Helga Weiss

Survivor

 

Hi, my name is Abbie Heseman and I decided to learn and share the story of the Holocaust survivor, Helga Weiss. For my outreach, I wrote an article for my local newspaper. I decided to write an article because many people read the newspaper, and it was the most effective way to get her story shared to a wide range of people.

 

Overcoming the Holocaust’s Former and Existing Obstacles

By Abbie Heseman

 

 

As humans we are faced with obstacles, and how we choose to conquer those obstacles says something about our character. Obstacles, minor or major, can be defeated. At times we know what to do in order to overcome an obstacle, but other times defeat seems imminent. As a student studying the Holocaust, I have found that an obstacle we all face today is losing the character witnesses of the Holocaust. How we can overcome this is simple: keep telling the stories of the victims and survivors and keep the story of the Holocaust alive. This is the story of Helga Weiss, a girl who used her art and mind to overcome and survive the obstacles of the Holocaust.

 

Helga Weiss was born in 1929 in Prague to Otto and Irena Weiss. From a young age, Helga’s father encouraged her to pursue music, but her gift was art. She always kept a sketchbook and drew everything around her. At the age of eight, when talk of war surfaced, Helga began writing in a journal because she knew it was important. When the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, Jews were faced with discrimination. Suddenly Jews were not allowed to speak or come in contact with non-Jews; that meant Jews would lose their jobs and children would be exiled from schools. Helga recalls wearing a yellow star labeled “Jude” to classify the Jews from non-Jews and make it easier for the Germans to enforce punishment.

 

 

In October 1941, Jewish Deportations became prominent. Jews began to pack their belongings in preparation for what might lie ahead. As Helga witnessed her friends and family summoned for deportation, she feared she would be next. In December 1941, German soldiers came to the Weiss home for their deportation to the concentration camp Terezín. Here, Jews were divided into buildings; Helga and Irena were kept together, but Otto was sent across the camp. Helga tried to find ways to contact her father, so she drew a picture of her surroundings and sent it to him in secret. Her father’s response encouraged her to document more: “Draw what you see.” By drawing what she witnessed, she was able to express her thoughts and emotions rather than keeping them in. Drawing helped Helga keep her sense of humanity as Nazis attempted to take it away. Three years after their report to Terezín, Otto was transported to help build a ghetto. Days later, Helga and Irena found they were going to another concentration camp: Auschwitz. Before Helga was transported, she gave her diary and drawings to her uncle who worked in the records department. He bricked the documents into a wall to keep them hidden from the officers.

 

 

At Auschwitz, Helga and Irena waited in line to hear of their fate. Mothers with young children and the ill were sent to the left for death, and those able to work were sent to the right. Helga and Irena lied about their ages in order to escape death in the gas chambers. Everything was taken from them: clothes, any possessions, and even their hair. Helga and Irena were at the camp for ten days, but those were the longest days she endured. The conditions here were far worse than at Terezín, but perhaps, her inability to express herself in her sketchbook made the experience unbearable. From Auschwitz, Helga and Irena were sent to Freiberg, a slave labor camp. Here they polished airplane parts for five months. After their time at Freiberg came a 16 day rail transport to Mauthausen. During the trip, Helga suffered from frostbite and extreme hunger and thirst. She had thoughts of suicide, but the recurring idea that the next day they would be freed, kept her going. After the long awaited arrival to Mauthausen, they were kept for days without being fed. Soon after their arrival, the camp was liberated by US forces; had they been any later, Irena would not have survived.

 

 

Helga and Irena returned to Prague after liberation and began to search for Otto. They found no evidence of him past Terezín. Upon Helga’s return, she obtained her diary and drawings from her uncle and began to document everything that had happened since she had last written. After the war, Helga went to school and pursued her artistic talent. Today, Helga continues to live in the apartment where she was born, and has influenced her descendants to overcome their obstacles through art. By telling you Helga’s story, we have found a way to overcome the obstacle of losing character witnesses. Now you are a witness; you have the chance to tell someone else Helga’s story and keep the story of the Holocaust alive.

 

Sources:

http://www.theguardian.com

 

Weiss, Helga. Helga’s Diary. London: W.W. Norton, 2013. Print.

 

http://newsletter.pamatnik-terezin.cz/zivotni-osudy-mlade-malirky-z-ghetta-terezin/?lang=en