09/12/2025
In 1938, Hilde Back was sixteen years old, and time was not on her side.
She was a young Jewish girl living in Germany as the persecution against Jews grew more brutal every day. The Nuremberg Laws had stripped her of citizenship and banned her from attending public school. Her education was cut short. Her future shut down in front of her.
Then a stranger â someone whose name Hilde would never learn â stepped in and gave her family the money they needed to escape.
In 1940, Hilde managed to reach Sweden. She was welcomed. Her parents were not. Swedish laws at the time refused adult refugees. Hilde watched her parents stay behind, fully understanding what that meant.
She would never see them again.
Her father died in a concentration camp. Her mother was deported to another. The last thing Hilde ever received from her was a letter. Then, silence.
At sixteen, she arrived in Sweden alone, carrying the weight of survival and the memory of a stranger whose kindness had saved her life.
She started over. She studied. She became a preschool teacher. She taught theatre. She lived a simple, private life â a survivor who rarely spoke of her past.
But she never forgot.
She never forgot that one small act, once, had meant the difference between life and death.
In the 1970s, Hilde learned about a program supporting the education of children in need around the world. She didnât have much money, but she had something far more powerful: memory.
She remembered what it meant to be denied an education.
She remembered what it felt like to have every door closed simply because of who you were.
She decided to sponsor one childâs schooling.
It cost about $15 a month.
That childâs name was Chris Mburu.
Thousands of kilometers away, in a small farming village in Kenya, Chris was brilliant. But his familyâs poverty made continuing his education impossible. Without help, his life would have been spent in the coffee fields.
Then came the sponsorship. A woman in Sweden â whom he had never met â began sending money every month.
Chris blossomed. He finished school with top grades. He entered the University of Nairobi.
Then something extraordinary happened: he was accepted into Harvard Law School.
From a barefoot child in a rural village to a Harvard-trained lawyer â all thanks to those $15 a month sent by a Holocaust survivor.
Chris became an expert in human rights. He worked for the UN. He fought against discrimination and hate crimes.
But he never forgot his âangel.â
In 2001, he decided to turn that act of kindness into something greater. He founded an organization to provide scholarships for other children like him.
He called it the Hilde Back Education Fund, in honor of the woman who changed his life.
With the help of the Swedish ambassador, Chris searched for her.
And he found her.
In 2003, Hilde traveled to Kenya for the first time to attend the inauguration of the foundation that bore her name. At 81, she met the child she had supported â now an international human rights lawyer.
Neither of them knew the full story of the other.
Chris discovered that Hilde was not wealthy. She was a refugee. A woman who had lost her parents in extermination camps. A teacher who had lived modestly. Every donation she made had been a real sacrifice.
Hilde learned that Chris was not merely grateful â he had multiplied her gesture, helping hundreds of children.
American filmmaker Jennifer Arnold heard their story and knew it had to be shared.
The documentary A Small Act premiered at Sundance in 2010 and aired on HBO.
The UN also officially honored it for its message about education and humanity.
The impact was enormous.
Donations poured in from around the world. One anonymous donor contributed $250,000.
The fund, which had started supporting ten children, grew rapidly.
By January 2024, the Hilde Back Education Fund had helped 973 Kenyan students finish high school.
Almost a thousand lives transformed.
Almost a thousand futures made possible by that woman in Sweden.
In 2012, Hilde returned to Kenya to celebrate her 90th birthday.
She met many of the students who had benefited from the fund. Many called her âgrandmother.â
She said:
âI believe there are so many needs in the world that everyone should help. Sometimes you wonder if your small act really makes a difference. But you must do it anyway.â
She never saw herself as a hero.
But for Chris, she was âan angel who crossed my life and repaired it.â
And for nearly a thousand children⊠she was the reason they could dream.
The parallels between their lives are extraordinary.
Hilde survived N**i persecution.
Chris dedicated his life to fighting genocide.
Hilde was denied education by hateful laws.
Chris founded a program to ensure no child was left behind.
Hilde Back died in 2021, at the age of 98.
She left behind an immense legacy: a life that turned trauma into kindness, pain into purpose, memory into education.
Her story reminds us of a fundamental truth:
You donât need to be wealthy to change the world.
You donât need to be extraordinary.
You just need one small, courageous act.
Fifteen dollars a month.
Thatâs all.
That child then saved hundreds of others.
And those hundreds will help thousands.
Ripples widening, waves spreading.
As Hilde used to say:
âIf you do something good, it can spread like circles in water.â
She lived it.
She proved it.
And thousands of lives are still moving forward, carried by those circles of kindness that never stopped growing.
