A Train Near Magdeburg

by Matthew Rozell

  Not very much, no. No, it was… it was because... [Hesitates] it was just another day, you might say… I do not mean to put that down or minimize what was going on, but… it was just another incident, another day… and on you went! I had almost forgotten about [it] really, over the years. It was almost like another day in combat; nothing surprised me by then. No, I did not think much about it through the years, until I had this interview with Matt Rozell, the history teacher at Hudson Falls, New York High School [chuckles]. My daughter said, ‘Why don’t you tell him about that train?’ I had not even thought to mention the train to Matt Rozell, and I did, and as a result of that, that is how a lot of the programs and the connections with the survivors have come about.

  You said it was emotional and I can understand why it was emotional for them [the survivors]. You guys, whether you knew it or not, were the saviors and the heroes but…

  Well, let me stop you there. No, not heroes. It all came about, it just so happened, that Gross and I were the ones whose tanks were assigned to this particular scouting trip. Yes, those people look upon us as saviors. I do not, I don’t know why [chuckles]… I do not feel like a ‘hero’; I don’t know if you can understand my feeling. Yes, the liberation came about, because we got there. Yes, at that particular time those SS guards took off, and it was the end of their ordeal; there is no question about that.

  I mean, if you were not, you know, the ‘sole hero’ who saved them, certainly you and the other tank commander were the symbols of their liberation.

  Exactly! That is a good expression. That is a good description, ‘symbols.’ Yes, indeed. Yes.

  And so if it was, in a way, just ‘another day in battle’ for you, when you say that your reunions have been emotional, why—why are they emotional for you?

  It’s emotional for me when I think of where they were headed. They were headed for another concentration camp and extermination. And I get emotional now because I know what they went through, and what it meant to them, that we happened to intercept that train at that time. They are real people. When I look back, they were almost not like ‘real people’ when I first encountered them on the train on the cars! They were just a large group; 2,500 figures…now, all of a sudden, they have names. They had lives. They had families. They had stories. I guess that is why I find it emotional.

  Sixty-two years ago, as those events happened, I never in my wildest imagination thought I would ever meet anyone from that train again.

  Micha Tomkiewicz

  All throughout my life, [my liberators] were always an abstract concept. Now suddenly they've got shape, voice, life. Suddenly, we have names. We can shake hands. We can put our own background into a context we couldn’t put it in before. And now, [we] have an event that crystallizes that scenario. All of this to a large degree came out of a high school project. This to me is fascinating. When he started the project, he had no idea where it was going to lead. It is an excellent manifestation of what education can do.

  George Gross, who was at the time not feeling well enough for the 3,000-mile journey from California across the United States, also had his statement read aloud to the assembled students and teachers.

  George C. Gross

  Sincere greetings to all of you gathered at this celebration of the indomitable spirit of mankind!

  Greetings first to all the admirable survivors of the ‘Train near Magdeburg,’ and our thanks to you for proving Hitler wrong! You did not vanish from the face of the earth as he and his evil followers planned, but rather you survived, and grew, and became successful and contributing members of free countries, and you are adding your share of free offspring to those free societies. You have vowed that the world will never forget the horrors of the Holocaust, and you spread the message by giving interviews, visiting schools, writing memoirs, and publishing powerful books on the evil that infected Nazi Germany and threatens still to infect the world.

  I have met and enjoyed the company of Dr. Peter Lantos and Drs. Micha and Louise Tomkiewicz, and I carry on a rewarding conversation with Lexie Keston, Fred Spiegel, and Micha Tomkiewicz’s niece in France by email. I am enriched by the friendship of such courageous people who somehow have maintained a healthy sense of humor and a desire to serve through all the evils inflicted upon you. I am very sorry that I am unable to meet with you today.

  Greetings also to the dedicated teacher whose efforts have brought us all together through the classes he has taught on World War II and the website he maintains at the cost of hours of time not easily found in his duty as a high school teacher. I know that several of you found your quest for knowledge of your past rewarded by the interviews and pictures Matthew Rozell and his classes have gathered and maintained. Selfishly, I am grateful to Mr. Rozell for leading several of you to me, bringing added joy to my retiring years.

  And special greetings also to my old Army buddy, Judge Carrol Walsh, and his great family. Carrol fought many battles beside me, saved my life and sanity, and resuscitated my sense of humor often. We had just finished a grueling three weeks of fighting across Germany, moving twenty or more hours per day, rushing on to reach the Elbe River. Carrol and I were again side by side as we came up to the train with Major Benjamin, chased the remaining German guards away, and declared the train and its captives free members of society under the protection of the United States Army, as represented by two light tanks. Unfortunately, Carrol was soon ordered back to the column on its way to Magdeburg while, luckily for me, I was assigned to stay overnight with the train, to let any stray German soldiers know that it was part of the free world and not to be bothered again.

