A recently published book memorializes the late Elmer Hovland, a decorated Luverne World War II veteran who served as a tank unit commander on the front lines in Europe.
The book, “The Boys in the Light,” talks about Hovland’s role as a U.S. military leader in rescuing two concentration camp survivors in the waning weeks of the war.
The book’s author, Nina Willner, is the daughter of Eddie Willner, one of the two emaciated Jewish escapees whom Hovland risked his military career to take in.
She will be in Luverne next weekend to spend time with the Hovland family and “learn a little more about this soul of Luverne,” Willner told the Star Herald.
“What happened in that part of the world where people learn to do something like this?”She said her book touches on the difficulty of moral choices in war.
“On one hand we have Hitler’s appropriation of Christianity. On the other hand, you have this real Christian kid who is just doing the right thing,” Willner said. “The choices Elmer made and the type of person he was … his humility, decency and his faith. That goes a long way in this book as well.”
Willner will be at Luverne High School at 1:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 26, for a public event and book signing.
Willner’s other public engagements next weekend include a 9 a.m. book signing at Barnes and Noble in Sioux Falls and a 2 p.m. book signing and “meet and greet” with the Hovland family at First Baptist Church in Luverne.
The story of two boys and two parallel lives
In her book, Willner chronicles the parallel lives of her father and Hovland in the years leading up to the war.
One is a boy on the farm near Kenneth, the other a son of Jewish parents who fled Germany only to be captured in France during Hitler’s invasion of western Europe.
The book follows Hovland’s military journey to the front lines of the war. (He became a tank commander in charge of 140 young men.)
Meanwhile, the story follows Eddie Willner’s journey to the Nazi concentration camp where his parents perish and he nearly dies.
The lives of the two young men cross paths when Hovland’s tank motors past Willner and another Jewish teenager who wave to the American soldiers for help.
In a summary of her book for Air Mail digital magazine, Willner describes the encounter.
“Both German-Jewish teenagers had just escaped from a death march heading from the Buchenwald concentration camp,” she wrote. “Days later they were found in the woods by a band of Allied frontline fighters — American tankers not much older than teenagers themselves.
“Although under strict orders not to jeopardize the battle momentum by stopping to aid refugees, the 23-year-old company commander (Hovland) looked over at the two dying boys in blue-and-white striped uniforms and, recognizing that they were no ordinary refugees, said, ‘They’re with us now.’”
She said piecing together the rest of their story took six years of research — including conversations with her dad and Hovland — that led to the publication of her book, “Boys in the Light,” released in July this year.
Willner said the two men lost track of each other after the war, but her father became an American citizen and 50-some years later they found each other again.
“The Boys in the Light” is Willner’s second non-fiction book to be widely distributed.
Her first book, “Forty Autumns,” is about her own family, “the family behind the iron curtain.”
She describes it as a true story of her mother’s escape from Communist East Germany at age 20 and the four-decade journey for the family to reunite.
Willner is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer currently living in Washington, D.C. More information is at ninawillner.com.
