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Artist's Lost Works Find UK Home After 70-Year Ordeal
26 Jan
Summary
- 681 artworks by Peter Kien landed at Heathrow Airport last Thursday.
- Judy King fulfilled a deathbed promise to her mother, Helga Wolfenstein.
- The artworks survived Nazis but were held by Czech authorities for decades.
Six hundred eighty-one artworks, including drawings and manuscripts by Jewish artist and poet Peter Kien, have found a new home in London. These works, created between 1941 and 1944 in the Theresienstadt ghetto, arrived at Heathrow Airport last Thursday. Their journey to the Wiener Holocaust Library fulfills a promise made by Judy King to her late mother, Helga Wolfenstein, Kien's lover.
Kien entrusted the suitcase containing these pieces to Wolfenstein before his transport to Auschwitz, where he perished at 25. Wolfenstein's mother hid the suitcase from the Nazis, but it was later confiscated by communist authorities in Czechoslovakia. For decades, the collection was held by a museum, with recovery efforts proving difficult due to poor record-keeping and bureaucratic hurdles.
Judy King successfully navigated complex negotiations, including proving provenance with a notarized document from her mother. Despite last-minute customs complications and weather delays, the artworks were finally released from Prague and brought to London. This significant donation adds to the Wiener Holocaust Library's existing collection of Kien's works, further preserving his legacy.
