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Teaching History Matters

"for the sake of humanity"… A small town American high school history project changes lives worldwide. These are the observations of a veteran teacher- on the Power of Teaching, the importance of the study of History, and especially the lessons we must learn, and teach, on the Holocaust. Click on "Holocaust Survivors, Liberators Reunited" tab above to begin.

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“A Train Near Magdeburg”

April 28, 2008 by Matthew Rozell

“A Train Near Magdeburg”

NOTE: In 2001 my students and I began to post interviews that we had conducted with World War II veterans  at our school website, http://www.hfcsd.org/ww2/Two of our veterans had described this incident, and one of them had taken photographs of it. Four years went by, and we heard from a grandmother in a far away country who had been a seven year old girl aboard this train. Then more survivors began to contact us, and today we are aware of over 200 survivors who have now made contact with each other and their liberators through the efforts of this school project.

We have organized several reunions for them.

This story takes place in the closing days of World War II, asAmerican and British forces pushed into Germany from the west and the Soviet Red Army closed in from the east.

On the morning of Friday, April 13th, 1945, the US 9th Army was fighting its way eastward in the final drive through central Germany toward the Elbe River. A small task force was formed to investigate a train that had been hastily abandoned by German soldiers near the town of Magdeburg, Germany.The boxcars were filled with Jewish families that had survived the infamous concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen and were now being transported away from the advancing Allies to another death camp location.Scores of children were among the prisoners.

Two tank crews were charged with guarding these newly liberated people until the tanks could be relieved and the people could be properly cared for. By the afternoon of the 13th, one tank alone was responsible for safeguarding 2500 refugees. A small guard of emaciated Finnish soldiers who were also liberated that day set up the perimeter guard. The American tank commander had a small Kodak camera. He took several photographs that day of the newly freed men, women and children and spent some time talking to them through one of the survivors who spoke English. The following morning he was relieved, but the events of that day were never far from his thoughts. Later, he wrote them down for posterity, and filed them away with his photographs.

Sixty-plus years after the event, survivors all over the world who had been children aboard the death train are finding their rescuers’ narratives and photographs of the day of their liberation near Magdeburg in 1945 on an oral history website produced by a high school teacher, Matthew Rozell,and his students at Hudson Falls High School in upstate New York.

CBS Evening News Story

 ABC World News  Persons of the Week

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum film on our project

SUNY Geneseo magazine cover story

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Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

3 Responses

  1. on October 2, 2009 at 9:12 am New York Students Discover Death Train from WWII Germany « Never Again!

    […] The reunion was the third one hosted by Hudson Falls High School thanks to the Herculean efforts of history teacher Matt Mozell (see AP Article from 9/23).  It’s quite a remarkable story, really. Mozell, looking for a way to inspire his students with some hands-on history lessons, began to send questionnaires home with students whose grandparents had served in WWII. In 2001, Mozell and his students began conducting interviews and that’s when they learned about the liberation of a “train near Magdeburg,” Germany. Read more… […]


  2. on February 25, 2010 at 12:36 pm Josef E. Horowitz

    There is no question that we (thirteen memebers’ family from Cracow, Poland) were on one of the trains expedited from Bergen Belsen a few days before liberation, and our train arrived near Magdenburg and stopped there. But we know there were other trains with Dutch an Hungarian Jews.


  3. on January 27, 2012 at 12:00 am marozell

    Josef, you were most likely on this train. Several others from Cracow were as well. You should contact the Bergen Belsen Memorial for more information.



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