Helga Weiss

Helga Weiss, later Hošková-Weissová, was born to a secular Jewish family in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Her mother Irena Fuchsová was a seamstress, and her father Otto Weiss worked at the state bank. In 1939, she was an 11-year-old schoolgirl when she endured the first wave of the Nazi invasion of World War II. Her father was denied work and she was barred from attending her school. As she witnessed Nazi brutality toward her friends and neighbors, and eventually her own family, she began documenting her experiences in a diary. In 1941, she and her parents were sent to the concentration camp of Terezín (Theresienstadt), where she continued to write about her daily life. Before she was deported on to the death camp at Auschwitz at age 15 in 1944, her uncle, who worked in the Terezín records department, hid her diary and drawings in a brick wall. From Auschwitz, she was sent to a forced labor camp at Flossenbürg, and then on on a 16-day death march to the camp at Mauthausen. Of the estimated 15,000 children sent to Terezín and then to Auschwitz, Helga was one of only 100 survivors. After the war, her uncle was able to retrieve her diary for her.
She returned to Prague and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and under Czech artist Emil Filla. She worked as an artist and raised a family. After the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, she exhibited her art in Prague and in other places in Europe.
In 2009, President Václav Klaus presented her with the Medal of Merit of the Czech Republic. Her diary, illustrated with her childhood drawings, was translated into English and published in 2013 as Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp.