The ACF DC and Goethe-Institut Washington are delighted to host author and historian Lilly Maier for the presentation of her book 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.

The book details the impact one encounter had on the lives of two people, shaping their outlooks on the past and their paths into the future. The story is based on author Lilly Maier’s real-life meeting and following friendship with Arthur Kern, a Holocaust-survivor. Arthur managed to flee from Austria onboard a French “Kindertransport” (children’s transport) in 1939 and eventually settled in the USA. Sixty-five years later, Arthur knocks on the door of the apartment he used to live in as a boy in Vienna, and meets eleven-year old Lilly. It is a moving tale of two lives that fatefully cross paths, and an immensely knowledgeable insight into the Kindertransporte that rescued hundreds of Jewish children.

Arthur and Lilly. The Girl and the Holocaust Survivor was released in English on October 23, 2023, marking the 85th anniversary of the start of the Kindertransporte.

Lilly Maier is a historian, author and Austrian Fulbright Alumna. She holds degrees from the University of Munich and New York University, and has written several books about the rescue of Jewish children. She has been working as a journalist for several American, German, and Austrian publications, including the Jewish Daily Forward, the Columbus Dispatch, and PolitiFact.com for the past ten years.

Photo © Sophia Lindsey