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She survived the Holocaust as a child, alone and on the run, never knowing if she’d live to see her teenage years.
Now, at 95, she’s won an Emmy for telling her story — and delivering a defiant message to Hitler: “This is my FU.”
Lusia Rosenzweig Milch was just 10 in July 1941 when German troops invaded her small town of Skalat, Poland — now part of Ukraine — “like wild beasts,” shattering her idyllic childhood with her loving parents and younger sister.
“Gone was my carefree childhood and freedom as a Jew,” she recalled.
Her extraordinary story of survival — posing as a Ukrainian peasant girl to escape the Nazis — became “My Mother’s Eyes,” a 12-minute animated short that won an Emmy for best teen long or short form content at the New York Emmy Awards on Oct. 10.
“This is our victory. For Hitler and his gang, this is my revenge,” Milch told The Post.
“I never imagined I would be here now,” Milch, a grandmother of three and great-grandmother of two who lives on the Upper West Side, said following her historic win that’s believed to make her the oldest female and only female Holocaust survivor to win an Emmy.
“OMG, it feels great” said of holding the award — a victory that only reinforces the former school teacher’s mission to stamp out hate. “My purpose is to fight what’s happening today.”
Milch narrated the harrowing film that takes young Lusia from a happy, thriving life surrounded by friends, extended family and rich Jewish traditions to a desperate bid for survival.
After years in a disease-ridden ghetto of Skalat where she witnessed torture and barbarism, her family’s hoped-for refuge in the home of a local peasant fell apart when he threatened to kill them.
With Nazi mobs raging outside, Lusia’s mother, Necha, looked into her daughter’s eyes and urged her to flee since “hell was ruling on the street.”
Necha gave her daughter an unmistakable look, Milch recalled, and “I understood what she was telling me.”
“Now is the time to run and save yourself.”
That move proved to save her life, as her mother and 4-year-old sister were murdered that same day.
“From that day on, I was on my own,” recounted Milch, noting her father was burned alive and their town of some 10,000 Jews almost entirely wiped out.
“I thought, ‘I’m the only Jew left in the world.’”
For nearly two more years, Milch survived by posing as a Ukrainian peasant girl in a tiny village, navigating woods and fields while living a lie to stay alive. She eventually reached liberation by way of the Soviet army.
By grit and determination, she snuck across borders in snowstorms and eventually made her way to America, where she married fellow survivor, Bernard Milch — and “began my life again as a Jew.”
While she rebuilt a comfortable life on Long Island, raising two sons and working as a public school literature and Russian teacher, the memories still haunt her.
“I still have nightmares,” she admitted. “The pain is with you every day.”
Now, Milch fears the world has failed to learn the lessons of the Holocaust as antisemitism and hate persist.
“Even at my old age, I want to stand in the middle of Times Square and scream, ‘Wake up!’”
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But she is no longer the helpless girl who fled Skalat with no means of defending herself.
“It scares the hell out of me to see what’s happening now, but I would never be still again,” the nonagenarian said. “I would be the very first one to buy a gun and learn how to shoot it” if conditions deteriorate.
Still, winning a prestigious award, alongside producers including her son, Dr. David Milch, The Ledi Center and The Lappin Foundation in this hostile climate “speaks volumes,” said Milch.
Her mission is to educate the next generation “to make sure it will never happen again.”

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