Born January 30, 1928 in Halberstadt, Germany
Lillyan was a five year-old schoolgirl when Hitler came to power in 1933. She lived with her parents, Ernest and Margarete, and her older brother, Werner. Halberstadt was a center of Orthodox Jewry in Germany. After 1933, the Jews of Germany were slowly pauperized and constatly humiliated. In 1935, the Nazis enacted the anti-Jewish "Nuremberg Laws." Jews were stripped of their German citizenship.
Believing that the harsh restrictions and the daily ostracismwere only temporary, Lillyan's family did not atempt to leave Germany where ther family had lived for generations. Many others, however, did leave.
As conditions worsened, most German Jews became desperate to leave. Their abailit to do so was limited, as most were impoverished. Additionally, other countries began restricting the number of Jews they would allow in. German Jews were trapped.
On the night of November 9-10, 1938 a centrally planned, country-wide riot aganst the Jews occurred. Arson and the destruction of Jewish-owned property took place in every single town where Jews lived. That night was known afterwards as Kristallnacht because of all the broken glass found in the streets.
World opinion was aghast at the horror and violence of that night. Individuals and organizations in various countries attempted to remove as many endangered children as possible from Nazi Germany. On December 2, 1938, a first transport of 320 children was sent to England. By September 1939, 9,354 children were evacuated. The transports were halted at the outbreak of war. Lillyana's parents managed to find a place for their eleven year-old daughter on a transport to England. Her parents and older brother, Werner, saw the train off.
Lillyan's parents told her that the separation would be only temporary, but she still felt anxiety and fear. She had never before been separated from her family. The train was filled with many hundreds of children, from toddlers to teenagers. Living on charity, Lillyan was raised in various foster homes and attended school for th duration of the war. She was seventeen years old when the war ended. She found out that her parents had been deported to a concentration camp where they were murdered.
One and a half million Jewish children were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators in the Holocaust. Lillyan was one of the few who survived.