Community Corner
AuthorSpeak with Elizabeth M. Wilms
Join Elizabeth M. Wilms, author of Blessed As A Survivor as part of the AuthorSpeak series at the Norwalk Public Library. Elizabeth was born an ethnic German (Danube Swabian) in the former Yugoslavia prior to World War II (1938). At age 4, her father was drafted into the German Army. The family was separated for close to eight years. When Elizabeth was 6, her mother was shipped to Russia as a slave laborer. Her maternal grandmother took care of Elizabeth and her younger brother but was also taken away to work in the collective fields owned by the state of Yugoslavia. They were expelled from their home in the spring of 1945 and placed into three different liquidation camps in Yugoslavia, where hunger, sickness, death and terror ruled. Care packages from relatives in Chicago were their life saviors. In her book, Elizabeth Wilms shares her story, her escape from Yugoslavia and the immigration of her family to the United States in 1955.