Författarbild
7 verk 97 medlemmar 1 recension

Om författaren

Hella Pick is the former Diplomatic Editor of the Guardian and author of the highly acclaimed Simon Wiesenthal: A Biography. She was born in Austria and fled the country as a young child following Hitler's takeover. As an adult and in her journalistic career, she has frequently visited Austria and visa mer has known well all the country's leaders. She was awarded the CBE in the Millennium Honours list visa färre

Verk av Hella Pick

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Födelsedag
1929-04-24
Kön
female
Nationalitet
Austria
UK
Födelseort
Wien, Österreich
Bostadsorter
Großbritannien
London, England, UK
New York, New York, USA
Ambleside, Cumbria, England, UK
Utbildning
London School of Economics
Yrken
journalist
foreign correspondent
Holocaust survivor
autobiographer
biographer
television journalist
Relationer
Cooke, Alistair (mentor)
Priser och utmärkelser
CBE (2000)
Kort biografi
Hella Pick was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. Her parents divorced when she was three years old and her father emigrated to the USA; she never saw him again. She was raised in middle-class comfort by her mother and maternal grandparents. In 1939, following Nazi Germany's Anschluss (annexation) of Austria and a visit from the Gestapo, her mother put 10-year-old Hella alone on a Kindertransport to the UK. Her mother was able to obtain a visa and joined her daughter three months later. Pick stayed with different foster families while her mother worked as live-in domestic servant and cook to support them. They moved to the Lake District, where Pick attended the Fairfield School at Ambleside, Westmorland, and learned English. In 1948, she became a British citizen. She studied at the London School of Economics and began her career as a journalist in the 1950s working as a foreign correspondent in West Africa. In 1960, she was named the United Nations correspondent of The Guardian in New York City. The paper's chief USA correspondent, Alistair Cooke, was her mentor. She also wrote for the New Statesman. She was the director of the Arts & Culture Program at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent think-tank based in London. She has also served on the advisory board of the German-Jewish Studies Centre at the University of Sussex. She regularly visited Austria, and became famous there and in Germany for her appearances on the weekly TV current affairs shows Frühschoppen and Presseclub, as well as the BBC's World Service and World Service TV. In 2000, she was named CBE for her work as a journalist and writer. She is the author of several acclaimed books, including Simon Wiesenthal: A Life in Search of Justice (1996), Guilty Victim: Austria from the Holocaust to Haider (2000) and her autobiography, Invisible Walls: A Journalist in Search of Her Life (2021).

Medlemmar

Recensioner

Simon Wiesenthal survived several extermination/concentration camps. His mother died in one.* He thought his wife perished. As the war ended and his camp was freed by the Americans he began helping to testify against SS guards and tracking them down. It turned into a life long passion.

This is not a hagiography as the author acknowledges that Wiesenthal has had some shortcomings. But, the author correctly points out that Wiesenthal has contributed much to our understanding of the holocaust and how it should be dealt with. There are evil people who probably would not have been brought to justice in this world were it not for the work of Wiesenthal. This is his story.

*I thought one of the most moving parts of the story was when Wiesenthal described how his mother was picked up while he was away from home and packed into a very crowded train bound for a concentration camp. The train sat on the edge of town for three days. The people inside the box cars calling for water but the guards would not let anyone approach. How anguished and helpless to know your elderly mother may be literally dying of thirst on a train car right on the edge of your town and you cannot do anything about it. Wiesenthal never knew if he mother perished in a box car or survived to die in the concentration camp.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Chris_El | Mar 19, 2015 |

Statistik

Verk
7
Medlemmar
97
Popularitet
#194,532
Betyg
½ 3.3
Recensioner
1
ISBN
14
Språk
3

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