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THE BOYS IN THE LIGHT
By: Nina Willner
An Extraordinary World War II Story of Survival, Faith, and Brotherhood
Dutton
August 2025
On Sale: July 22, 2025
Featuring: Eddie Willner; Mike; Elmer Hovland
384 pages
ISBN: 059347127X
EAN: 9780593471272
Kindle: B0DKMWSFN8
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
An epic story of the triumph of good over evil.
The soldiers of D Company could not believe their eyes as they came face-to-face with the human cost of Hitler’s evil: two teenage boys—survivors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald—who had escaped.
The Boys in the Light follows the parallel journeys of Company D and Eddie Willner, the author’s father, as they are caught up on two sides of World War II.
At sixteen, Eddie Willner was among the millions of European Jews rounded up by Hitler’s Nazis. He was forced into slave labor alongside his father and his best friend, Mike, and spent the next three years of his life surviving the death camps, including Auschwitz. Meanwhile, in the United States, boys only a few years older than Eddie were joining the army and heading toward their own precarious futures. Once farmers, factory workers, and coal miners, they were suddenly untested soldiers, thrust into the brutal conflicts of WWII.
A company of 3rd Armored Division tankers, led by 23-year-old Elmer Hovland, quickly became battle-hardened and weary, constantly questioning whether the war was worth it. They got their answer when two emaciated boys stepped out of the woods with their tattooed arms raised. This extraordinary true story is a testament to survival against all odds, the strength of the bonds forged during war and the resilience of the human spirit.
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