If anyone reads my tweets, I'd like to share the story of a young woman I came across while researching for my dissertation. Lilli Goldwerth had just turned 16 when Austria joined the German Reich.

After Kristallnacht in November, it was obvious that a Jewish family could not stay in Vienna. By 1939, they planned to travel to the UK where they had found work. But as the summer ended, Lilli still did not have her visa.

In August her parents made the difficult choice to leave Lilli to look after herself in Vienna until her visa arrived. It seemed at the time that their seperation would not be long.

But in September war broke out.

Lilli was trapped and her parents were stuck in a foreign country. There were no lines of communication. I can't imagine how heavily this must have weighed upon the Goldwerths.

In 1942, they recieved a letter from the Red Cross informing them that Lilli was dead. And that's it.

These images came from @wienerlibrary, who are a great Jewish archive in London. (I understand these images are free to reproduce non-commercially.)

@threadreaderapp unroll