The schoolgirl who survived the Holocaust by fooling the Nazis

Helga Weiss, now an artist in Prague, escaped death in Auschwitz by Josef Mengele to lie about his age and saying he was able to work

On a train platform in Auschwitz in 1944, Helga Weiss and his mother deceived one of the most reviled men in modern history, Josef Mengele, and managed to save their lives. Shortly into his teens, Weiss lied about his age, saying it was of working age to keep it. His mother convinced the Nazis under the command of Mengele that Helga was, in fact, the older sister of her daughter, and she was sent to the headquarters of forced labor and the gas chamber.

The story is one of many recorded in a logging camp was sold to publishers around the world at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The diaries of Helga Weiss was published in the UK for the first time next year by Viking Press, while the rights of foreigners have been picked up by publishers around the world.

Weiss, an artist of 80 years who lives in Prague and is also known by her married name of Weissova-Hoskova, said his magazine during public appearances, but until Now the public written history has always been overshadowed by his success as a painter after the war. The British publisher Venetia Butterfield heard about the existence of the newspaper last summer, when Weiss went to London for a concert at the Wigmore Hall to commemorate the other prisoners in the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.

"I have heard of cases where someone called and in north London, who knew Helga. I was told that I was about to board a plane to return to Prague, but was the first coffee next round, "said Butterfield. "I ran to her and talk to no more than 10 or 15 minutes. OF A wonderful woman with a great attitude, willing to fight. "

Butterfield, who also publishes the diary of Anne Frank, asked to see a sample of writing in one of the survivors to exercise books Weiss. "We made an academic report, and once it was clear the day I went to Prague to see. Accounts of the past are often shaped by the knowledge of what would happen next. How important is the agenda is that it is the reality of Helga. You are there with her. This is a very different thing from a book of memories. "

Before Weiss was sent to the ghetto of Terezin Nazi controlled as a child, witnessed the insidious development of the Holocaust in Prague. "One thing after another, was banned. Employees have lost their jobs, which were banned in parks, pools, sports clubs to be banned from going to school when he was 10 years," said Weiss, the Observer

during the concert in London. "He was always asking my parents," What is happening? ", And was angry with them if they thought they were trying to hide something, to protect me."

• Weiss The apartment was handed over to the Germans and the family were taken to Terezin by rail. Known as Theresienstadt in German, the city in the northwest perimeter of Prague had become a transit center where Czech Jews were put to work before being sent to death camps. His diary, which begins in 1939, records the sounds that remain torment. The "thundering steps ghetto guards, blows the doors and always hysterical crying sound - and predict - the same"

"He was obviously very intelligent and mature enough," said Butterfield. "I was obsessed by the school at first, like any child of that age. Then there are his friends farewell terrible start to be brought to Terezín. At each point of Helga believes that the worst has happened to so see how people are used to bad things. Finally, when the family is sent to the field that takes a bit of cake and eat a little every day. "

points Butterfield said that memories of Terezin are not as painful. Weiss grew up there, fell in love first, and spent time with both parents, before his father was murdered in Auschwitz. "My father told me that, whatever happens, we remain human, we should not die like cattle," said Weiss. "And I think the desire to create is an expression of the will to live and survive as human beings. "

On October 4, 1944, Weiss and his mother were also transferred to Auschwitz, where they met Mengele, who led the women and children into gas chambers and adults of adjustment to the labor camp. With his subterfuge, which was one of 150 to 1,500 children suspected of having survived the 15,000 sent to Terezin.
She was transferred from Auschwitz to a labor camp in Flossenburg, where he escaped death a second time when she was forced to join a 16-day "death march" in the Mauthausen camp. He remained there until the end of the war. "I asked Helga if there was a wonderful feeling to be released," said Butterfield. "She said no, it was not so special, because at that time was so ill and had seen many terrible things that it was difficult to feel anything."

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