I will finish your work': one woman's fight for the Jewish art and letters her mother saved from the Nazis

"But last Thursday, a small suitcase filled with 681 drawings, love letters, poems and manuscripts created by the Jewish artist and poet Peter Kien in the Theresienstadt ghetto in German-occupied Czechoslovakia between 1941 and 1944 finally made a blustery landing at Heathrow. From there, the treasures were transported to their new home: the Wiener Holocaust Library in central London, where Judy King, 66, was anxiously waiting for them."

"She was keeping a promise she had made to her mother, Helga Wolfenstein, beside her deathbed in 2003. Wolfenstein had been Kien's lover in the ghetto. It was to her that he handed the small caramel brown suitcase on the evening before he was transported to the Auschwitz death camp, where he was murdered at the age of 25 along with his parents, Leonard and Olga, and his estranged wife, Ilse Stranska."

"Wolfenstein's mother, Hermine, was matron of the infectious diseases ward in the ghetto, and it was here that they hid the suitcase from the occupying forces, on the correct assumption the Nazis would balk at the risks of entering such a place. When what was left of Theresienstadt was liberated in 1945, Wolfenstein left Prague for Libya, where her brother in law was working for the British as a doctor, before she moved on to England."

A small caramel-brown suitcase containing 681 drawings, love letters, poems and manuscripts by Peter Kien arrived at Heathrow and was transported to the Wiener Holocaust Library in London. Judy King fulfilled a promise made to her mother, Helga Wolfenstein, who had been Kien's lover in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Kien handed the suitcase to Wolfenstein the evening before his deportation to Auschwitz, where he was murdered at 25 along with his parents and estranged wife. Wolfenstein's mother, Hermine, hid the suitcase in the ghetto's infectious diseases ward to deter Nazi searches. After Theresienstadt's liberation in 1945 Wolfenstein left Prague for Libya and later England. She could not foresee the deception of a man called Karl Finger.

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