~From the Author of A Train Near Magdeburg
On April 13th, 1945, three weeks before the end of World War II in Europe, two US Army tank commanders were summoned by their major to investigate a strange train transport curiously halted at a railroad siding, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. As they cautiously maneuvered forward in their Sherman tanks affixed with the white star, they were stunned at what they were encountering.
Thousands of prisoners of the Nazi regime, 2500+ Jews from all over war-torn Europe, suddenly realized that they were free.
A cry went up from the group; the major told his driver to stop as the tanks behind him closed the gap and clanked to a halt. Disheveled survivors of every age swarmed, if they could, up the hillside to their saviors. The major stood in the jeep and snapped a photograph so fresh and raw that if one did not know better, one might think it was from a modern cellphone, although it would be soon buried into his official report back to headquarters. The Americans then sprung into humanitarian action in the middle of a shooting war.
The liberators of the train were soon off to fight a final climactic battle for the city of Magdeburg a few miles away on the Elbe River, where some of them would be killed.
The incident at the railroad siding would be buried and forgotten as World War II, and the Holocaust, came to a close and survivors, both Holocaust victims and the soldiers of the most catastrophic war in history, went on with their lives.
Fifty-six years passed. The state of Israel was born, old enemies became allies, the Cold War came and went. In the summer of 2001, a history teacher in upstate New York sat down with an 80-year-old former World War II tank commander to record an oral history. The interview was over after two hours of conversation; the camera was about to be turned off. But the world was about to change for many people when his daughter interrupted and asked her father to tell the teacher the story of that warm spring day in April. He had forgotten about it himself. The teacher went on to find the other tank commander and more soldiers, collect more photographs taken by the soldiers themselves that day, and eventually reunite nearly 300 of the train’s child survivors with their saviors before those men passed away, after 11 joyous and emotional reunions on 3 continents over the span of 13 years.
That teacher, in the middle of it all, was me.
On April 13th, 2022, 77 years to the day, I was present at the site of the liberation as a monument to the soldiers’ actions is unveiled in the presence of 2nd Gen survivors of the train and generations who are alive today because of the soldiers’ actions. German students and teachers have learned of the story spearheaded by me and my students and are now taking the lead in the land where the horrors were perpetrated. Accompanying me was Emmy Award winning film director and producer, Mike Edwards, bringing to life visually the messages behind my 2016 book, A Train Near Magdeburg.
We have since also travelled to Israel to interview a dozen more survivors and their families. A major distributor is asking for a four-part mini series, and possibly more. (See our most recent trailer, above). The director Mike Edwards and I premiered the new trailer above at the Ohio Statehouse with Gov. Mike DeWine at Ohio’s Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 27, 2023. Here’s a link to our TV interview at the local Columbus NBC affiliate.
But why should anyone get excited about supporting “another Holocaust film”? The short answer to that question is a question we should all be asking back:
Is there a limit to the stories that should be told about the greatest crime in the history of the world, perpetrated as that world, for the most part, was content to sit back and stay silent?
But this is not just another film; I also ask, why have we been working on this film for seven years now? Why have I, a non-Jew, spent ten years writing a book? Why do I still get up every day—even having since “retired” from the classroom— and think, write, or educate about the Holocaust? Why have I traveled to the authentic sites of mass murder throughout Europe, where my friends’ siblings, parents, loved ones’ ashes are scattered underfoot? Why have I spent half a summer in Jerusalem at Yad Vashem, and parts of two summers in intense studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum? And why does the filmmaker have such confidence in the power of this story?
Perhaps the soldiers themselves can explain a bit. Frank Towers, the soldier who arrived the next morning to transport the people out of harm’s way and toward medical attention, remembered, “Never in our training were we taught to be humanitarians. We were taught to be soldiers.” And Walter Gantz, as a medic who nursed the survivors back to health over six weeks, recalled, “After I got home, I cried a lot. My parents couldn’t understand why I couldn’t sleep at times.” Both men also had the opportunity to meet and cry with those they saved, before they passed.
And we have it on film. We won’t let what they witnessed die with them.
Shortly before the pandemic, I had the privilege of addressing a roomful of 300 US Army officers and enlisted men. Those current men and women in uniform, now listening intently, knew NOTHING about this episode, which, I posited, is really a lesson, an exercise in ethics and morality that took its place as a nano-incident in the most cataclysmic war in history, so infinitesimal it was virtually lost for over half a century— until those two tank commanders showed me that picture and others they had taken from that incident, and told me their story.
I went on to fill in the gaps. What happened next was just as mind-blowing, I told the soldiers, but for now, we will consider this:
In a shooting war, the rescue of the people on the train was not a military objective. The Army did not have to stop and help.
But it did.
And why was it that it fell to our young men and women to pick up the pieces of the world’s collective failure of responsibility to humanity?
Six/sevenths of European Jewry would be killed in four and a half years, but thanks to the soldiers’ actions, tens of thousands are alive today. And it’s not a nano-incident to them; “whoever saves one life, saves the world entire”.
Some of our soldiers came up to me afterwards, some quite emotional, all with profound takeaways from my talk. And as the Americans who may support, or at least eventually view this film, this also becomes your legacy and your heritage. In learning and supporting this story, you become witnesses empowered to reflect on your personal roles as defenders of our core democratic values, and like the soldiers, as protectors of those who are suffering, as confronters of injustice and indignity.
Since then, I have also had the opportunity to address our future Army leaders at West Point, a highlight of my speaking career, and certainly a target audience.
Thank you for the opportunity to put this into words. However exhausting, Mike Edwards and I will press on to make this film, the subsequent tours, educational outreach and resources happen, because the words of Carrol Walsh, my 80-year-old tank commander—my first liberator—forever resonate in my heart:
“I cannot believe, today, that the world almost ignored those people and what was happening! How could we have all stood by and have let that happen? They do not owe us anything! We owe them, for what we allowed to happen to them!”
Carrol passed almost 10 years ago, but he and the other soldiers are going to be kept alive, along with the survivors they gave life to. Both Mike and I are willing to do whatever it takes to find sponsorship, because we can’t bear the thought that our friends’ actions will remain largely unknown to a world that—to quote historian Michael Berenbaum—simply MUST KNOW. Every day we see the consequences of this ignorance.
You can find trailers at the links below, and a whole new website devoted to chronicling the story of the film itself, with ways to help as well. Thank you for your interest.
Matthew A. Rozell
Author, A Train Near Magdeburg
ABC WORLD NEWS PERSON OF THE WEEK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR https://teachinghistorymatters.com/meet-the-author/
SOCIAL MEDIA ‘VIRAL PROOF’ LINKS:
So many social media shout outs. Just one screen shot. This photo, described in my narrative above, has been viewed HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF TIMES…Yet few know the story…and they see it only because the tank commanders showed it to me. And I did something about it…
Teaching History Matters 