Description

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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.

About the Author

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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.

Praise For…

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"A fascinating and deeply affecting story, at once a piece of detailed historical detective work into the lives of Jewish children in the Holocaust, and a careful and loving exploration of connections and understanding across generations, geographical barriers, across history." —Perri Klass, Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics, New York University; Author of The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future

"A moving and essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Holocaust and the reconciliation process after the war." —Michael Brenner, Director of American University's Center for Israel Studies; Professor of Jewish History and Culture at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich; Author of In Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution and the Rise of Nazism and A Short History of the Jews 
 

"A gripping story of a Holocaust survivor from California and a girl from Vienna, who became friends against the odds of a dividing history." —Mirjam Zadoff, Director of the Munich Documentation Center for the HIstory of National Socialism; Author of Next Year in Marienbad: The Lost Worlds of Jewish Spa Culture and Werner Scholem: A German Life