Hella Pick

Hella Pick CBE
Pick in 1972, with journalist Moshe Ali
Born	Hella Henrietta Pick (1929-04-24)24 April 1929 Vienna,Austria
Died	4 April 2024(2024-04-04)(aged 94) London,England
Nationality	Austrian British (from 1948)
Occupation	Journalist

Hella Henrietta PickCBE(24 April 1929 – 4 April 2024) was an Austrian-born British journalist.

Biography

Hella Pick was born inVienna,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'sannexation of Austriain 1938, and a visit from theGestapo,Pick's mother decided to leave Austria. Pick was put on aKindertransportand arrived in Britain in March 1939. Her mother obtained a visa and joined her three months later.

Pick attended school in theLake Districtand 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 theLondon School of Economics.She applied for a job at the United Nations, but was not accepted. In 1960, she became the UN correspondent ofThe Guardiannewspaper, where she was tutored by its chief US correspondentAlistair Cooke.At the time there were very few women correspondents, and women were disadvantaged and not treated as equals; for example, at ambassadorial dinners thewomen withdrewafter 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.She also wrote for theNew Statesman.She was honoured with aCBEin 2000 for her work as a journalist and writer. In Germany she became known for her appearance on the TV showsInternationales FrühschoppenandPresseclub.

Pick was the Arts & Culture Programme Director at theInstitute for Strategic Dialogue,an independent think-tank based in London.She had dual British and Austrian citizenship, and regularly visited Austria, her "home away from home".

TheGuardian News & Media Archivecontains an oral history of her time on the paper in the 1960s and 1970sand a written memoir.Invisible Walls,an account of her life and career in journalism, was published in 2021.

Pick died in London on 4 April 2024, at the age of 94.

Bibliography

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

External links

• Imperial War Museum interview, February 2001