Gershon Willinger

Gershon and his birth sister Rita after his placement with Jewish foster parents

Gershon and Rita, last picture taken together before she was taken to States with paternal aunt

Gershon with his birth sister Rita and his Christian foster family.

Jewish foster family home, Holland

Gershon as a young boy

Esther Klafter, Gershon’s Jewish foster mother

Manfred Klafter, Gershon’s Jewish foster father circa early 1950s

Gershon’s adoption papers

WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FAMILY AFTER THE hOLOCAUST?

So I I'm the man of many names, Gert Israel I was born, until the age of 18 I was called Fritz. My last name was called Klufter because this was the name of my foster parents slash adoptive parents a year before I left. I didn't want to be adopted, but it got me quicker out of Holland as well, because I got a Dutch passport. Born Gert Israel Willinger became Klufter. And then, when I had my bar mitzvah Gert Gershon, Gershon is a stranger in foreign lands, he was also the son of Moses. So very apt name for me. I still was called Fritz and the day on my 18th birthday, when I left Holland, I became Gershon...

I was eight years old when I came to permanent foster parents. So what I do know is the time of 1945, 1950, when you are in institutions, orphanages, foster homes and not knowing even if you're a Jewish. Curious to find out who I really was. And so from an early age, my new foster parents, have a bookcase full of authentic photographs from the Nazi time, also that they obtained with the bodies in this concentration camps and how the Americans found the camps afterwards. So I used to leaf through them and so it is a psychologically, a very normal thing because the child looks for his parents. So, um, they told me that I did have parents, which I didn't bemoan my fate because it was very normal if you don't even remember parents that you had them. I remember it's very hard to call them mum and dad because, uh, you know, you get there at eight years of age, a very difficult child with lots of problems. And, but with a hunger for reading so that saved me because I was read, like a fiend and I could read well...

I belong to a group of 50 children who in 1944 were sent from Westerbork to Bergen Belsen. And we were there a couple of months and from Bergen Belsen we were transported to Theresienstadt. Because we were known as a group of "unbekannte Kinder”, unknown children, we came there. And what I tell usually schools is in order so that they can grasp, especially grade seven and eights I ask them who tucks you in at night, who's responsible for your food who's responsible for your clothing who's responsible to take care of you and who loves you unconditionally? Well, it's your parents. So now then put yourself in the picture of this and that happening. They understand that we didn't speak about the war. My most of my friends were children who were either in hiding, were in hiding or didn't have parents. We knew it about each other but we never spoke about it. We were getting ready to go to Israel and were Zionists and we were not going to stay in Europe…