Hela Yungst

Who was Hela Yungst?

Hela Yungst, also known as Hela Young, was an American television entertainer and beauty pageant winner. She was a promoter of Holocaust awareness and a former president of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education.

Yungst was born in Israel to parents who were survivors of The Holocaust. The family moved to the United States in 1956. She was raised in Hillside, New Jersey and graduated from Hillside High School in 1967. She was a member of the National Honor Society and was awarded the title of Miss New Jersey, representing the state in the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City in 1971. Around the same time she graduated Newark State College with a B.A. in music education and theatre.

Yungst was a performer on stage and in films, television commercials and soap operas, appearing in Guiding Light and All My Children. She changed her name to Hela Young and became the New Jersey Lottery hostess on television, picking the nightly winning numbers for some 24 years. She left television in November 2001 due to illness.

She resided with her husband and daughter in Mountainside, New Jersey and died in 2002 due to cancer.