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Website: How Helga Weiss used art to survive

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Website: How Helga Weiss used art to survive

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What to do in Houston? Visit the Czech Center Museum Houston

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Through her diary and art, Helga Weiss tells her story of survival and coping through the Holocausts. After being transported to Terezín at age 14, Helga clung to writing and art, depicting everyday life in the camp. Today her diary and art are known by many and has reached millions.

In an interview with BBC TV Helga Weiss described how much they were allowed to bring to the camp. "We were allowed 50 kg of luggage, so we took just our clothes and something important to us. I took two very small dolls, a pad, watercolors and crayons," Her art became a way of communicating and processing her experiences and feelings in the camp.

Helga's art was greatly encouraged by her father Otto Weiss. After receiving a picture of children in snow, he urged his daughter to "draw what you see". Her art mirrored her diary as she began to illustrate everyday life in the camp. Her art would prove as a medium of understanding the would she was living in.

Her drawings depicted the horrors of Terezin like rations, disease, the lice and bed bugs. The pictures show queues for food; a bleak, basic washroom; a girl ill with tuberculosis; people on stretchers; bread transported in a hearse marked "Welfare for the young". Helga did as her father told her and would later think of the snowman drawing as the first picture, she drew in Terezin, but also the last drawing of hers as a little girl.

Helga would later be sent to four camps, Terezin, Auschwitz, Freiberg, and Mauthausen. In the days leading up to her deportation to Auschwitz, she hid her drawings and poems from her father in the Terezin camp. Helga was one of 100 children to survive from the Terezin camp.

Today, Helga shares her diary and illustrations with the world. The atrocities of the Holocaust will forever be a part of her and in her art. Her diary has been published as well as two more books.

Recently Helga's story was included in the 2019 film Anne Frank Parallel Stories. Helga Weiss, Arianna Szörenyi, Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard and sisters Andra and Tatiana Bucci share their stories side by side along with Anne Frank. These girls were all around the same age experiencing the Holocaust. The movie portrays their struggles and similarities. These women will go on to share their story and life with millions. Helga Weiss's story will continue through her writing and in her art.

At the Czech Center Museum Houston we are inspired by Helga Weiss and her art. The Creative Activism Project is the museums growing and interactive project. The project allows students to develop critical thinking skills by asking students the following questions: What does it mean to live through a traumatic event? How can we discuss sensitive topics? How can art be used to express empathy?

To answer the following questions, please research the history of the Terezin Concentration Camp and create a work of art based on what you've learned about the children in Terezin and what it means towards our times. Students are welcome to create an illustration representing how the information about Terezin had impacted their perspective on a historical event. In the fall of 2020, we will showcase the art in a special exhibit on Terezin in our museum.

You can share your artwork with us until August 31, 2020
For more information, email: Development@CzechCenter.org

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Helga Weiss - How a young Hero survived Terror through Art Czech Center Museum Houston - A place to celebrate our world's art, music, dance and diverse cultures - What to do in Houston? Visit the Czech Center Museum Houston The Czech Center Museum Houston is a meeting place for Czech and local culture, a place where artists and professionals, Czech and non-Czech alike, can celebrate art, culture and music.

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Through her diary and art, Helga Weiss tells her story of survival and coping through the Holocausts. After being transported to Terezín at age 14, Helga clung to writing and art, depicting everyday life in the camp. Today her diary and art are known by many and has reached millions.

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Helga Weiss and her mother fooled a Nazi doctor named Josef Mengele he was known as "The angel of death". When she was an early teen, she lied to Josef Mengele about her age. She claimed she was old enough to be used for work and not be sent off to the gas chambers. If children were too young to be used in forced labor camps, the Nazis would send them straight to the gas chambers because the viewed as "worthless". Her mother backed her up and said Helga was older than she appeared. The Nazis believed them and instead of sending Helga to the gas chambers they sent her to the forced labor camps. Helga was one of the very few children that survived the Holocaust because of this.

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While in the Concentration camps, Helga kept a diary which follows her traumatic experience in the camps. In her diary she also recorded certain noises that haunted her that she still carries with her to this day. Her diary was later published.

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Picture: Helga days before her family was deported

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Picture: Helga days before her family was deported

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Helga and her mother were transported to this camp after they fooled Josef Mengele about Helga's age.

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While in the concentration camps, Helga's father urged her to use her art skills to draw pictures about the camps along with her dairy. Her pictures follow her diary, and they are about the many traumatizing and horrible things she saw. Her diary and drawings helped her get through the terrible things she went through at the four different camps she went to. In the end, she was one of the 100 children that survived the Terezin. Now, her diary and artwork have been published, and she shares them with the world.

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Diary of schoolgirl who outwitted Nazi Angel of Death to become publishing sensation

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The remarkable story of how a Jewish schoolgirl outwitted one of the most feared Nazis to escape the death camps is to be published for the first time next year.In 1944 Helga Weiss and her mother were transported to Auschwitz, where they came face to face with Josef Mengele – the Angel of Death – who was selecting children and older women for the gas chambers.Weiss, who was in her early teens at the time managed to persuade Mengele and the other guards that she was older than she appeared and her mother was much younger.The subterfuge meant the pair were directed to the forced labour camp rather than the gas chambers and Weiss became one of just 10 per cent of children from the Nazi controlled Czech ghetto of Terezin to survive the holocaust.After the war, Weiss became an internationally renowned artist, whose married name Weissova-Hoskova, is celebrated around the world.…

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Helga Weiss is now an artist living in Prague. She continues to tell her story to many people and share her horrifying experiences. Her diary and artwork are published for many people to read.