Lya Riley passed away on 18 May, 2024, aged 103. In 2022, Lya generously gifted Te Papa a collection of treasures from her early years in Austria and her married life in Aotearoa New Zealand. Here, Curator New Zealand Histories and Cultures Katie Cooper shares some of Lya’s story and looks back on a very special day spent with Lya and her whānau.
In April 1939, twenty-three days after her eighteenth birthday, Lya Kleinmann left Vienna alone and flew to London via Rotterdam. Her mother Eugenie joined her in London late in 1939, but her father Emil stayed in Austria and Lya never saw him again. Lya’s family, like many millions of others, were caught up in the maelstrom of the Second World War.
Lya Kleinmann was born in Vienna on 27 March 1921, the only child of Emil Kleinmann and Eugenie Rosenberg.
The Kleinmanns were Jewish, and in the early twentieth century Vienna was an important centre of Jewish culture. The city had 22 synagogues, over 50 prayer houses, and a range of Jewish libraries, schools, hospitals, clubs and political associations. Lya wrote diaries as a teenager, recording a very rich cultural life filled with lessons, sport, music recitals, theatre outings, and family holidays.
Austria in the 1930s
Intense Nazi propaganda had been circulating in Austria throughout the 1930s so when German forces marched into Austria on March 12, 1938, many citizens greeted them with enthusiastic support. Austria was incorporated into Germany the next day, and the Anschluss (union) was formalised through a plebiscite in April. Neither Jews nor Romani people were allowed to vote.
Anti-Semitic actions and violence escalated quickly, and Jews were attacked, humiliated, and their businesses seized or looted. In addition, anti-Jewish legislation was quickly extended to Austria, initially focussed on expropriation and emigration. Between 1938 and 1940, 117,000 Jews, including Lya and Eugenie, left the country.
On the day Lya left, her father gave her this card with the message (translated from German): ‘Dear Lya, Be all good angels with you. Your father. Wednesday 19.4.39 Fly well, fly into a good future.’
Emil stayed in Vienna, possibly because he could not afford to leave or because he needed to stay for his work, and Lya never saw him again. In September 1942 he was deported to Minsk in cattle wagon Da227 and was shot four days later at Maly Trostinec. Emil lies with tens of thousands of other victims in the regenerating forest; his name, date of birth and date of death printed on a yellow notice which has been attached to a tree.
Lya and her mother Eugenie lived in Hampstead throughout the war, and Lya joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service – the women’s branch of the British Army.
Life in New Zealand
After the war Lya met a Londoner named William (Bill) George Alexander Riley, who had been a foundry worker before joining the British Army in 1934 and retraining as a chef. During the war Bill was interned for three years in Singapore and Burma, and returned to London suffering from malaria. He immigrated to New Zealand in 1947 to aid his recovery, and Lya followed a year later. They were married in Dunedin on 22 October 1948 and quickly purchased an old Victorian cottage at 247 North Road.
Lya and Bill’s first child Lysette was born in January 1950, and Peter followed in December 1951. Family life was busy and had its challenges, but Lya strove to maintain her independence. She worked briefly as a cleaner and as the diet cook at the hospital, then used her clerical skills to build a career at the Bonus Bonds Service.
Gift to Te Papa
Lya’s mother Eugenie moved to New Zealand in 1970 and was able to bring a selection of family heirlooms with her. In 2021 Lya and her family offered some of these treasures to Te Papa. Te Papa hosted Lya and her whānau for a very special handover in June 2022, with five generations of the family in attendance.
As well as relating to important moments in Lya’s life, the objects in the collection speak to broader experiences of war and conflict, migration, identity-building, and family. We are very grateful to Lya and the Riley whānau for their generous gift, and we feel privileged to be able to share Lya’s story of survival and independence.
A useful reference for additional information on the Holocaust in Austria is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Encyclopedia. See entries on Austria, Vienna, Anschluss and Antisemitism.
