Helga-Kinsky

Farewell to

Helga Kinsky, born Pollak (May 28, 1930 -  November 14, 2020)


14 November 2020

 

In the night of 13/14 November 2020, the life of a wonderful woman came to an abrupt end. I am still much too shaken and I struggle with tears for words. My sympathy goes out to her children Eva and Eric and grand-daughter Sara and family. - Even though Helga Kinsky, née Pollak, turned ninety years old on 28 May 2020, I feel as if she was torn out in the middle of life. There was nothing to suggest that this would happen. The day before, we spoke on the phone. Whenever I heard her soft calming voice I was glad to feel that she was still in good health, still interested in life and people and everything that was dear and important to her.

Countless people have come to know, appreciate and love Helga over the past decades - as a Holocaust survivor and contemporary witness, always ready to share her experiences especially with younger people, as the author of a touching diary written at the age of 12-14 in the Terezin ghetto, and above all as a wonderful, wise and immensely engaging, charming woman. Many people took her to their hearts; she was so special.

Fragments of memories swirl in confusion in my head as if shattered by a violent quake - memories of the annual meetings in Spindleruv Mlyn and Prague, of my visits to Vienna and of the innumerable journeys we made together, journeys that took us all over Germany and abroad, to Israel, London, Brussels (European Commission), and in 2014 to Geneva (United Nations).

Not long ago Helga asked me: "Where have we been? I cannot think of all the places, all the people who invited us." I promised to update the list which I made 2005, ten years ago for her 80th birthday, while being well aware that so much more happened in the last years in Vienna ever since our unforgettable matinée on 29 January 2017, when we staged "our reading" for the last time together, along with our beloved Berlin ensemble Zwockhaus. 

The event in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, a project supported by the German Foreign Office,  to which Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen spoke the Welcoming words, marked both, the highlight and the closing of our common public appearance. Never was Helga's story told in a more touching way, in a more captivating atmosphere than in Vienna's Stadtsaal on Mariahilferstasse, the very street in which she spent the first eight years of her childhood and in the very street, where her father Otto Pollak owned and managed the concert-cafe Palmhof.

Without having planned, the event was recorded and, thanks to the initiative of a friend turned into a CD by the Austrian Radio (ORF). 


I was so happy for her when, after many years of unceasing commitment in Germany, Helga and her friend Flaška (Anna Hanusová) were awarded, in 2013, the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Merit on a Ribbon) of the Federal Republic of Germany. 

Further rewards followed in Austria. In 2016 Helga received the Golden Order of Merit of the State of Vienna and, in 2019, the Golden Order of Merit of the Republic of Austria. 

I know of course, we all know, that life comes to an end one day. But the knowledge of it does not take away the shock, the pain, the grief and sadness when a loved one is torn away from life, the more so in so sudden unthinkable way. I imagined and believed that you will live for many more years to come, Helga! I hoped and wished it so much! You are so important for me. You are an essential part of my l life- I will forever cherish you in my heart.


Hannelore

Unforgettale Memories....

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