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In 1944, Helga Weiss and her mother fooled the most reviled man in modern history, Josef Mengele. Helga claimed she was old enough to work and her mother Irena, claimed she was Helga's older sister, as the together mothers and children were sent to the gas chambers.

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Below is a photo of Helga Weiss while she was talking in a recorded interview.

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"Helga laughs explosively, a sound still full of shock and incredulity. They hadn't known about the gas chambers, the death camps. 'We arrived and saw smoking chimneys – we thought it was a factory.'"

-an article by theguardian.com

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Helga and her mother, Irena were sent to Terezín, Auschwitz, Freiberg and Mauthausen camps.

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Watch this video as Helga talks about life in the camp(s) and her diary.

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Below is a photo of Helga taken 3 days before she was taken to a ghetto camp.

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"Thunderous steps, the roar of the ghetto guards, the banging of doors and hysterical weeping always sound – and foretell – the same."
-Helga Weiss

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From the left, Helga's Mother Irena Weiss, Helga's paternal grandmother Sophie, Helga's father Otto Weiss, and in front is Helga herself.

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Helga was a great artist and her father instructed her to draw the things that she saw.

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"My father told me that, whatever happens, we must remain human, so that we do not die like cattle."

-Helga Weiss

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Helga was one out of 100 children that survived Auschwitz out of the 15,000 children sent there. Her diary is an important record of life in the concentration camps.

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"I asked Helga whether it had felt wonderful to be liberated," said Butterfield. "She said, no, it was not that special because by that point she was so ill and had seen so many terrible things it was hard to feel anything."

-Venetia Butterfield, the women that published Helga's Diary

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Below is a picture of what Helga's published diary looks like.