Mayor Ludwig presented the award in Vienna City Hall
Vienna (OTS/RK) – On Monday, the journalist and author Hella Pick received the Golden Medal of Honor for services to the state of Vienna in the Red Salon of the town hall. Mayor Michael Ludwig presented the award in the presence of numerous guests of honor.
Ludwig called Pick “an anti-fascist, contemporary witness and admonisher who never tired of teaching young generations to ‘never forget’.” As a world politics expert, numerous institutes and institutions trusted Pick’s analyses, “including the Royal Institute of International Relations, of which she was a member for two terms.” The WDR formats “Der Internationale Frühschoppen” and “Presseclub” also made Pick known in Germany. On behalf of the British journalist, publisher and political consultant George Weidenfelds, Pick was also “involved in the founding of the Chair of Israel Studies at the University of Sussex and in the establishment of the Weidenfeld Institute for Jewish Studies.” At the end of the 1960s, at the request of Bruno Kreisky, she became an Austrian citizen again.
In Vienna she “supported projects at the Simon Wiesenthal Center and also made a name for herself as a celebrated author.” “Simon Wiesenthal – A Biography” was published by Rowohlt in 1997, and in 1999 Hella Pick took issue with the traditional “victim thesis” in her major analysis “And what role does Austria play?” Ludwig quoted Pick from a recent interview with “Zeit” in which she criticized England’s nationalist tendencies and emphasized that she felt like a European who was getting closer to Austria again. Finally, the mayor congratulated Pick on the Golden Medal of Honor and thanked her for her courage and her “great role model for generations of upright people.”
To person
Dr. Hella Pick was born on April 24, 1929 in Vienna. After Austria was “annexed” to the National Socialist German Reich, she fled to England on a Kindertransport in 1939 at the age of 10. Pick studied political science there and received his doctorate from the London School of Economics in 1947. In 1957 she began her journalistic work as a freelancer for the BBC. From 1961 to 1996 she worked as a UN correspondent at The Guardian newspaper, later heading the editorial office in Washington DC. In the course of her work, she reported on important world political events and met important personalities such as Willy Brandt, Wojciech Jaruzelski, Nicolae Ceaușescu, John F. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger and Winston Churchill. Pick is a holder of the Order of the British Empire.
(End) white
Questions & Contact:
PID town hall correspondence
City of Vienna Press and Information Service, editor on duty
Service for journalists, city editorial team
01 4000-81081
dr@ma53.wien.gv.at
presse.wien.gv.at