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Gitta Sereny
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Gitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny, CBE (13 March 1921 – 14 June 2012) was an Austrian-British biographer, historian, and investigative journalist who became known for her interviews and profiles of infamous figures, including Mary Bell, who was convicted in 1968 of killing two children when she herself was a child, and Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp.
Born and initially raised in Austria, she was the author of five books, including The Case of Mary Bell: A Portrait of a Child Who Murdered (1972) and Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995).
Sereny was awarded the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her book on Albert Speer in 1995, and the Stig Dagerman Prize in 2002. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2004 for services to journalism.
Sereny was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1921. Her father was a Hungarian Protestant aristocrat, Ferdinand Serény, who died when she was two. Her mother was a former actress from Hamburg, Margit Herzfeld, of German-Jewish background. Gitta Sereny's stepfather was the economist Ludwig von Mises.
When she was thirteen, her train journey to a boarding school in the United Kingdom was delayed in Nürnberg, where she attended one of the annual Nürnberg rallies. After writing about the rally for a class assignment, she was given Mein Kampf to read by her teacher so she might be able to understand what she saw there. After the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938, she moved to France, where she worked with orphans during the German occupation until she had to flee the country because of her connection to the French Resistance.
After World War II, she worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration with refugees in Allied-occupied Germany. Among her tasks was reuniting with their biological families children who had been kidnapped by the Nazis to be raised as "Aryans". This could be a traumatic experience because the children did not always remember their original family, but when she accompanied a train-load of such children back to Poland she saw the delight of the original family members at the restoration of the children.
She attended the Nürnberg trials for four days in 1945 as an observer, and it was here that she first saw Albert Speer, about whom she would later write the book Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. It was for this book that she was awarded the 1995 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The book was also later adapted by David Edgar as the play Albert Speer and directed by Trevor Nunn at the National Theatre in 2000.
She married Don Honeyman in 1948 and moved to London, where they raised their two children. Don Honeyman (who died 1 June 2011) was a photographer, who worked for Vogue, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times, among other publications. The poster of Che Guevara on a red background (1968) is one of his best known creations.
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Gitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny, CBE (13 March 1921 – 14 June 2012) was an Austrian-British biographer, historian, and investigative journalist who became known for her interviews and profiles of infamous figures, including Mary Bell, who was convicted in 1968 of killing two children when she herself was a child, and Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp.
Born and initially raised in Austria, she was the author of five books, including The Case of Mary Bell: A Portrait of a Child Who Murdered (1972) and Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995).
Sereny was awarded the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her book on Albert Speer in 1995, and the Stig Dagerman Prize in 2002. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2004 for services to journalism.
Sereny was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1921. Her father was a Hungarian Protestant aristocrat, Ferdinand Serény, who died when she was two. Her mother was a former actress from Hamburg, Margit Herzfeld, of German-Jewish background. Gitta Sereny's stepfather was the economist Ludwig von Mises.
When she was thirteen, her train journey to a boarding school in the United Kingdom was delayed in Nürnberg, where she attended one of the annual Nürnberg rallies. After writing about the rally for a class assignment, she was given Mein Kampf to read by her teacher so she might be able to understand what she saw there. After the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938, she moved to France, where she worked with orphans during the German occupation until she had to flee the country because of her connection to the French Resistance.
After World War II, she worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration with refugees in Allied-occupied Germany. Among her tasks was reuniting with their biological families children who had been kidnapped by the Nazis to be raised as "Aryans". This could be a traumatic experience because the children did not always remember their original family, but when she accompanied a train-load of such children back to Poland she saw the delight of the original family members at the restoration of the children.
She attended the Nürnberg trials for four days in 1945 as an observer, and it was here that she first saw Albert Speer, about whom she would later write the book Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. It was for this book that she was awarded the 1995 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The book was also later adapted by David Edgar as the play Albert Speer and directed by Trevor Nunn at the National Theatre in 2000.
She married Don Honeyman in 1948 and moved to London, where they raised their two children. Don Honeyman (who died 1 June 2011) was a photographer, who worked for Vogue, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times, among other publications. The poster of Che Guevara on a red background (1968) is one of his best known creations.