681 Theresienstadt drawings and letters by Peter Kien arrive in London

A small caramel-brown suitcase containing 681 drawings, love letters, poems and manuscripts by the Jewish artist and poet Peter Kien, created in the Theresienstadt ghetto between 1941 and 1944, landed at Heathrow last Thursday and was taken to the Wiener Holocaust Library in central London, where Judy King, 66, was waiting.

Kien had handed the suitcase to Helga Wolfenstein the evening before he was transported to Auschwitz, where he was murdered at 25 along with his parents and his estranged wife. Wolfenstein and her mother Hermine hid the case in the ghetto's infectious diseases ward; after the war Wolfenstein left Prague and eventually settled in England, but the suitcase was taken from her elderly aunt Julia Fleischerova by communist authorities in the 1970s after a handyman informed on the contents.

When communist rule ended in 1989 the works were held by the Terezín Memorial; Wolfenstein campaigned for their return for 33 years and, after Judy King began negotiations in 2017, the museum agreed to work with her. The transfer required advice from the National Gallery in Prague, was complicated by the status of the pieces as national treasures, and involved demands for legal proof of ownership until a notarised document from Wolfenstein naming King as her heir satisfied the museum.

Customs in Prague initially sought a court-appointed document but ultimately relented, and the shipment then faced a hazardous landing in London because of strong winds.

Key Topics

Culture, Peter Kien, Theresienstadt, Wiener Holocaust Library, Terezín Memorial, Helga Wolfenstein