Arthur and Lilly. The Girl and the Holocaust Survivor
Listen to a radio interview with author, Lilly Maier, on thoughts on the Holocaust in the future especially with the small amount of Holocaust survivors left with us. (auf deutsch).
About the Event
What do a 75-year-old Los Angeles based rocket engineer and an eleven-year-old schoolgirl from Austria have in common? Not much at first glance, but Arthur and Lilly influenced each other’s lives in a fateful way.
In 1939, Arthur‘s Jewish parents sent their son abroad on a so-called Kindertransport (“children’s transport”), hoping to save him from the Holocaust. The separation is a traumatic experience for the
ten-year-old. Although he is rescued – from Austria via France to the USA – his family is murdered by the Nazis. He never sees them again.
Sixty-five years later: During a visit to his parents‘ former apartment in Vienna, Austria, Arthur Kern meets eleven-year-old Lilly Maier. A decisive encounter for both of them, which not only shapes Lilly’s further life, but also leads to Arthur receiving a long-lost legacy from his parents.
A moving tale of two lives that fatefully cross paths, and an immensely knowledgeable insight into an unknown Holocaust story: the rescue of hundreds of Jewish children to America on a Kindertransport.
Videos showing Lilly Maier and Arthur Kern: http://youtube.com/@lillymaier_author
About the Speaker
Lilly Maier was born in Munich, Germany, in 1992 as the daughter of Austrian journalists. She holds an MA in Jewish History from the Ludwig-Maximilians- University in Munich and a second MA in
Magazine Journalism from New York University, where she studied as a Fulbright scholar.
Since 2012, she has been working as a museum guide for the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site.
Arthur and Lilly was originally published in German in 2018. Since then, Maier has written a biography of the Austrian educator Ernst Papanek who rescued hundreds of children during WW2 – one of them Arthur Kern. She is currently finishing her Ph.D. thesis about Jewish women who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.
For over ten years, she has worked as a journalist for several American, German, and Austrian publications, including the Jewish Daily Forward, the Columbus Dispatch, and PolitiFact.com.
Instagram & YouTube: lillymaier_author
FB: Lilly Maier – Author
Twitter: lillymmaier