Story and photos by Marcia Tatz Wollner
SAN DIEGO — Most people at Comic Con go to the Masquerade on the Saturday night of the five-night convention. But on Saturday evening from 8:30-9:30pm over 50 participants attended the program Lily. This shows their serious commitment to the comics industry, history, women in comics, and to learning more about the Holocaust.
Thursday’s “Art During the Holocaust” session provided a perfect segue to learning more about Lily Renée Wilheim Phillips. Born in Vienna, Lily was an only child growing up in a family of culture and privilege. A teenager at the time of Kristallnacht, she was able to escape Austria and be taken in by the family of her British pen pal, Molly.
Her parents survived the war, immigrated to New York, and Lily Renée continued on to New York. Her life in New York is what brought fame to Lily. After dealing with sexism in the workplace, Lily Renée became a trail blazer for women in the comics industry. One of her most famous comic book heroine’s is Señorita Rio, an actress who also doubled as a US spy during WWII.
The panel included Adrienne Gruben, director of the documentary film Lily, Ben Shearn, co-director of Lily; Trina Robbins, historian and author of the graphic novel Lily Renée, Escape Artist from Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer and David Armstrong, Executive producer of Lily.
The audience previewed the film Lily, which tells of Lily’s life through interviews with Lily, who still lives in her apartment in New York City. Lily still has the tag which she wore when she was a child of the Kindertranport.. The numbers were 133 on one side, and 5069 on the other. The film portrays her life history, and shows some of her artwork, costume design, and comics.
During the panel discussion, many pages from her comics were screened.
Lily has a son and daughter, The son and his two sons were in the audience.
Lily was featured in the July 30 , 2010 edition of Newsweek- A Real- Life Comic- Book SuperHero by Adriane Quinlan.
The session provided many insights into the life of Lily Renée. It is commendable that Gruben produced this film about this dynamic woman who despite personal hardship was able to pave the way for other women in the field of comics.
I found that I was left with many unanswered questions and want to learn more about Lily Renée — about her family’s life prior to the war, the estranged relationship she had with her mother, her parents’ WWII experiences, etcetera. As a Holocaust educator, I’d like to delve more into Lily’s early year’s. As a Comic-Con participant, I’ll check out the Señorita Rio comics and Trina Robbins’ book. Students in my March of the Living classes and other Holocaust classes definitely will benefit from my bringing graphic novels and comics into their classroom.
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Wollner is Western Region Director of the March of the Living