The Boys in the Light

An Extraordinary World War II Story of Survival, Faith, and Brotherhood

Author Nina Willner

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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…

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$48.00

July 22, 2025

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Nina Willner is the author of Forty Autumns, which Publishers Weekly called "a thrilling and relevant read” and which is still being feverishly read by book clubs eight years post-publication. Prior to her writing career, Nina was a US Army intelligence officer, who served in Berlin during the Cold War. Following her career in intelligence, Nina worked in Moscow, Minsk, Prague, Ottawa and Istanbul promoting human rights, children’s causes, and the rule of law for the US Government, nonprofits, and a variety of charities. She is married, has three grown children, and after a life living abroad, has settled in Washington, DC. Her father, Eddie Willner, survived the Holocaust, and this is his story.