POW’s experience detailed in documentary

A brief conversation with an audio engineer more than a year-and-a-half ago at a restaurant led to the creation of a new documentary which will be shown on two occasions at Missouri’s National Veterans Memorial.
“That’s how it started,” said Debi Winschel, daughter of the late Kenny Winschel, a U.S. Army veteran who died in 2016.
“A Soldier’s Story,” will be shown Thursday, May 20, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. and again Sunday, May 23, from 3 to 4 p.m. in the event room at MNVM.
The production details the experience of the late Kenny Winschel, who endured more than half a year in a Nazi prison camp toward the end of World War II.
In his time in the camp, he kept a 38-page journal.
“It was hidden from the Nazis in the floor boards, in his bunk,” she said. Winschel hopes viewers can get a glimpse of life for those who served during the WWII era.
“I hope they realize what a great generation this really was, for all the men that were able to survive and come home, and how a 19-20-year-old man was able to endure this, with his faith, his family, with his ties to Perry County,” she said. “All of that together is probably what pulled him through. How somebody could endure what he did for seven months as that young of a kid — it was probably his grandparents. Your loyalty is your family.”Winschel served in the 88th infantry of the Army, and was a POW from October 1944 through May 1945. He was captured in Poe Valley, Italy, then transferred to Germany.
Winschel was liberated in Moosberg, Germany as part of Stalag 7A, which was the largest German POW camp. This area also housed French, Italian, Russian, but the majority were Americans.
“At the end of the war, with the Allies, they were bombing Germany and they kept moving them from prison to prison, wherever there was a place to put them,” said Debi Winschel.

Upon returning home from Germany, Kenny Winschel began a lengthy career as carpet installer, and lived in Florissant.
His parents were Joseph Winschel of Apple Creek and Mary Alma (nee Brewer) Winschel.
Debi Winschel said her late father occasionally spoke about his experiences in World War II, though not all the time.
“People that were really interested in history, he would never refuse to talk about it,” she said. “He never had a problem with it, ever, because he survived and I guess he wanted to share that story. It was personal to him. We never knew as kids that he did have nightmares.”
Occasionally, she said her father would kneel up in bed and attempt to escape. She thought her father’s bad knees were due to his work in flooring. However, that goes back to his time as a POW as well.
“That’s what we thought caused his bad knees and arthritis, but because he was moving too slow, one of the tortures the Nazis used was to take railroad ties and crack them over the prisoners’ knees,” Winschel said.
She provided a brief review of the film.
“It’s fantastic,” Winschel said. “It will give you goosebumps, whether it brings you to tears, that’s up to the individual. We’re like two, three generations past that, and we just can’t imagine...put them in a barracks with a stove, but we’re not going to give you any wood, so you can freeze to death, or whatever, things like that. The food was so scarce.
The American Red Cross packed parcels for them but the Germans took everything. They were lucky to get (a meal).”
For more information about the documentary, call DeAnna Kluender at MNVM at 573-547-2035, ext. 103.