 |
At the Wilner gravesite in Adas
Israel Cemetery,
from L to R: John Wilner, Richard Wilner,
Ginger
Newmyer, Larry Wilner, and Jean Paul Pitou.
|
French researcher Jean Paul
Pitou ended an 18-year quest last month when he visited the gravesite of
Captain John Wilner at Adas Israel Cemetery in Anacostia. Pitou had been
studying the 83rd Infantry Division and its role following the
Normandy invasion in saving the town of
Saint-Briac-sur-Mer in Brittany.
Just months after the town was liberated in August, 1944, the people of St.
Briac erected a large stone monument in memory of the three American soldiers
who were killed there. Captain John Wilner of Washington, D.C., was
among those listed. But Wilner's name was misspelled on the French
monument as 'Woelner', a mistake that went unnoticed until 1994 when an
American veteran, in town to commemorate the 50th anniversary of
D-Day, noticed that the name Woelner did not appear in the historical records
of the 83rd Division. It took years of searching before Pitou
and fellow researchers Gille Billion and Antoine Nosier correctly identified
the soldier who gave his life liberating St. Briac as Captain John Wilner, the
company commander of the 709th Tank Battalion that supported the 83rd Infantry. With that information in hand, they traced his burial place to
the
Adas Israel cemetery in Anacostia.
The story began in
Washington, D.C., in 1897, when Joseph Wilner, a recent immigrant from Vilna,
Poland, opened a tailor shop on 6th Street, NW. While
his business prospered, he and his wife Ida raised four sons: Bernard,
Morton, Paul, and John. Joseph Wilner quickly became a prominent leader
in the Jewish community, founding the
Jewish Community Center in 1920s and
serving as president of
Adas Israel Congregation for 25 years. When World
War II broke out, all four sons left Washington to
serve their country.
Just six weeks after Bernard died from an illness, the Wilners were notified of
John's death in battle. Killed on August 15, 1944, while on a
reconnaissance patrol in preparation for the attack to liberate the town,
Captain John Wilner posthumously received the Bronze Star for his actions.
As part of Pitou's plans to
attend the 83rd Infantry Division's 66th Reunion in
Nashville, Tennessee this month, he contacted Glenn Easton, Executive Director
of Adas Israel Congregation, for information about Wilner's final resting
place. Easton quickly reached out to the extended Wilner family. John Wilner's daughter Cathy, who never met her father, made an emotional phone
call to Pitou from her home in Switzerland. Neither she nor the rest of
the Wilner family had known of the monument to her father or the town's annual
memorial service. Weeks later, Pitou and Easton joined Joel Wind of the Jewish Historical Society and other
members of the Wilner family at the Adas Israel cemetery on a warm July afternoon.
At the graveside, Pitou shared his research into the battle's history
and gave family members an engraved stone and some soil from St. Briac.
Later, Pitou visited the archives of the Jewish Historical Society to view
documents and photographs of the Wilner family.
And the story will
continue next year, when the village of St. Briac will correct the historical
record by adding a plaque with Captain John Wilner's name to the monument on
August 15, 2013.
These words from Captain John
Wilner's letter to his daughter and his brother's children was found among his
papers after his death.
More than anything, I
value a cause, an ideal, which is decent and clean, representing relative
happiness and insuring the validity of a few of the finer thing which life can
offer... I am willing to die fighting for these things; I am happy to fight
for them...
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