Maria Lewitt

(1924- ), born Lodz, Poland, arrived in Australia in 1949. In Australia she has worked as an outdoor machinist, shop assistant and secretary. Her publications in English include the autobiographical novels Come Spring (1980), winner of the Alan Marshall Award in 1978, and No Snow in December (1985), winner of the NSW Premier's Award for Ethnic Writing. Her short stories which have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals, were awarded first prize in the 1972 CAE Adult Association Writers' Short Story Competition. She has also written a novel for secondary school children, Just Call Me Bob (1976). Come Spring, based on Lewitt's experiences in Poland as a member of a part-Jewish family during the Nazi occupation, is a fast-paced, compelling account of living daily on the edge of catastrophe; at 15 Irena, Lewitt's narrator, was conscious of being at the threshold of life, entranced by 'the idyllic beauty of the European summer of 1939', but the succeeding years of horror and occasional despair were introduced suddenly by the murder of her father, beaten to death by the Gestapo. Death thereafter became a regular companion, in company with brutality, betrayal, starvation and fear; presenting this grim story in spare prose and through the eyes of an adolescent girl, who manages to find love in the midst of general destruction and who undergoes the normal conflicts of youth, Lewitt achieves a strong impression of authenticity and a fine balance between horror and lyricism. No Snow in December continues the narrator's experiences as a migrant in Australia, recording the misconceptions and problems of the non-English-speaking newcomer and the difficulties of coming to terms with the residual horrors of war.

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