Helga's Diary by Helga Weiss

Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp

Helga Weiss

Published 2013

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Why bother reading another Holocaust story? 

To answer that, Francine Prose noted in her introduction of Helga's Diary that more than a century later it still seems amazing that such a thing could have happened: 

that millions of innocent men, women, and children could have been murdered by the Nazi's remarkably efficient killing system, in broad daylight and with the full knowledge of so many.  The further these horrors recede into history, the fewer the living witnesses who remain to provide us with firsthand accounts, the more important it is for those amazing stories to continue to be told. 

Helga was a young Jewish girl in Prague, who began a diary at age ten. It was 1938, before the Nazi occupation. Helga recorded her observations and experiences of the Nazi treatment --  the increasing  demoralization, humiliation, and absolute seclusion from society; the growing prohibitions of public use, like theaters, parks, schools, and travel; and later the physical mark of the yellow star. She saw her neighbors, friends, and family taken away when called up for transport, which they suspected would mean a work camp. 

As is typical of young children, Helga adapted to the changes in her new world, and seemed to only want order and sanity. She remained cheerfully optimistic throughout much of her experiences, including suppressing any feelings of anguish or sadness. 

The Guardian: artwork of Helga Weiss

At the end of December 1941, Helga and her parents were selected for transport and ended up at Terezin. Here the Jews recreated and maintained as close to normal life as possible by working, keeping house, cooking, playing, and doing school. Their lives were made more difficult, almost impossible, and yet they still rose to the occasion to confront every challenge and excelled. 

Helga's writings in her diary demonstrated the spirit to overcome obstacles, even tolerate things like bed bugs and fleas, and at times hunger. At one point she said:

They want to destroy us but we won't give in.

By October 1944, Helga and her mother were selected for transport out of Terezin, to Auschwitz. She gave her diary to an uncle, along with her drawings, in which he hid behind a brick wall. The remainder of her entries were from memory, written down after she was liberated. 

She recalled the miserable long trip to Auschwitz, the hunger, the sleeplessness, the cold. She described how freezing was worse than starving, and I remembered that Frederick Douglass said the same: he could stand being hungry, but being cold was unbearable. 

At Auschwitz, Helga and her mother lied about their ages so that they would remain together, not too young or too old, which could mean instant gas chamber. It worked. They were given very little to wear and very little to eat. Their work was tedious and dangerous, but again, they rose to the occasion. Often times they stood for hours and hours in insufferable temperatures for roll call, and sometimes it was just to wear them down mentally. 

As it became obvious that the Allies were closing in on Germany, the prisoners were removed to Freiberg and then Mauthausen. They had been on one transport for sixteen days. Then the Nazis forced them on foot. Helga wrote:

I can't go on. I'll lie down here - let them shoot me. If they'd only let us rest a moment, an instant, just to catch our breath. Or allow us a drink. If we'd been allowed to drink from the pump at the train station, we'd be able to go on. They drive us on at a mad pace. A drop of water, a single swallow. . . I can't go on. 

May 1945, something was happening. In the middle of distributing soup, Helga heard voices. The people dispersed. She dropped her soup bowl and ran outside. "A white flag flutters! A flag of peace!"

Mauthusen has capitulated, peace has come to us. My legs break into a run all by themselves. Muddied, in my bare stockings just the way I'd run out, I arrive back at our space. Mom stands up- where has she found the strength all of a sudden? I hang myself around her neck and, between kisses, I spill out, jubilantly, the word we've dreamed of for years. The word we indulged ourselves with in the most secret corner of our being and feared to pronounce aloud. That sacred word, which contains so many beautiful unbelievable  things: liberty, freedom. The end of tyranny, misery, slavery, hunger. 

We survived the war. PEACE IS HERE. 

Helga and her mother returned to Prague, only to suffer under the Communist regime of the U.S.S.R. She never saw her father again. He probably died in the gas chamber immediately after arriving at Auschwitz. Helga went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts and became an artist. 

At the end of the diary, there is an interview with Helga. She was asked what contribution her diary [brought] to the stories of the Holocaust, and she said that her diary is truthful. It is "half-childish, accessible and expressive, and it will help people to understand those times." 

What I take away most is this passage: toward the very end of the war, as she sees the demise of the people in the camp, what she describes as "Death herself walking past." And, yet, even in her own demise she longs to reach them, to encourage them. 

You want to entice a smile on to these people's faces? Fool! Weeks, maybe months without food and drink. Yes, that's the last system. Physical and spiritual torture became commonplace and then -- the mortality rate wasn't high enough -- the sickbed, at the whim of lice and the typhus bacilli, what have these -- people? -- gone through?

Yes, they were once people. Healthy, strong, with their own will and thoughts, with feelings, interests, and love. Love for life, for good things, for beauty, with faith in a better tomorrow. What's left are phantoms, bodies, skeletons without souls. 

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For me, I still need to read these Holocaust stories. They deserve to be read. I wish not to believe that man can be this evil, but -- yes, he can. There was a time when I did not think the Holocaust could ever happen again, but in the last two years, I have changed my mind. Man is still willing to practice segregation, prejudice, humiliation, separation, public shaming, class and group warfare, and just plain evil in order to gain power and control -- including my own government. Man does not seem to want to learn from history; but some, in fact, are desirous to capitalize on the very devilish systems of centralized power, control of the masses, suppression of truth, and elimination of powerless groups. Today's global power grabs are no different than the Nazis or the Romans. Man is all the same; he just finds new creative and technological ways to accomplish his evil.