Gershon Willinger was born in Holland, in 1942. His experience in the Holocaust is a very different story because he was a very young boy who was unaware of his environment, and did not know what to do. Guido and Edith, his parents, were German Jews. They were both murdered in 1943, in a Polish concentration camp called Sobibor. His parents gave him to a friend in Holland who was a farmer. Gershon was taken by the Nazis and placed in a children’s home in Westerberg, Germany. He was then taken with a group a children originally headed to Auschwitz concentration camp, but they were rerouted to Bergen-Belsen. Gershon and 48 other children were then moved to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. He was liberated by the USSR and remembers one of the soldiers hugging him and giving him candy. Gershon is currently 73 years old and lives in Toronto with his wife.
Gershon was interviewed for this project in February 2015 by Jonah, Mert, Shane and Augusta.
“Look out for people regardless their race, religion, you accept everybody…”
– Gershon Willinger
Videos
- 1. Gershon Willinger - Early and School; Anti-Semitism.mp4
- 2. Life in the Camps.mp4
- 3. Gershon's Parents; The Rise of Nazism.mp4
- 4. Time in the Camps.mp4
- 5. Languages; Life in Israel.mp4
- 6. A Changing Family.mp4
- 7. After Liberation.mp4
- 8. A Duty to Speak.mp4
- 9. PTSD.mp4
- 10. Speaking Out; Gershon's Wartime Brother.mp4
- 11. Meeting his Wife and Family.mp4
- 12. Travel; Languages.mp4
- 13. Career Path.mp4
- 14. Speaking to Other Survivors; Learning Experiences.mp4
- 15. Standing up to Racism.mp4
