Hella Pick

Hella Henrietta Pick (born 24 April 1929) is a British-Austrian journalist and author of Austrian descent.

Education

Pick went to school in the Lake District. She also studied at the London School of Economics.

Career

From 1961 to 1997, she was on the staff of The Guardian newspaper, working as UN correspondent, Washington correspondent, East-West affairs correspondent, Diplomatic Editor, and Associate Foreign Affairs Editor.

She has been a frequent contributor to BBC news programmes and often appears on German and Austrian television.

IRD contact

Pick was one of around 100 journalists who were contacts for the Information Research Department.

IRD's main targets were in the Third World - "hitting back at Russian propaganda as hard as we could," as Mayhew puts it. It also set out to "be of use to" British media and opinion formers. As well as supplying material to the BBC World Service secret lists were compiled of approved journalists and trade unionists to whom material was offered if not always accepted. More often IRD simply offered quite straightforward research help. Recipients - often experts in their own fields - could and did judge its quality. By the time IRD was finally purged, one of its list contained a cross section of the General Council of the TUC. The journalist list contained about 100 names.

Those we have traced include two Labour journalist MPs, Roderick MacFarquhar and Colin Jackson. There were three writers connected with the Financial Times; five from the Times ; two from the Observer ; five from the Sunday Times ; five from the Telegraph ; six from the Economist ; one from the Daily Mail ; two from the Mirror ; one from the Sunday Mirror ; and one from the Express.

Guardian journalists on the lists included Hella Pick, Michael Simmons, Ian Wright and Victor Zorza.

Other journalists were informally blacklisted as politically undesirable or had assistance withdrawn if they became politically embarrassing.

British introductions to IRD were made discreetly; one distinguished liberal journalist recalls how he was taken to lunch at a London club by his retiring predecessor in the newspaper who passed him on to his IRD contact. All journalists were told as little as possible about the Department. Material was sent to their homes under plain cover. Correspondence marked "personal" carries no departmental identification or reference.

They were told documents were "prepared" in the FCO primarily for members of the diplomatic service, but are allowed to give them on a personal basis to a few people outside the service who might find them of interest...they are not statements of official policy and should not be attributed to HMG, nor should the titles themselves be quoted in discussion or in print. The papers should not be shown to anyone else and they should be destroyed when no longer needed.

Affiliations

• Institute for Strategic Dialogue, member of the International Advisory Board and Director of the Arts and Culture Programme.
• Club of Three, senior consultant.
• Advisory Board of the German-Jewish Studies Centre at the University of Sussex.

Publications

Books

• Hella Pick, Guilty Victim - Austria from the Holocaust to Haider, I.B. Tauris (17 July 2000)
• Hella Pick, Simon Wiesenthal: A Life In Search Of Justice, W&N; First Edition edition (15 April 1996).

Articles

• Hella Pick, Victor Hochhauser obituary , The Guardian, 24 March 2019.
• Hella Pick, Jewish history can be used as a weapon to fight antisemitism, The Guardian, 16 November 2018.
• Hella Pick, Kofi Annan obituary, The Guardian, 19 August 2018.
• Hella Pick, Letter: Peter Preston and foreign news coverage , The Guardian, 10 January 2018.
• Martin Bailey and Hella Pick, Martin Roth obituary, The Guardian, 11 August 2017.
• Hella Pick, Letter: Clare Hollingworth took me under her wing, The Guardian, 15 January 2017.
• Hella Pick, Walter Scheel obituary, The Guardian, 24 August 2016.
• Hella Pick, Hans-Dietrich Genscher obituary, The Guardian, 1 April 2016.
• Dennis Barker and Hella Pick, Lord Chorley obituary, The Guardian, 26 February 2016.
• Hella Pick, Boutros Boutros-Ghali obituary, The Guardian, 16 Febraury 2016.
• Hella Pick, Lord Weidenfeld obituary, The Guardian, 20 January 2016.
• Hella Pick, Eduard Shevardnadze obituary, The Guardian, 7 July 2014.
• Hella Pick, General Wojciech Jaruzelski obituary, The Guardian, 25 May 2014.
• Hella Pick, Lord Dahrendorf obituary, The Guardian, 19 june 2009.
• Hella Pick, Mieczyslaw Rakowski obituary, The Guardian, 10 November 2008.
• Hella Pick, Eric Silver obituary, The Guardian, 17 July 2008.
• Hella Pick, Simon Wiesenthal obituary, The Guardian, 21 September 2005.
• Hella Pick, Paul Nitze obituary, The Guardian, 22 October 2004.
• Hella Pick, Pierre Salinger obituary, The Guardian, 18 October 2004.
• Hella Pick, Appreciation: Rabbi Albert Friedlander obituary, The Guardian, 15 July 2004.
• Hella Pick, Thomas Klestil obituary, The Guardian, 8 July 2004.
• Hella Pick, Friend, colleague and mentor, The Guardian, 31 March 2004.
• Hella Pick, Cardinal Franz König obituary, The Guardian, 16 March 2004.
• Hella Pick, Knighthood for Nazi hunter, The Guardian, 20 February 2004.
• Hella Pick, Warren Zimmermann obituary, The Guardian, 10 February 2004.
• Hella Pick, Marion Dönhoff obituary, The Guardian, 13 March 2002.
• Hella Pick, Ismat Kittani obituary, The Guardian, 21 November 2001.
• Hella Pick, My family and other enemy aliens, The Guardian, 17 November 2000.
• Hella Pick, A kind of homecoming, The Guardian, 11 July 2000.
• Julian Borger, Ian Traynor and Hella Pick, UN confirms Bosnian massacre, The Guardian, 12 August 1995.
• Hella Pick, Bush rejects peace 'hoax', The Guardian, 16 February 1991.
• Hella Pick and Michael White, Thatcher and Saddam wage war of words, The Guardian, 3 September 1990.
• Hella Pick, The Wall's history, The Guardian, 10 November 1989.
• Hella Pick, Pope tugs at the Iron Curtain, The Guardian, 4 June 1979.
• Hella Pick, Vows of peace as Israel and Egypt sign, The Guardian, 27 March 1979.
• Hella Pick, Cardinals turn to Poland for new Pope, The Guardian, 17 October 1978.
• Simon Winchester and Hella Pick, Dignity in the last goodbye, The Guardian, 9 August 1974.
• Hella Pick, EEC plan a step to political unity, The Guardian, 19 October 1970.
• Hella Pick, Conflict of interests claims against Agnew, The Guardian, 29 October 1968.
• Hella Pick, KKK men charged with murder, The Guardian, 8 August 1964.
• Hella Pick, Allen Dulles leads the search, The Guardian, 25 June 1964.