Helga Hošková-Weissová

Helga Hošková-Weissová (1929) is a Czech artist and a survivor of the Holocaust. She was raised in Prague and, on November 4, 1941, she was taken with her parents to the Terezin concentration camp , also known as the Theresienstadt concentration camp. ^{1 2} Once there they were separated, although in the end it was possible that they were seen from time to time and even could communicate through clandestine notes. ^{1 2} It is estimated that some 15,000 children under the age of 16 went to Terezín ² and that fewer than 100 of these, later deported to Auschwitz, survived. ¹

In October 1944, when Helga was 15, both she and her mother were transferred to Auschwitz. As they reached the camp, the new prisoners were subdivided: if they were sent to the left they went directly to the crematorium ovens, but if they were sent to the right they lived a little longer. Probably the person responsible for making this division the day of the arrival of Helga and his mother was the infamous Josef Mengele ² although, whoever it was, Helga convinced him that he was old enough, 18 years, to continue living and finally They sent to the right. ² In addition, he also got that person to believe that his mother was younger than he really was. ³

Thanks to his gift for painting and drawing when he was in Terezin wrote a diary that included images of his life in the countryside ^{4 3} that survived the war. ^{1 2} After ten days, ^one transferred her from Auschwitz to Freiberg, an auxiliary field labor camp ¹ Flossenburg, near Dresden. There she escaped a terrible end after being forced to join one of the so-called “death marches”. This one lasted 16 days and its destiny was the field of Mauthausen , ⁵ where it remained until its liberation 5 of May of 1945 by the United States Army. ⁶

After the end of World War II, Helga returned to Prague, where she studied painting since 1950 ⁶ with the Czech artist Emil Filla ^{7 4} . Years later, he worked as an artist and formed his own family. ² After the revolution of November 1989, he exhibited his artworks numerous times in the Czech Republic, their own country, as in Austria, Germany or Italy. ¹

In 1993, she was honored with a Ph.D. of honor at the Massachusetts College of Art, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, for all the accomplishments she had made throughout her life. Later in 2009, she was awarded the Josef Hlávka medal and in October of the same year Vaclav Klaus awarded her the Medal of Merit. ^{Referring to Fig.}

In February of 2013, at age 89, she lived in the house where she was born, the same where she was arrested in 1944. ² WW Norton & Company published the story of all her experiences, Helga’s diary: testimony of a girl in a Concentration camp , on April 22, 2013. ^{3 5 9}

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