Hella Pick
{{Short description|British-Austrian journalist (1929–2024)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2024}}
{{infobox person
| image = Hella-Pick-with-Moshe-Ali-1972.jpg
| caption = Pick in 1972, with journalist Moshe Ali
| birth_name = Hella Henrietta Pick
| birth_date = {{birth date|1929|4|24|df=y}}
| birth_place = Vienna, Austria
| death_date = {{death date and age|2024|4|4|1929|4|24|df=y}}
| death_place = London, England
| name =
| nationality = Austrian
British (from 1948)
| honorific_suffix = CBE
| occupation = Journalist
}}
Hella Henrietta Pick CBE (24 April 1929 – 4 April 2024) was an Austrian-born British journalist.
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.{{cite web|url=http://www.throughmyeyes.org.uk/server/show/nav.22181|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131110233532/http://www.throughmyeyes.org.uk/server/show/nav.22181|url-status=dead|archive-date=10 November 2013|title=Hella Pick|date=10 November 2013|website=Imperial War Museum - Through My Eyes}}
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.{{Cite news |title='A woman, a refugee, and a Jew': pioneering reporter Hella Pick on breaking down walls |last=Graham-Harrison |first=Emma |newspaper=The Guardian |date=21 June 2021 |url= https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2021/jun/21/hella-pick-foreign-correspondent-before-my-time}}
In 1960, she became the UN correspondent of The Guardian newspaper, where she was tutored by its chief US correspondent Alistair Cooke.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/mar/31/pressandpublishing.broadcasting|title=Obituary: Alistair Cooke|first=Nick|last=Clarke|date=31 March 2004|newspaper=The Guardian|accessdate=16 September 2018}} 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. She also wrote for the New Statesman.{{cite web |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/writers/313551|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130530073153/http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/hella_pick|archive-date=30 May 2013|title=New Statesman articles by Hella Pick|website=New Statesman}} 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 was the Arts & Culture Programme Director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent think-tank based in London.{{cite web|url=https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-board//|title=ISD Board|website=Institute for Strategic Dialogue|accessdate=21 June 2021}} She had dual British and Austrian citizenship, and regularly visited 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{{cite web|url=http://guardian.calmview.eu/calmview/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=OHP/65&|title=Hella Pick|date=January–June 2002|website=Guardian News and Media Archive|publisher=The Guardian/The Observer}} and a written memoir.{{cite web|url=http://guardian.calmview.eu/calmview/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=MEM/HHP|title=Memoir of Hella Pick 1960s-1970s|date=1997|website=Guardian News and Media Archive|publisher=The Guardian/The Observer}} Invisible Walls, an account of her life and career in journalism, was published in 2021.{{cite news|last=Keane|first=Fergal|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/22/invisible-walls-review-hella-pick-autobiography-journalist|title=Invisible Walls by Hella Pick review – vital lessons from a titan of journalism|work=The Guardian|date=22 March 2021|access-date=22 March 2021}}
Pick died in London on 4 April 2024, at the age of 94.{{Cite news |author-link=Jonathan Steele (journalist)|last=Steele |first=Jonathan |date=4 April 2024 |title=Hella Pick obituary |url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/04/hella-pick-obituary |access-date=4 April 2024 |work=The Guardian}}{{cite news |title=Journalistin Hella Pick gestorben: Aus Wien ganz nah an die Weltpolitik |url=https://kurier.at/kultur/medien/journalistin-hella-pick-gestorben-aus-wien-ganz-nah-an-die-weltpolitik/402843655 |access-date=4 April 2024 |publisher=Kurier |date=4 April 2024}}
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
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80020148 Imperial War Museum interview, February 2001]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pick, Hella}}
Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics
Category:20th-century British journalists
Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Category:The Guardian journalists
Category:Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United Kingdom
Category:Journalists from Vienna
Category:Kindertransport refugees