willie sterner

For six desperate years, Willie Sterner’s skill as a painter saved him from death at the hands of the Nazis. Faced with inhumane conditions in slave labour camps and grieving the loss of his close-knit family, Sterner relied on courage and ingenuity to hold onto his dignity. Through almost random luck, he came under the protection of the famed Oskar Schindler and became 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 met on a death march – as they rebuilt their lives and regained hope in Canada. Gripping and moving, this is a tribute to one man’s remarkable determination to survive.