  Carrol missed much heartbreaking and heartwarming experience as I met the people of the train. I was shocked to see the half-starved bodies of young children and their mothers and old men—all sent by the Nazis on their way to extermination. I was honored to shake the hands of the large numbers who spontaneously lined up in orderly single file to introduce themselves and greet me in a ritual that seemed to satisfy their need to declare their return to honored membership in the free society of humanity. I was heartbroken that I could do nothing to satisfy their need for food that night, but I was assured that other units were taking care of that and the problem of housing so many free people. Sixty years later, I was pleased to hear that the Army did well in caring for their new colleagues in the battle for freedom. I saw many mothers protecting their little ones as best they could, and pushing them out, as proud mothers will, to be photographed. I was surprised and pleased by the smiles I saw on so many young faces. Some of you have found yourselves among those pictured children, and you have proved that you still have those smiles. I was terribly upset at the proof of man’s inhumanity to man, but I was profoundly uplifted by the dignity and courage shown by you indomitable survivors. I have since been further rewarded to learn what successful, giving lives you have lived since April 13, 1945.

  I wish I could be with you in person at this celebration, as I am with you in spirit. I hope you enjoy meeting each other and getting to know Matt Rozell and Carrol Walsh. I look forward to seeing again my friends whom I have met and to meeting the rest of you either in person or by email.

  My experience at the train was rich and moving, and it has remained so, locked quietly in my heart until sixty years later, when the appearance of you survivors began to brighten up a sedate retirement. You have blessed me, friends, and I thank you deeply. May your lives, in turn, bring you the great blessings you so richly deserve.

  Fondly yours,

  George C. Gross

  September 2007

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘Now I know what I fought for.’

  The following morning it was raining very hard. Our guests were making their way back to their homes after an electrifying day. The local newspaper had run a front-page story; after reading it over breakfast I set out according to my previous plan to go shopping for a new computer. I entered the big-box electronic retail store intent on making this a quick experience,
but I also needed a new monitor, and asked the salesman to demonstrate the various models. As he fired up one of the larger screens, the Yahoo! News homepage came to life. And the lead story, complete with the Associated Press photograph of Judge Walsh talking to students in my classroom two days previously, flickered to life. I drew a deep breath and read the story, purchased the computer and monitor, and headed home in the driving rain.

  At home, I checked my email. My brother Drew had sent me the screenshot of the Yahoo! News homepage with his prescient comment, ‘Could be the start of something big’; rapidly multiplying by the minute on that Saturday morning were the congratulations and tributes, and thank-yous from all over the United States, Canada, and the world. As the day progressed, I checked the web counter on my website. It also was growing by the hour, and by the end of the weekend it had been visited over 20,000 times, straining the school’s servers as people tried to view or download the photographs taken by George Gross and Major Benjamin on that April day 62 years earlier. Chris Carola’s news article had been picked up by nearly every major news outlet in North America, and many overseas, including in Israel. Thanks to Chris, at least sixty more survivors or their children contacted me over the next few months.

  From: Steve Barry

  Sent: Tue 9/18/2007 5:31 PM

  To: Rozell Matt

  Subject: A Train Near Magdeburg

  Dear Mr. Rozell,

  Even before I proceed to tell you how I found you, I'm one survivor of that train nearly 63 years ago. Last Saturday the South Florida Sun-Sentinel published an article titled ‘Vet unites with 3 death train survivors.’ Needless to say I was in a state of shock, and to some degree I still am, to find out after all the years, that the event burned in to my soul for all eternity, is shared with a lot of other people. I'm writing you all this since I'm planning to call you at the high school, and it will be a lot easier to have a conversation than writing down all this information.

  Sincerely,

  Stephen ‘Berenyi’ Barry

  Boca Raton, FL

  Frank W. Towers, a retired administrator at the University of Florida and the head of the 30th Infantry Division Veterans of World War II Association, also saw the article.

  From: Frank W. Towers

  Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 10:19 PM

  To: Rozell Matt

  Subject: Holocaust survivors

  Dear Mr. Rozell:

  Thank you for promoting the story of the Holocaust in your high school.

  I am a veteran of the 30th Infantry Division, and we had the 743rd Tank Battalion attached to us. I believe that you are referring to a veteran of this unit that liberated this train of the Holocaust survivors at Farsleben, near Magdeburg.

  I have more to tell you about this incident… I was involved in the displacing of these train survivors out of harm’s way so that we could continue the battle without doing them more harm.

  If interested, you can contact me.

  Yours in ‘Old Hickory’ Friendship,

  Frank W. Towers

  President, Historian & Editor

  30th Inf. Div. Veterans of WWII

  I contacted Frank and we immediately began working together so that these additional survivors who had missed the first gathering could also meet the soldiers of the division who had liberated them. The 30th Division had been having annual reunions every single year since the end of World War II; back in the early days, their gatherings would fill more than one city hotel. I began working with Frank and his wife Mary to invite the survivors to meet their liberators, and in March 2008, several of them traveled to Fayetteville, North Carolina. I flew down with my ten-year-old son. Here I met for the first time many of the people who I would become close to over the next several years, besides Frank—Steve Barry; Elisabeth Seaman, a Dutch survivor who ran a conflict mediation service in California; Ern Kan, a survivor liberated not on the train but at the nearby Polte Ammunition Works slave labor complex on the same day. Micha Tomkiewicz and his wife Louise were also there, as was Peter Lantos from London.

