Helena M. Weinrauch

Helena Weinstock Weinrauch died on May 25, 2025 at her home on the Upper West Side, with her beloved dance partner who became one of her most devoted caretakers Slavi Baylov, at her side. Her affectionate roommate Joy Kithinji, who works at the UN, and would sing with Helena and hug her, was there within a few minutes of her death and helped take her body to the funeral home. And Melissa Pepper, who lives in the same building as Helena, and has made her a latte every morning for years and managed her health care aides and her finances and organized yearly birthday parties for Helena in Melissa’s penthouse apartment since Covid days, Melissa drove in from Maine on Slavi’s informing Melissa of Helena’s death. Her lawyer Phyllis Landau, whom Helena knew since Phyllis was a little girl; and her writer/psychoanalyst friend of 45 years Arlene Heyman; and Gail Dubov, journalist, and friend ever since she wrote an article about Helena “The Girl in the Blue Sweater” in 2019 (https://momentmag.com/the-girl-in-the-blue-sweater/?srsltid=AfmBOoonHUWZoLtuQxJ7Gcv24DiFXttPlrXlnOuUQCqzrw-cNBjyxhww)--all gathered in her living room a few hours after Helena’s death to mourn her.

Helena would have been 101 on June 6, 2025. She lived a long and extraordinary life. Born in Drohobycz, Poland, into a cultivated, wealthy family of German-speaking Jews—Helena’s mother, from Dusseldorf, was a well-known concert pianist, and her father, from Vienna, was an engineer who owned oil wells, Helena had governesses and chauffeurs and maids. She was brought up by her father to be respectful of herself and of everyone else, regardless of their position in the world; her mother inspired in her a love of the arts. She had an older sister, who, like any normal older sister, considered Helena a bit of a nuisance.

On September 1, loved into the family home, happy to be with a German-speaking family. After two weeks, they bid the family a courteous farewell and withdrew--the Russian Army entered the city on September 24th. Russian officers took over Helena’s family house. The family’s oil wells were nationalized, their wealth and safety taken away. They were Capitalists. They were moved out of their home into very humble quarters but allowed to survive because Helena’s father had a reputation for being fair to workers who signed a petition to attest to his decency; besides, he was very knowledgeable about oil wells; and so, he was useful to the Russians. Then the Germans and Russians went to war, and on July 1st, the German army came in and the family had to go into hiding. Helena as a young girl, was thought to be safe so she was able to find work, find food which she smuggled in to the secret hiding place of the family; she kept them alive. However, one day when she came to see them, they were gone, the door open, uneaten food on the table. She did not find out until after the war was over that they had been murdered by the Nazis.

Helena began a life of hiding. Her fluent German helped her. (Besides Polish, she spoke Russian and French, and she would go on to learn Swedish and English and Italian.) But ultimately, after a series of terrifying and demoralizing adventures, Helena is caught. (Read Helena’s memoir THE WILL TO LIVE or see the wonderful movie made about her by Karen Goldfarb “Fascination” for more details; FYI, an extraordinary play was made about Helena’s life and presented by the Chain Theater; it was called A WILL TO LIVE.) She is tortured. She is sent to Plaszow, to Auschwitz, and, in January of 1945, she goes on the infamous two-week death march to Bergen-Belsen. At liberation, she is unconscious and skeletal.

After a stay at a German hospital, she is sent to Sweden to recuperate. Her prognosis is guarded. But she survives, she is restored to health, she learns Swedish, after a year she volunteers as a nurse’s aid, refusing the wages offered her. The Swedes have restored her faith in humanity, and she wants to give back.

She almost marries a wealthy Swede but when she discovers there is a Nazi officer in his family, she cannot go through with it.

In 1947 a distant relative (the half-brother of her mother’s sister who escaped to Argentina) sends her a visa to come to the United States. Helena uproots herself from Sweden and in 1947 arrives in New York—penniless, without a word of English. She learns the language by listening to the radio, she works as a dental assistant, and then, later, as a receptionist/nurse/co-medical-paper writer to a nephrologist in Manhattan. Helena would have become a wonderful physician—that was a wish of hers-- if she’d had the means to put herself through medical school. Meantime, in 1951 she married Joseph Weinrauch “a kind, loving, very supportive man. He brought stability and security into my life—something I had not had since my childhood”. (The quotation is from Helena’s memoir.) They had one daughter, Arlene, a very intelligent and beloved girl. She died at the age of 41 from breast cancer. Helena said Arlene’s death was worse than anything she suffered at Auschwitz. Joe died in 2006 after a long cardiac illness; they were married for 55 years.

Helena talked about her Holocaust experiences in many schools in New York City and Upstate New York--she was an animated, much sought-after speaker. She was interviewed and filmed for Spielberg’s Shoah project. Always concerned to help others, she read to the blind. Perhaps 20 years ago, she took up ballroom dancing; she was graceful and elegant and beautiful—always beautiful, as a young woman and even at 100 at her last birthday party. And she made many new friends because of her interest in dancing, among them her beloved and loving young dance partner Slavi Baylov, who brought joy and playfulness into her life. And she died in her apartment in her building on the Upper West Side, a building full of people who respected and admired her and felt great affection for her.

The funeral will be held at Riverside Memorial Chapel at 76th and Amsterdam at 12:30 on May 27, 2025; there will be a gathering later at Helena’s apartment at 310 W86th Street from 5 to 7pm. All are welcome.

Arlene Heyman MD