An international journalist who was one of the last surviving Jewish refugees as a child fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria on the Kindertransport has died at her north London home days away from her 95th birthday.

Hella Pick arrived with other Jewish children when she was nine on a refugee train into Liverpool Street from Harwich in March 1939, after crossing from the Continent.

She was fostered by a Jewish family in Cricklewood, the Infields, who had three children and sent her to a local primary school with them.

Her family in Vienna had endured Hitler’s ‘Anschluss’ annexation of Austria and survived the Kristallnacht anti-Semitic rioting of 1938. Her mother then put her on the Kindertransport list.

Hella grew up to become a diplomatic correspondent for The Guardian newspaper covering the UN General Assembly in New York, then in 1961 went on to report the conflict in the Belgian Congo.

Years later, she volunteered to record her story for the Association of Jewish Refugees in an interview by Dr Bea Lewkowicz.

“She has very few memories of growing up in Vienna,” Dr Lewkowicz later recalled. “Her real memories start when she arrived in England.

“Hella regretted having so few memories of Vienna, just vaguely recalling her primary school and playing in the park.

“She cannot remember the Anschluss or Kristallnacht. Her mother was arrested by the Gestapo but released the next day.”

Hella’s mother managed to get to London just weeks before Second World War which led to the Nazi Holocaust and the murder of six million European Jews.

Mother and daughter were reunited and stayed in the Lake District for the duration of the war.

The refugee organisation’s chief executive Michael Newman paid tribute to Hella this week.

He said: “We are deeply saddened to hear of her passing, a pioneering journalist of great repute.

“We worked with her most recently to mark the 85th anniversary of the Kindertransport. She met the King at our commemoration in November and took part in events here and in Vienna, dedicated to raising awareness of the Holocaust and sharing her story.”

She also worked for Lord Weidenfeld to create a centre for Jewish studies at Sussex University so that the Holocaust should be “contextulaised in the wider context of Jewish life and culture”.

Hella Pick, who would have turned 95 on April 24, left her testimony as part of the organisation’s audio ‘Refugee Voices’ archive.