Zuzana Justman / Zuzana Pick (F / Czechia, 1931), Holocaust survivor

Zuzana Justman / Zuzana Pick (F / Czechia, 1931), Holocaust survivor.

• KEYWORDS : <Theresienstadt> <Liberation of Theresienstadt>

• MEMOIRS : Terezin Diary (doc, 1990) -- Voices of the Children (doc, 1998)

Biography

She was born into a Jewish family as Zuzana Pick, the second child of Viktor and Marie Pick in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She had an older brother, Jiří Robert Pick, who became a writer and playwright. During World War II Zuzana, her brother and her parents, Viktor and Marie Pick, were imprisoned for two years in the Terezín concentration camp. Her father was deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where he was killed; she, her mother and brother were among the survivors of Theresienstadt. They returned to Prague.

After the communist putsch ("Victorious February") of 1948, Zuzana and her mother emigrated to Argentina. Jiří remained in Prague.

Zuzana left Buenos Aires in 1950 to study at Vassar College. She received a B.A. from Vassar and later a Ph.D. in Slavic Linguistics from Columbia University in New York.

After working as a writer and translator, in 1986 Pick began her career as a filmmaker.

Her documentary Voices of the Children (1997), which tells the story of three concentration camp survivors, received the 1999 Emmy Award for best historical program.