The Shadows Behind Me

I was surprised that Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist, would talk to me not as a Jew but as a normal person…. I thought that I must be having a nice dream.

For six desperate years, Willie Sterner’s skill as a painter saves him from death at the hands of the Nazis. Faced with inhumane conditions in slave labour camps, and grieving the brutal loss of his close-knit family of nine, Sterner relies on his courage and ingenuity to hold onto his dignity. Showing how random luck could change the course toward almost certain death for Jews in the Holocaust, Sterner finds himself transferred to Oskar Schindler’s Emalia factory, where he comes under the protection of the famed German businessman and becomes his personal art restorer. An unvarnished account of what he experienced and what he lost, The Shadows Behind Me also follows the story of Willie and Eva – the woman he meets on a death march – as they rebuild their lives and regain hope in Canada. Gripping and moving, this is a tribute to one man’s remarkable determination to survive.