Helgas Diary

Helga Weiss was born in Prague in 1929. Her father Otto was employed in the state bank in Prague and her mother Irena was a dressmaker. Of the 15,000 children brought to Terezin and later deported to Auschwitz, only 100 survived the Holocaust. Helga was one of them. On her return to Prague she studied art and has become well known for her paintings. The drawings and paintings that Helga made during her time in Terezin, which accompany this diary, were published in 1998 in the book Draw What You See (Zeichne, was Du siehst). Her father's novel And God saw that it was bad, written during his time in Terezin and which she illustrated, was published in 2010. In 1954 Helga married the musician Jiri Hosek. She has two children, three grandchildren and lives to this day in the flat where she was born.