Maria was born in Lodz, Poland in 1924. She attended high school until the outbreak of World War II, underground schools during the war, and night schools afterwards. In 1948, she left Poland with her husband Julian and young son Joe and lived in Paris for a year where she studied French at Alliance Francaise. The intention had been to settle there, near to other Holocaust survivor family members, but with the Berlin blockade raising the threat of a major conflict between the US and USSR, plans quickly changed to getting as far from war-torn Europe as possible.
In January 1949 the family arrived in Australia. Maria, with no knowledge of English, had to learn it from scratch with a few after-hours lessons from a young school teacher and by ear. Her younger son Michael was born in 1953, and she was thrilled that the family now included a “dinkum Aussie”. She worked as a home-based machinist for a Polish Jewish clothing manufacturer, behind the counter of their Malvern milk bar, then at their cake and sandwich shop Clovelly Cakes in the Block Arcade.
From a young age, she had always had a great love of literature, especially for the richness of her mother tongue, Polish. Maria was frustrated that in her newly adopted country she was unable to share this interest and pass it on to her children, and had difficulty expressing herself adequately verbally or in writing.
Pursuing her passion for literature, in the late 1950s she took some writing classes at the Council of Adult Education and started writing in English in 1967. She had her first short story Say It In English, Please published as a finalist in a competition in The Sun New-Pictorial newspaper in 1972.
Read the tribute to Maria Lewit in The Sydney Morning Herald.