In 2014 I published Helga Pollak's complete diary for the first time in Edition Room 28. It is an authentic diary, written in room 28, girls' home L 410. Unlike the book "The Girls of Room 28", where the fate of the girls in this room is told using selected passages from the diary, the diary is written here Helga's biographical context. It is supplemented by her father Otto Pollak's calendar notes, historical facts and conversations with Helga. The result is a deeply moving testimony from children's hands.
Theresienstadt.
The Girls of Room 28
My Theresienstadt diary
For Bookseller: Publisher number: 5245445
Editor of the Edition Room 28: Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick, Berlin
My Theresienstadt diary 1943-1944
Czech edition
My Terezín Diary 1943-1944
Albatros Media, Prague, 2019
Press release (short)
Helga Pollak-Kinsky, born Helga Pollak on May 28, 1930 in Vienna, was twelve years old when she was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto with her father Otto Pollak in January 1943. From January 1943 until her transport to Auschwitz in October 1944, she lived in girls' home L 410, room 28. There she repeatedly withdrew to confide in her diary.
target group
The book is aimed at a broad readership - at everyone who is interested in contemporary history, in authentic evidence from the time of National Socialism and the Holocaust, in the Theresienstadt ghetto and Auschwitz.
Helga and the "Girls from Room 28"
She attributes the fact that Helga survived the Holocaust to pure chance: "I was lucky. Of the 1,714 people who were deported to Auschwitz with me on October 23, 1944, only 211 survived. Most of us were sent there immediately after arriving "I was murdered in the gas chamber. I was assigned to a work transport, taken to a labor camp in Oederan/Saxony, a subcamp of Flossenbürg, and back to Theresienstadt in April 1945. It was purely coincidence that I survived."
Dedicated contemporary witness
After the war, Helga's wish came true. After being separated from her mother for 7 years - Frieda Pollak fled to England in 1939 - she flew to her mother in London. A new life began. In 1951 she married the German emigrant Gerhard Kinsky from Rössl/East Prussia, who was able to find safety from the Nazis in Ethiopia. She moved with him first to Bangkok, then to Addis Ababa. Her two children were born in the Far East. Helga's father, Otto Pollak, was now living in Vienna again. The Kinsky family moved there at the beginning of 1957. Since then, Helga has lived in Vienna.
Since the publication of the story of the Girl from room 28 In 2004, Helga led an eventful and committed life as a contemporary witness. In January 2014 she was a keynote speaker at the United Nations in Geneva and gave the memorial speech in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. With her contemporary witness, she enriched many projects, including the documentary film about the Holocaust art project by the Austrian artist Manfred Bockelmann "Drawing against Forgetting" (2015).
Awards
October 16, 2013: Cross of Merit on the Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
April 13, 2016: Golden Medal of Merit from the State of Vienna
November 27, 2019: Golden Medal of Merit of the Republic of Austria
