Hella Pick

CBE
Hella Pick in Finland, 1972, with journalist Moshe Ali (right).
Born
Hella Henrietta Pick

(1927-04-24) 24 April 1927
Vienna, Austria
OccupationJournalist

Hella Henrietta Pick CBE (born 24 April 1927) is a British-Austrian journalist of Austrian descent.

Biography

Hella Pick was born in Vienna, Austria, into a middle-class Jewish family. Her parents divorced when she was three years old and she was brought up by her mother. Following Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938, and a visit from the Gestapo, Pick's mother decided to leave Austria. Pick was put on a Kindertransport and arrived in Britain in March 1939. Her mother obtained a visa and joined her three months later.[1]

Pick attended school in the Lake District and learned English. Feeling awkward about her identity, for a while she refused to speak German at all, even with her mother. In 1948, Pick became a British citizen and she no longer felt herself to be a refugee.

Pick studied at the London School of Economics. She applied for a job at the United Nations, but was not accepted.[2] In 1960, she became the UN correspondent of The Guardian newspaper, where she was tutored by its chief US correspondent Alistair Cooke.[3] At the time there were very few women correspondents, and women were disadvantaged and not treated as equals; for example, at ambassadorial dinners the women withdrew after the meal as was long the custom in the English-speaking world, while the men—including Pick's colleagues and competitors—discussed events over port and cigars.[2] She has also written for the New Statesman.[4] She was honoured with a CBE in 2000 for her work as a journalist and writer. In Germany she became known for her appearance on the TV shows Internationales Frühschoppen and Presseclub.

Pick is the Arts & Culture Programme Director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent think-tank based in London.[5] She has dual British and Austrian citizenship, and regularly visits Austria, her "home away from home".

The Guardian News & Media Archive contains an oral history of her time on the paper in the 1960s and 1970s[6] and a written memoir.[7] Invisible Walls, an account of her life and career in journalism, was published in 2021.[8]

Bibliography

  • Simon Wiesenthal: A Life in Search of Justice, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996
  • Guilty Victim - Austria from the Holocaust to Haider, I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2000
  • Invisible Walls, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021

References

  1. ↑ "Hella Pick". Imperial War Museum - Through My Eyes. 10 November 2013. Archived from the original on 10 November 2013.
  2. 1 2 Graham-Harrison, Emma (21 June 2021). "'A woman, a refugee, and a Jew': pioneering reporter Hella Pick on breaking down walls". The Guardian.
  3. ↑ Clarke, Nick (31 March 2004). "Obituary: Alistair Cooke". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 September 2018.
  4. ↑ "New Statesman articles by Hella Pick". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 30 May 2013.
  5. ↑ "ISD Board". Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  6. ↑ "Hella Pick". Guardian News and Media Archive. The Guardian/The Observer. January–June 2002.
  7. ↑ "Memoir of Hella Pick 1960s-1970s". Guardian News and Media Archive. The Guardian/The Observer. 1997.
  8. ↑ Keane, Fergal (22 March 2021). "Invisible Walls by Hella Pick review – vital lessons from a titan of journalism". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 March 2021.
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