Gitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny Austria | |
---|---|
Died | 14 June 2012[1] Cambridge, England, UK | (aged 91)
Occupation |
|
Language | CBE (2004) |
Spouse | Don Honeyman (1948–2011) |
Relatives | Ludwig von Mises (stepfather) |
Gitta Sereny,
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
Biography
Sereny was born in
When she was thirteen, her train journey to a
After
She attended the
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[7] (1968) is one of his best known creations.
From the mid-'60s and throughout the 1970s she wrote extensively for The Daily Telegraph Magazine under the editorship of John Anstey. These articles were often about young people, the social services, children and their relationships with their parents and society. This led to her covering the trial of eleven-year-old Mary Bell (found guilty of murdering two children) and would further lead to her first investigative book on this case.
Writing
Books
The Case of Mary Bell was first published in 1972 following Mary Bell's trial; in it Sereny interviewed her family, friends and the professionals involved in looking after Mary during her trial. This book was edited by Diana Athill who would also edit Sereny's Into That Darkness.
Into That Darkness (also following an initial article for the Telegraph magazine) was an examination of the guilt of
hours interviewing him in prison for the article and when she had finished he finally admitted his guilt; he died of a heart attack nineteen hours later.Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995) is a biographical work on Albert Speer, German minister of Armaments during World War II. In it, Sereny explores how much Speer knew about the Holocaust. During the Nuremberg trials, Speer had avoided a death sentence, claiming all the while that he knew nothing of the Holocaust. However, Sereny concludes that Speer must have known based on a letter he wrote to the Jewish community in South Africa (after the war), and the fact that his closest assistant attended the Wannsee Conference (where the details of the genocide of the Jews were worked out) and could not have failed to inform him about the proceedings.
In 1998, her second book on Mary Bell, Cries Unheard,[10] caused controversy in the British press because she shared the publishing fee, from Macmillan Publishers, with Mary Bell for collaborating on the book. Sereny was initially criticized[11] in the British press and by the British government, though the book quickly became, and remains, a standard text for professionals working with problem children.
Sereny wrote of her final book, The German Trauma (2002): "The nineteen chapters in this book, all intimately concerned with Germany before, during and since the end of the Third Reich, describe more or less sequentially what I saw and learned from 1938 to 1999, thus almost over a lifetime."[12]
David Irving libel suit
British
Death
Gitta Sereny died on 14 June 2012 at age 91 while in Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, after a long illness.[14]
Bibliography
Her writings include:
- The Case of Mary Bell. Vol. 158 of Pimlico (Series). United Kingdom: Random House. 13 February 1995. ISBN 978-0-7126-6297-0.
- Into That Darkness: from Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, a study of Treblinka (1974, second edition 1995)
- The Invisible Children: Child Prostitution in America, West Germany and Great Britain (1984)
- Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995, 1996 paperback)
- Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell (1998)
- The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections, 1938–2001 (2002)[15]
The second edition of The Case of Mary Bell contains an appendix on the murder of James Bulger.
References
- ^ "Gitta Sereny". Telegraph. 18 June 2012. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
- ^ Schoenfeld, Gabriel (23 December 2001). "Into That Darkness, Again". The New York Times.
- ^ The legacy of Ludwig Von Mises by Peter J. Boettke, Peter T. Leeson, p. xiv
- ^ "Gitta Sereny : The German Trauma – Spike Magazine".
- ^ ISBN 0-679-77663-X
- ^ "Albert Speer – Productions". National Theatre. Archived from the original on 16 June 2012. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
- ^ Mandy Honeyman (2 July 2006). "Don Honeyman with the 1st Che poster he created | Flickr – Photo Sharing!". Flickr. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
- ^ Neild, Barry. "Gitta Sereny dies at 91", The Guardian, 18 June 2012.
- ^ Sereny, G. (1983). Into that darkness. 1st ed. New York: Vintage Books, p.14.
- ^ "Newsmakers | April: Gitta Sereny". BBC News. 22 December 1998. Retrieved 24 June 2012.
- ^ "BBC News | UK | Gitta Sereny: Biographer with bite".
- ^ The German Trauma pp xi Introduction by Gitta Sereny
- ^ Tim Adams (24 February 2002). "Memories are made of this". The Observer. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ Cahal Milmo (30 April 2012). "Veteran journalist Gitta Sereny dies age 91 – News – People". The Independent. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
- ISBN 0-393-32382-X.
External links
- BBC biography
- Interview in Spike Magazine
- Stolen Children by Gitta Sereny
- Review of Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth in Foreign Affairs
- Two half-hour ABC interviews with Sereny about Speer and Mary Bell
- 1998 Interview with Gitta Sereny In the Psychiatrist's Chair, BBC, 21 June 2014
- My Years with Ludwig von Mises, Margit von Mises. Arlington House Publishers, NY. 1976 5 August 2014