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Helga's life as an artist had some major inspiration. While at the concentration camp in 1941, her father said to her, "draw what you see," and she did just that. Her drawings and paintings depict life at Terezín. Not only did her art survived, but her Diary she kept helped to explain her art in much more detail, as writing is an art in itself. Much of her art survived the war.

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Helga's Thoughts on her Diary

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Helga Hošková-Weissová was born on November 10 1929, in Prague-Libeň. Her mother's name was Irena Fuchsova, and she was a seamstress. Her father, Otto Weiss, worked at the state bank in Prague. She was raised there until her family was sent to the concentration camp.

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Helga defied the Nazis. When her family was sent to Terezín, she was only 12. This meant she was unable to work for them, and she would be sent to the gas chambers to die. Instead, she lied to Josef Mengele, one of the most prominent Nazis in the war, about her age. She claimed she was 18 and could work for her keep. Her mother convinced the Nazis under Mengele's command that Helga was her daughter's older sister, and she was forced into the labor barracks and not the gas chamber.

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According to BookBrowse, the diary is as follows,

"In 1941, Helga and her parents were sent to the concentration camp of Terezín. There, Helga continued to write with astonishing insight about her daily life: the squalid living quarters, the cruel rationing of food, and the executions—as well as the moments of joy and hope that persisted in even the worst conditions.

Reconstructed from her original notebooks, the diary is presented here in its entirety. With an introduction by Francine Prose, a revealing interview between translator Neil Bermel and Helga, and the artwork Helga made during her time at Terezín, Helga's Diary stands as a vivid and utterly unique historical document."

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Helga and her family were sent to Auschwitz in 1944. Before she left, Helga's uncle, who worked in the Terezín records department, hid her diary and drawings in a brick wall. He was able to reclaim them for her after the war. Only 100 of the 15,000 children originally sent to Terezín survived. Helga was one of the few.

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Helga's Diary

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Helga Continues to paint in her old age

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Helga was only 12 when she went to the concentration camp.

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Helga says she often didn't understand what was happening, and it often lead her to believe they were hiding things from her.

"I was always asking my parents, 'What's happening?', and became angry at them if I thought they were trying to hide something, to protect me."

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Helga's art was inspired by her family to make her art.

In December 1941, her father said to her "draw what you see," and Helga took that to heart.

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Click on this article to learn more.

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On an Auschwitz station platform in 1944, Helga Weiss and her mother fooled one of the most reviled men in modern history, Josef Mengele, and managed to save their lives. Not long into her teens, Weiss lied about her age, claiming she was old enough to work for her keep. Her mother persuaded the Nazis under Mengele's command that Helga was in fact her daughter's older sister, and she was sent to the forced labour barracks and not the gas chamber.

The story is one of many recorded in a concentration camp diary that was sold to publishers around the world at the Frankfurt book fair. The private journals of Helga Weiss are to be published in the UK for the first time next year by Viking Press, while foreign rights have been snapped up by publishing houses across the world.

Weiss, an artist in her early 80s who lives in Prague and is also known by her married name of Weissova-Hoskova, mentioned her journal during occasional public appearances, but until now public interest in her written story has always been overshadowed by her success as a postwar painter. The British publisher Venetia Butterfield heard of the diary's existence last summer when Weiss visited London for a concert at the Wigmore Hall commemorating fellow inmates at the Terezín camp in former Czechoslovakia.

"I heard about the event and called someone in north London who knew Helga. They told me she was just about to get on a plane back to Prague, but that she was coming round for a coffee first," said Butterfield. "I raced up to see her and we talked for no more than 10 or 15 minutes. She is an amazing woman with a great, feisty attitude."

Butterfield, who also publishes Anne Frank's diary, asked to see a sample of the writing in one of Weiss's surviving exercise books. "We had an academic report done, and once it was clear what the diaries were I went to Prague to see her. Accounts of the past are often shaped by the knowledge of what was to happen next. What is so important about the diary is that it is Helga's reality. You are there with her. It is a very different thing from a memoir."

Before Weiss was sent to the Nazi-controlled ghetto of Terezín as a child, she witnessed the insidious progress of the Holocaust in Prague. "One thing after another was forbidden: employees lost their jobs, we were banned from the parks, swimming pools, sports clubs. I was banned from going to school when I was 10," Weiss told the Observer at the time of the London concert. "I was always asking my parents, 'What's happening?', and became angry at them if I thought they were trying to hide something, to protect me."

The Weiss apartment was handed over to Germans and the family were transported to Terezín by rail. Known as Theresienstadt in German, the city on the north-west perimeter of Prague had become a transit hub where Czech Jews were put to work before being sent on to extermination camps. Her diary, which begins in 1939, records noises that still haunt her; the "thunderous steps, the roar of the ghetto guards, the banging of doors and hysterical weeping always sound - and foretell - the same".

"She was obviously very clever and quite mature," said Butterfield. "She was obsessed with school at first, like any child of that age. Then there are terrible goodbyes as her friends begin to be taken off to Terezín. At each point Helga thinks the worst thing has happened to her so you see how people become used to bad things. Eventually, when the family are sent to the camp they take some cake and eat a little every day."

Butterfield points out that memories of Terezín are not all painful. Weiss grew up there, fell in love for the first time, and spent time with both her parents, before her father was killed at Auschwitz. "My father told me that, whatever happens, we must remain human, so that we do not die like cattle," Weiss has said. "And I think that the will to create was an expression of the will to live, and survive, as human beings."

On 4 October 1944, Weiss and her mother were also transported to Auschwitz, where they faced Mengele, who was directing children and older women towards the gas chambers and fit adults towards the forced labour camp. Thanks to her subterfuge, she was one of only 150 to 1,500 children believed to have survived of the 15,000 sent to Terezín.

She was then transferred from Auschwitz to a labour camp at Flossenbürg where she escaped death a second time when she was forced to join a 16-day "death march" to the camp at Mauthausen. She remained there until the end of the war. "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."
Helga's Diary will be published by Viking on 7 June next year

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The schoolgirl who survived the Holocaust by fooling the Nazis

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Helga Weiss, now an artist in Prague, escaped death at Auschwitz by lying to Josef Mengele about her age and saying she was fit to work

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This song illustrates a child longing to come home, on promises of the war being soon over. Helga's paintings and drawings express her despair in the camp, but also highlight the feelings in this song of hope and promises of returning home.

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Yiddish folk poet and songwriter Mordecai Gebirtig was born in 1877 in Krakow, Poland. He wrote "Shifrele's Portrait" was written in Krakow in December 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. Gebirtig's eldest daughter, Shifre, lived in Lvov, and was separated from her family when the Soviets annexed Lvov.

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To conclude, Helga Weiss was a Jewish girl who survived the Holocaust by lying to a prominent Nazi. Helga's lie about her age saved her and her family's lives. Her act of treason showed how even kids could stand up to the Nazis, even if it wasn't in the way anyone thought of before.

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Helga before she was sent to the Concentration Camp

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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/feb/22/helga-weiss-diary-nazi-death-camp

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/16/schoolgirl-who-fooled-the-nazis

https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/2860/helgas-diary#:~:text=In%201941%2C%20Helga%20and%20her,in%20even%20the%20worst%20conditions.