the rank of Lieutenant in the U.S. Army and stationed in Heilbronn, Germany. She supervised a U.S. hospital in a special camp for displaced people and wartime casualties, many of them children and Poles. There she hired Mitchell Lewicki, an Auschwitz survivor from Poland, as her ambulance driver. They later married. Although Mitchell could not accompany her home when she was released from the service in 1947, he later arrived in Ellis Island and was re-united with her in Auburn, New York. His Auschwitz prison uniform was donated to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. They had 2 children and Victoria continued her nursing and teaching career. After an extended illness, she died from Alzheimer's disease in 1996. When she left the service Lewicki had reached the rank of lieutenant, and for her service she was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, and National Defense Service Medal. No transcript of this interview is currently available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Binker, Mary Jo

date:

2003-05-27

type:

Audio

format:

Cassette

identifier:

565; 2003.565

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

260668

coverage:

World War II (1939-1945) | 1943-47

rights:

Unrestricted