Helen Covensky was born Hanka Ciesla, the daughter of a cultured Jewish family in Poland that supported her early interest in art. The Second World War changed her life completely. Her parents and sister died in concentration camps. Only she and her brother, David, survived. Shortly after the war, she emigrated to the United States. At this time, she changed her name from Hanka to Helen, in memory of her mother, Helena. (Covensky often signs her work both Hanka Ciesla and Helen Covensky, expressing her sense of the continuity of life.) During the 1950's and 60's, she took courses in art history and other areas of the humanities at Wayne State University. In 1967, the outbreak of the Six-Day War in the Middle East led to a resurfacing of Covensky's feelings about her experiences in World War II. She had family living in Israel, and the fears of loss that she remembered from more than twenty years earlier came back in force. She felt that she had to express her emotions through some artistic medium, and with the encouragement of her husband, Milton; and a close friend, she began to paint.