Gershon Willinger

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Gershon Willinger was born in 1942 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Guido and Edith Willinger, German Jews who had fled Nazi persecution. When he was only a few months old, his parents entrusted him to Geert and Riek Schonewille, members of the Dutch resistance in Coevorden. Hidden under the name Fritsje, he was separated from his older sister, Rita, who was sheltered elsewhere.

After his hiding place was betrayed, Gershon was taken to Westerbork transit camp, where he was cared for in the children’s home. His parents were deported to Sobibor, where they were murdered in July 1943. On 13 September 1944, Gershon was deported with a group of approximately fifty children to Bergen-Belsen, before being transferred to the Terezín (Theresienstadt) ghetto—a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. He survived there until liberation by Soviet troops in May 1945.

Freedom brought further uncertainty. Returning to the Netherlands, Gershon moved between foster homes and institutions before finding a permanent Jewish foster family in 1950. His sister also survived, and they met again after the war. Too young to remember most of his persecution, he later relied on documents and other people’s testimony to reconstruct his childhood and recover his family history.

In 1960, at eighteen, Gershon immigrated to Israel, where he served as a paratrooper in the Israeli army and subsequently studied social work. He married Jane, and they raised three children. In 1977, the family immigrated to Canada, where he continued working with vulnerable children and young people.