Gitta Sereny

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2004 for services to journalism.

Gitta Sereny studied at Max Reinhardt Seminar and University of Paris. The recorded working language is English and German. Distinctions recorded are Commander of the Order of the British Empire, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Duff Cooper Prize and Stig Dagerman Prize.

• Born — 13 March 1921 • Birthplace — Vienna, Austria • Died — 14 June 2012 • Place of death — Cambridge, England, UK • Occupation — * Writer • historian • journalist • Language — English • Genre — Non-fiction • Subject — The Holocaust, child abuse, society • Notable Works — The Case of Mary Bell: A Portrait of a Child Who Murdered (1972) "Into That Darkness, an examination of conscience" (1974) Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995) • Spouse — Don Honeyman (1948–2011) • Relatives — Ludwig von Mises (stepfather) • Awards — Duff Cooper Prize (1995) James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1995) Stig Dagerman Prize (2002) CBE (2004)

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. From the mid-1960s 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.

British Holocaust denier David Irving initiated a libel case against Sereny and the Guardian Media Group for two reviews in The Observer where she asserted he deliberately falsified the historical record in an attempt to rehabilitate the Nazis. Irving maintained a personal animosity for Sereny, whom he calls "that shriveled Nazi hunter", for successfully refuting his claims since the publication of his book Hitler's War. In 1977, Sereny cross-checked the source he cited for his assertion that Hitler knew nothing about the "Final Solution", and therefore could not have ordered the "Final Solution". Gitta Sereny proved that Irving had made an additional assertion which would have contradicted his claim; "I know many of the same people as he does who were of Hitler's circle…". Ms. Sereny later said, "That is scary for him. He says, 'we jostle at the same trough'. The difference is that he loves that trough, and I don't. There is, I think, for him [David Irving], despair in all of this." Although the case did not go to court, the cost to the Guardian Media Group of preparing its legal defence amounted to £800,000.

Gitta Sereny died on 14 June 2012 at age 91 while in Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, after a long illness.