Helen Covensky

Helen Covensky was born Hanka Ciesla in Kielce, Poland in 1925.  As a young child, her family moved to Sosnowiec, Poland where her father Leon owned a lumber yard. The oldest of three children, Hanka grew up in a cultured Jewish home.

Her life was drastically altered after the Nazis invaded Poland at the start of World War II. Her father was able to obtain false identification papers for so that she would not be known as a Jew. With her blond hair and green eyes, Hanka easily passed as a Polish Catholic. Her immediate family was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp.  Passing as a non-Jew, Hanka was instead sent to a work camp near Stuttgart, Germany.

Hanka spent several years at the work camp, and was ultimately liberated by American forces and transported to Berlin. Once in Berlin, she began working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the organization created to support those displaced during WWII. Hanka was fluent in multiple languages, which made her an ideal candidate to help all those who had been displaced from countries throughout Europe.

During her time in Berlin, Hanka discovered the tragic news that her mother and younger sister had been killed at Auschwitz, and that her father had been killed at a camp he was subsequently moved to. Despite this deeply devastating news, there was a glimmer of hope: she discovered her younger brother, Dudek, had survived.

An American Jewish solider, Chaim Kempner, reported about the reunion of Hanka and her brother for the U. S. Army newspaper, the Observer. Chaim was so charmed by Hanka, they ultimately fell in love.  

They were married in Berlin in 1946 and Hanka donned a wedding dress made out of an army parachute. Ten months later, their daughter Aviva was born at the U.S. Army hospital in Berlin. It was at this time that Hanka decided to adopt her mother’s first name, Helen, which she went by for the rest of her life.

In 1949, they immigrated to Detroit, Michigan and their son Jonathan was born in 1951. She divorced her first husband in 1959, and later married Professor Milton Covensky.

Her brother  also moved to America, where he changed his name to David T. Chase. David went on to become a successful businessman and philanthropist. Inspired by Pope John Paul, he returned to Poland in 1989 to build Poland’s largest cable TV company, Polska Telewizja Kablowa, and developed a close relationship with former President of Poland Lech Walesa in 1990.

In 1967, during the Six-Day War in the Middle East, Helen’s unresolved feelings about WWII resurfaced in a profound way. Much of her family moved to Israel following the war, and the great fear of loss and destruction came back in full force. In an effort to make sense of these unsettling emotions, she began to paint.

Helen captured her inspirations with the following words for her one-woman show at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1970:

“In my lifetime, I have witnessed a world of extreme change which saw great destruction and rebirth: world war, a terrible holocaust, the displacement of millions of people, and the loss of my loved ones are part of this experience. The United States gave me the opportunity to search for growth, equality, and self-awareness. I ask myself: How can I unite in my own being these opposite forces? How can I give meaning, truth, and authenticity to myself and the world around me? I try to do this through my art.

“My paintings are always in process. They are ‘action paintings.’ In them, I sense and feel the flow of life as an inner experience and vision. Just as nature and life cannot be frozen, my paintings affirm the vital energy, dynamism, magic, and mystery of my world. I seek to capture a sense of constant motion and restlessness through the use of form, color, composition, and texture.

“Painting for me is an absolute necessity, expressing personal needs, a constant struggle, and a never-ending search to portray the reaffirmation of life.”

Covensky and her husband moved to Bethesda, Maryland in 1983 to live closer to their children. She found great joy being close to her son Jonathan, daughter-in-law Lise Van Susteren and grandchildren Aliza, Delaney, and Piera. She continued to paint until her death in 2007.

Trained at Wayne State University in the Art Department, 1957-1963; 1968-1971