Mayday

The documentary film Theresienklang is about the life story about the shoa survivor Helga Pollak. She was born as the only child of Otto and Frieda Pollak on 28. Mai 1930 in Vienna. Otto Pollak who came from Kyov/Gaya (today Czech Republic), he moved to Vienna in 1916. The summer holidays spent the girl Helga always in the Czech Republic. Under the pressure of events in Vienna in 1938, Helgas parents decided to leave th daughter there . In the summer of 1941 her father Otto had just escaped deportation. At September 1941 he met Helga in Kyjov. Finally, in January 1943, Helga Pollak was deported together with her father Otto an her family (grandfather, grandmother, uncles, aunts and cousins) via Hungarian-Brod to Theresienstadt, where they arrived at 23. January 1943. Helga notes in her diary the practice lessons of the choir of Rafael Schächter rehearsing the requiem by Verdi fin the cellar of the children home. Helga fell ill with encephalitis. In October 1944 Helga had to leave Theresienstadt with a transport to Auschwitz and was assigned to forced labor. Than she was deported to Öderan in Saxony where she had to work in an ammunition factory. In 1945, she was deported back to Theresienstadt with a misery transport where she met her father again. Together they experienced the liberation in Theresienstadt. From Quarantine was Helga released with her father and they came back to Kyjov. Here they faced the terrible fact that their entire family had been murdered, 63 people did not return. Her murdered family is remembered in the pinkas synagogue.