Against All Odds

About the Book

This is a story of a young boy growing up in a close-knit family in Eastern Europe, influenced by intrigues of national politics in pre-World War II.

This autobiography dramatizes his life and survival at the end of WWII and the terrible period after the war, where he lost most of his family. It shows that with God’s grace, a hopeless situation can be turned around by hard work and an iron will to succeed.

About the Author

Willy Goellner was born on the 5th of April in 1931 in a German-speaking community in Poland. He lost his parents and one sister in the aftermath of the war, and was forced to leave his home, ejected to devastated Germany. In 1948, after two years of struggling to survive, he ended up in Austria where he studied engineering. He was married in 1955 and moved to Germany. With two baby boys, he and his wife emigrated to the USA and eventually Rockford, Illinois became their home. In 1966 he started his own business, which grew into a worldwide enterprise by 2016 with two plants in the USA, three plants in Europe and joint ventures in China, Germany, England, and India.