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, as so often, and I was always glad and reassured 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. Adorable.

Many fragments of memory 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 (Haberdaser's Aske's Boys' School) , Brussels (European Commission), Geneva (United Nations). Memories of readings, exhibition openings, speeches, international projects, often along with her friends from Theresienstadt, who beame known as "The Girls of Room 28". A theater-play, a book and the exhibition all entitled "The Girls of Room 28" tell their story since 2004, and without Helga's authentic diary the story would not have been told. It is impossible to say how often she gave interviews and testimony about her childhood in Vienna, Kyjov, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau and in the working-camp Oederan in Saxony, how often we were invited together to read from the book "The Girls of Room 28" and from her precious Theresienstadt diary.

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 I made ten years ago for her 80th birthday, while being well aware that so much more happened in the last years in Vienna ever since that unforgettable matinée on 29 January 2017, when we staged "our reading" for the last time together., along with our beloved Berlin ensemble "Zwockhaus", who presented songs from Ilse Weber and the Theresienstadt Cabaret. The event in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, 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 until,  in mid-1938,  her parents decided to give her in the care of their Czech family in Kyjov, Moravia,  and in the very street, where her father Otto Pollak owned and managed the concert-cafe Palmhof.  With songs that evoked the atmosphere of this special place on Mariahilferstrasse, our performance was also dedicated to the memory of her father.

Without us having planned it, the event was recorded and, thanks to the initiative of a friend, slightly changed in the studio of the Austrian Radio (ORF) and released as a ORF double-CD: "Helga Pollak-Kinsky. Theresienstadt".  Helga and I  and our friends Maria Thomaschke, Winfried Radeke and Andreas Jocksch (Zwockhaus), we all felt that this was the most emotional performance and not repeatable.

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, followed, in 2016,  by the Golden Order of Merit of the State of Vienna and, in 2019,  by the Golden Order of Merit of the Republic of Austria.

Helga's friends have written their  last good-byes. Visit the Website of our little association

Room 28 e.V.