Arthur and Lilly: The Girl and the Holocaust Survivor

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 United States - 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.

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. She regularly gives lectures about her Kindertransport research at places like the Jewish Heritage Museum or the Leo Baeck Institute in New York or at the ＂Kindertransport Association＂ conference in Detroit.