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About Me

I am a historian, author and freelance journalist. Originally from Europe, I switch between writing in English and German.

From 2015 to 2017, I lived in New York where I was a Fulbright grantee attending the Magazine Journalism program at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism School at New York University. I received my MA there in December of 2016. I previously studied history at the University of Munich and journalism at American University in Washington, D.C. Currently, I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Munich, where I write about female rescuers of Jews during the Shoah.

In 2018, I published “Arthur und Lilly“, the biography of a Holocaust survivor who – as a boy in the 1930s – used to live in the same Viennese apartment that I moved to as a child in the 1990s. The book was published in German, and will come out in English in October 2023 (see English subtitled book trailer here). In 2021, my book “Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder!” was published, the biography of Austrian educator Ernst Papanek who rescued hundreds of children during WW2.

Besides writing, I have a deep passion for history. For my thesis “Life After the Kindertransport,” I interviewed a dozen Holocaust survivors around the United States, and was subsequently awarded with the University of Munich’s “Prize for Outstanding Student Research.“ I also work as a guide at the Concentration Camp Memorial Site in Dachau, and regularly give talks about the Kindertransport, a unique rescue effort to save 10,000 Jewish children during the Holocaust.

Recent Publications

Arthur and Lilly: The Girl and the Holocaust-Survivor. Titletown Publishing 2023.

Interventions by non-governmental organisations in state-run internment camps in France. The rescue of Jewish children from Rivesaltes as told through the example of Vivette Hermann. In: Gabriele Anderl, Linda Erker and Christoph Reinprecht (Hrsg.): Internment Refugee Camps. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Wien 2022, S. 99-110.

Traumaarbeit mit jüdischen Flüchtlingskindern im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Eine biografische Studie zum Reformpädagogen Ernst Papanek. In Zeitschrift  für Individualpsychologie 47. Wien 2022, S. 241–255.

Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder! Ernst Papanek. Revolutionär, Reformpädagoge und Retter jüdischer Kinder. Wien 2021.

“Von der Mitverwaltung zur Kinderrepublik. Außergewöhnliche Pädagogik in Frankreich,”Jugend ohne Heimat – Kindertransporte aus Wien. Without a Home – Kindertransports from Vienna (2021), p. 48-55.

“Rescued twice: the French Kindertransport. Differences from and similarities to the British Kindertransport,” Jewish Historical Society of England 51,1 (2020), p. 267-284

Arthur und Lilly: Das Mädchen und der Holocaust-Überlebende. München 2018.

Guest-editor of Die Möhlstraße – Ein jüdisches Kapitel der Münchner Nachkriegsgeschichte. Münchner Beiträgefür Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur 12,1 (2018)

“Der Schwarzmarkt in der Möhlstraße und die Münchner Polizei – Eine Untersuchung im Spiegel der Akten der Polizeidirektion München,” Münchner Beiträge für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur 12,1 (2018), p. 35-51.

“Kindheitserinnerungen: „Nach dem Krieg wurden alle Juden Händler,” Münchner Beiträge für JüdischeGeschichte und Kultur 12,1 (2018), p. 74-81.

Several articles in the museum catalogue “Barbarossa – bewundert, gefürchtet, benutzt”. Veröffentlichungen des Stadtarchivs Göppingen 54 (2015).

“Ein Leben nach dem Kindertransport,” Fremde Heimat. Rettende Kindertransporte aus Hannover 1938/39, Schriften zur Erinnerungskultur in Hannover 8.1 (2015), p. 206-217.

Media Coverage

Press Reel: https://lillymaier.wordpress.com/category/medienecho-in-the-press/

Social Media

instagram.com/lillymaier_author/

Country Focus

Germany, Austria, France

Expertise by Geography

France, Germany

Expertise by Chronology

20th century

Expertise by Topic

Children & Youth, Gender, Holocaust & Nazi Persecution, Pedagogy, Women, World War II