Lusia Rosenzweig Milch has won a New York Emmy for an animated short about her childhood escape from the Nazis.
The 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, took home the award for best teen long or short form content at the New York Emmy Awards on Oct. 10 for “My Mother’s Eyes.” The 12-minute film recounts how she posed as a Ukrainian peasant girl to survive after German troops invaded her hometown of Skalat, Poland, in July 1941.
“This is our victory. For Hitler and his gang, this is my revenge,” Milch told The Post.
“OMG, it feels great,” she said of holding the award. The former public school literature and Russian teacher, a grandmother of three and great-grandmother of two, is believed to be the oldest female and only female Holocaust survivor to win an Emmy.
Milch narrates the harrowing animated short, which traces her journey from a childhood surrounded by friends, extended family and rich Jewish traditions to a desperate fight for survival. German troops invaded Skalat “like wild beasts,” she recalled, when she was just 10 years old.
“Gone was my carefree childhood and freedom as a Jew,” she said.
After years in a disease-ridden ghetto where she witnessed torture and barbarism, her family secured temporary refuge with a local peasant. That shelter collapsed when he threatened to kill them. With Nazi mobs raging in the streets, Milch’s mother, Necha, looked into her daughter’s eyes and urged her to flee.
Necha gave her an unmistakable look, Milch recalled, and “I understood what she was telling me.”
“Now is the time to run and save yourself.”
That decision saved her life. Her mother and 4-year-old sister were murdered that same day. Her father was burned alive. Their town of some 10,000 Jews was almost entirely wiped out.
“From that day on, I was on my own,” she recounted.
“I thought, ‘I’m the only Jew left in the world.'”
For nearly two more years, Milch survived alone by posing as a Ukrainian peasant girl in a tiny village, navigating woods and fields while living a lie. She eventually reached liberation through the Soviet army, then snuck across borders in snowstorms to make her way to America.
There she married fellow survivor Bernard Milch and “began my life again as a Jew.” She raised two sons, built a comfortable life on Long Island, and spent decades teaching. The memories never left her.
“I still have nightmares,” she admitted. “The pain is with you every day.”
Now Milch sees history repeating itself. Antisemitism and hate have persisted, and she fears the world failed to learn the Holocaust’s lessons.
“Even at my old age, I want to stand in the middle of Times Square and scream, ‘Wake up!'” she said.
The nonagenarian has lost her passivity. “It scares the hell out of me to see what’s happening now, but I would never be still again,” she said. “I would be the very first one to buy a gun and learn how to shoot it” if conditions deteriorated.
The Emmy win, shared with producers including her son Dr. David Milch, The Ledi Center and The Lappin Foundation, arrived in what she called a hostile climate that “speaks volumes.” She sees the award as reinforcement for her mission to stamp out hate and educate younger generations.
“My purpose is to fight what’s happening today,” she said. “I never imagined I would be here now.”
Her ultimate goal remains unchanged: “to make sure it will never happen again.”