Oral history interview with Eddie WillnerĮddie Willner, born on Augin Germany, describes how his father had felt that his family would be safe because he had fought in the German Army in World War I being separated from his parents and sent on a train to Brussels, Belgium, where a Jewish refugee organization placed him with a Dutch family his parents’ move to Belgium in 1939 and seeing them on weekends until the war broke out in May 1940 the arrest of his father and his deportation to an internment camp in France remaining with his mother and tracking down his father in the Pyrenees Mountains living in the house of a French priest getting caught with false identification cards with his family and being sent to Drancy his deportation out of France and toward the east on Septemarriving in Auschwitz, where his mother was immediately gassed while he stayed with his father his transfer to a work camp in Lazy, Poland, where he worked on reconstructing bombed-out railroads enduring harsh conditions, especially in the winter months losing his religious faith after the war returning from his work detail one day to discover that his father had been selected for the gas chamber during the day the bombing of the train on which he was being transported to Buchenwald, escaping, and being liberated by American troops staying in the Frankfurt displaced persons camp and then searching for his family in Brussels after the war and immigrating to the United States in December 1947. Teofil (Stefan) Kosinski, born on Januin Toruń, Poland, describes growing up in a poor Roman Catholic family not being able to attend gymnasium because Poles could not go to school once the war started his father’s decision to join the Polish Army in September 1939 fleeing with his mother and siblings to a nearby village, where they stayed for two months until they returned to Toruń being treated as second-class citizens under the Germans working at the age of 14 to make money for his family and avoid being sent to a labor camp beginning a relationship with an Austrian soldier reporting to the Gestapo on Septembecause he had sent a letter professing his love to the soldier being interrogated, beaten, and sent to prison for his homosexuality his sentence to five years in prison on Decemfor demoralizing the German military his transport to the forced labor camp Koronowo going through several camps until he was able to escape with three other prisoners to the British occupation zone in Munich receiving a displaced persons card and returning to Poland and writing a book titled “Damned Strong Love,” which tells of his wartime experiences and suffering.
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