Sylvia Kierszenblat Willner was born on March 29, 1923 in Pulawy, Poland and Charles Willner (her husband) was born on May 29, 1920 in Sanok Poland. 

When the Nazis invaded Pland, Charles crossed the border into Russia to determine if conditions there would be any better for his pios family.  He was one of six children.  The Russians however, would not allow Charles to return to his family, sending him instead to a forced labor camp.  His parents and all but one sibling were murdered by the Nazis and eventually perished in Auschwitz.  Fortunately, his older sister, Chiaka, had left Poland for Israel before 1939.  Charles spent two years in a Russian labor camp near the finnish border where the conditions were vile.  With little food or shelter in the cold of the Russian north, he toiled in the forests cutting down trees to be processed into lumber.  Charles Willner overcame hardships which would have broken other men.  He was finally released when the Germans advanced into Russia.

Sylvia Willner, born March 29, 1923 in Pulway Poland survived the Holocaust.  When Pulway was under siege and became a ghetto, her family began to make plans.  They decided to split up.  There were four children and two stepchildren.  The oldest, Surka, had left home already and was living in France.  Sylvia’s stepsister Mincha lived in Volvanitz, near Lublin, with her husband Mordechai.  They were planning to go to Russia.  The other stepson Zalman, lived in Warsaw, with his wife.  The plan was that Sylvia would go to Volvanitz and Chana, the younger sister would go to Warsaw.  Joseph, the youngest, not yet a bar mitzvah, would stay home with his mother and father.  In spite of these carefully laid plans, Sylvia was the only one to survive. 

There was room for one in the small boat which was to set sail across the Bug River to safety.  Sylvia was the chosen one to cross the Bug River to the Russian side, leaving behind he chaperones which her mother was hoping would watch over her 16 year old daughter.  Alone, she safely made her way to Russia.  Upon arrival, she was taken by the Russians and put to work.  Sylvia worked in the coal mines and lived in barracks with only a stove for warmth which held hot water.  This is where she lived and worked for the next years.  When the Germans advanced into Russia in 1941, she and all the youths were released. 

Sylvia and Charles Willner were freed form the Russian labor camps after two extremely difficult years.  Destiny had it that they met in the town of Chkalov.  They had heard that Jews in the oriental community of Bukharon in Csntral Asia, enjoyed a great measure of religious freedom.  Many Jews, who fled before the Nazis invaded, sought safety in this remote region.  They made their way to Samakand in Uzbekistan where there was a large Jewish population.  There, they livewd in one of the oldest existing cities in the world. 

Sylvia and Charles immediately found a Bukharan Rabbi to marry them and proceeded to earn a living trading in the marketplace.  Their first son, George, was born and together they survived the Shoah.  When the war ended they went back to the shetels in Poland to find their families.  The Poles had already taken their homes and they were told that their families did not survive the brutality of the Nazis.  Their families were either slaughtered or died of starvation in the camps.  Sylvia, Charles and their son George needed to gather all their courage to start over in Breslov. 

Charles opened a grocery store, only to eventually face fierce hatred and anti-semitism from the Poles again.

They left for Germany, the place of debarkation in order to leave Europe.  There, their other son Morris was born. 

With the help of HIAS, the Willners immigrated to Philadelphia in 1949 in search of the American dream.  Charles was 29 years old and Sylvia was 26.  They had two children.  They survived together yet alone no parents, no siblings, no support but they had each other.  They had lived through the most heinous period of history and experienced losses at very young ages.  Their families murdered, their homes lost, their possession stolen and dreams shattered.  Who would imagine one  could recover from this entire trauma.  Their recovery took the strength and courage few could understand.  Their devotion to each other and to their four children gave them the fortitude to rebuild their lives.  Their lives were reborn.  They instilled in their children the positive characteristics mankind had to offer.  They showed them the resiliency that an individual needs to survive.  Sylvia’s common sense is the wisdom of survival.  They were practical and resourceful.  Though they missed out on their own, they instilled in their children the love for learning and desire for excellence.  It seems Charles and Sylvia Willner were on a mission when they arrived in America 58 years ago.  A mission to continue and carry on the legacy they left behind. 

We must all take responsibility to the lessons of our history.  They are what brought us here today.