  This was the first of eight consecutive annual reunions held in the South between the soldiers and survivors of the train. The soldiers opened their hearts and turned the podium over to the survivors, who besides thanking the veterans, also had the opportunity to share their stories. The second and third generations of both the soldiers and the survivors bonded, and maintain relationships to this day.

  At the close of one of these reunions, at the conclusion of my presentation, John, one of the soldiers, said to me, tears in his eyes, ‘Yes. This is what I fought for. We didn’t really understand why we were over there. This is what we fought for.’ Of course, it is more complex than a statement of emotion made 70 years after the war, but the fact was that John and the others were now feeling blessed that they could meet the actual people who they had saved from the continent which they came to liberate—and before these meetings, few of the soldiers had any idea of the now tangible magnitude of what they had really achieved.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘For the Sake of Humanity’

  September 2009/Hudson Falls, NY

  As time passed after the very first reunion, and more and more survivors came into the picture, I began entertaining thoughts of holding a second reunion at Hudson Falls High School. This time, however, it would be a multi-day seminar, with the survivors and the soldiers and other guests addressing the students and staff in a more formal setting so that the lessons of history might be set forth for all. I designed it around the schedule of Judge Walsh and the beginning of the school year in September, and also so that students might take away high value lessons in ethics, responsibility, and morality early on in the academic setting. Frank Towers agreed to send me his list of World War II veterans of the 30th Infantry Division; over three hundred were on the list for the northeastern United States where we were located.

  As anyone who has planned a conference or any event where strangers were being invited to come from out of town, this became a daunting task. Hotels have to be contacted. Speaker slots have to be carved out of the day. Programs need to be confirmed and printed. Teachers need to be notified that their regular lessons may be disrupted. Meals have to be planned. Transportation needs to be arranged. Politicians, VIPs, and the media all need to be invited. Compound that with the unknown—how will the students, hundreds and hundreds of them, behave? Am I out of my mind to invite septuagenarians and octogenarians and people in their nineties to mingle with teenagers? And what if someone collapses? Thoughts like these kept me up many a long summer night.

  Fortunately, the administration and staff at the school was very accommodating—everyone wanted to help. The principal’s secretary became my secretary, fielding calls, relaying messages, coordinating welcoming gifts and packages with a core of other teachers who got involved in every aspect of planning and execution, right down to assigning seats in the auditorium for each of the six programs we would put on over the course of the next few days. Students from out of town were bussed in, as were some of the students from the other schools in our district. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which had invited me to become one of their Teacher Fellows, sent a representative to speak and also a film crew to document the event, and provided me a stipend with which to hire a professional photographer. The Bergen–Belsen Memorial in Germany also sent three representatives. And while I had contacted the major national news outlets, only one besides the Associated Press had indicated that it might be willing to send a team up to our small town. I began communicating with contacts at ABC World News back in late May. They were very interested, but would not commit until time grew closer. And then, just as school was starting and the final preparations for the grand reunion were being finalized, all communication ceased. An iconic U.S. statesman had passed away, and calling attention to our story did not appear to be in the cards.

  It didn’t matter. And I needn’t have worried. The entire community opened its arms in a wi
de embrace, and the love that burst forth, from soldiers to survivors, their children and grandchildren, all of the young people who became the new witnesses, was literally palpable. The elders became the new bonafide rock stars giving autographs and even dancing the night away on a steamboat dinner cruise on Lake George. Tears of happiness and joy flowed freely as the wires of the cosmos tripped once more.

  And once I wrote off big network coverage of the event, the phone rang in my room just as our guests began arriving. ABC World News did indeed make the time to come up to our small town, making us their ‘Persons of the Week’ in the Friday evening broadcast with anchor Diane Sawyer narrating our story, which we were able to all watch together at our goodbye banquet at a local restaurant. The following spring, I was invited to the U.S. National Days of Remembrance ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda honoring the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II and the liberators. By this time, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s short film was ready, and at the breakfast honoring the liberators, survivor Steve Barry and I were recognized by the USHMM’s director Sara Bloomfield, and the ABC News video was replayed for the over 100 U.S. liberators in attendance.

  April 15, 2010/Washington, D.C.

  We board the buses for the Capitol. Washington, D.C. traffic grinds to a dead halt in all directions as our convoy of three buses passes through intersections and sails down boulevards with a full Capitol police escort, every single crossroads blocked by police cars. Pulsing red and blue lights ricochet off the subterranean tunnel walls from which our buses are emerging, announcing to the citizens of our nation’s capital that a convoy of VIPs is arriving, like conquering heroes of old, returning home after a great victory. And in a real sense, that is what they are. Here, now, nearly sixty-five years after the last battle was fought, the American liberators of the concentration camps are returning, many for the first time since World War II ended. We are on our way to the national ceremony at the United States Capitol Rotunda, and it won’t do for us to be late.