Morgan Holdings roots date back to 1925 when Wolf ‘Yossela’ Margulies was born in a small, impoverished village in southeastern Poland called Czerniejow. Yossela was only 14 when the Nazis first invaded Poland in the fall of 1939 to mark the beginning of World War II. Upon arriving in Yossela’s town in 1941, the Nazi army forced all the Jews into the Stanislawow ghetto. Within the confines of the ghetto, Jews were shot at random and starvation and illnesses were widespread. Eventually, all the Jews in the ghetto would be sent to concentration camps. After several months in the ghetto, Yossela had witnessed enough to realize his only hope of survival was to escape the ghetto and leave town. At just 16 years old, Yossela secured a friend’s Polish identification papers and said his goodbyes to his parents and 6 siblings. 

One night, he snuck out of the ghetto and made it onto a train out of town. (It was later learned that Yossela would not only be the lone survivor of his family but also the lone survivor of the 600 Jews in his Polish village). Throughout the Holocaust, Yossela survived as a Christian under the name Stefan Chesnofski and worked as a farm boy on several farms. In 1944, Stefan was drafted by the Russians to serve in the Polish army and was trained as a truck driver. Once the war ended in the fall of 1945, Stefan was working as a truck driver when he met fellow Jews and learned of a displaced persons camp for Jews. Stefan made it over to Regensburg, Germany where there was assistance for Jewish survivors and soon thereafter changed his name to Willie Weisberg.