Eddy Wynschenk - On A Mission

On A Mission

Wynschenk never talked about his past, until after receiving a phone call in 1972 from a religious-school teacher. The teacher had discovered that Wynschenk was a Holocaust survivor from his son, Mike. Few Holocaust survivors were making their stories known at the time. The teacher asked the elder Wynschenk to speak to the class about his story, but he became angry instead, and promptly refused. But then he reconsidered. “He became determined for people to know his story and spoke to many, many schoolchildren over the years,” said Adrian Schrek, of the Holocaust Center of Northern California, “He touched many children over the years.”

Wynshenk received numerous letters from appreciative students who heard him, and many inviting him to speak. “I get goosebumps when I read them. I cry. The kids open up from deep inside. They touch me with their love, power, their strength.” In 1988, he was invited to a middle school in Galt, California, after a student there brought in a newspaper article about him. “Usually I get letters after I talk to schools,” he then told the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, but the students had already written him more than a hundred letters. When he and his wife went to Galt, they were welcomed with a banner that said “Welcome, We Love You.”

Wynshenk was awarded an honorary high school diploma in 1989, from Earl Wooster High School in Reno, Nevada, where a month earlier his talk had held students spellbound for two hours.

In 1997, Wynschenk went to tell his story at a church in San Bruno, California, but was confronted by five Holocaust deniers who insisted his story was a hoax. But the audience would have none of it. “The kids stood up roaring, roaring, roaring. Eighty kids, as if on cue, stood up and said ‘Shut up, get out of here,’" according to Wynshenk. The crowd then began to chant, “Eddy, Eddy, Eddy,”