I’m a teacher.
This blog is about the Power of Teaching.
If you decide to spend a few moments here, you will see what I mean…
Start by studying the photograph below.
I mean, click on it to enlarge, really look at it.
Study the faces.
Imagine being the man behind the lens…
Farsleben train, moment of liberation, Friday the 13th of April,1945. Two American tank commanders in Sherman light tanks and their major in a jeep liberate the train, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. Stunned survivors come to the realization that they are saved. Major Benjamin snaps the photo.
This online journal was begun to chronicle the unfolding of something very special in my career – the re-connection of a train transport full of 2500 victims of the Holocaust with the American soldiers who liberated them on April 13th, 1945 near Magdeburg, Germany.
I’m a teacher, teaching history in the small town that raised me. But the things we have done here reverberate across borders and through time. They started out as little things, that all teachers with a spark of passion do.
He told me a story. If you keep reading, you will begin to understand why I was driven to bring it back to life. But it did not begin like that.
No.
As they say, the truth is stranger than fiction. I have to believe that there are other forces at work, that there is something else larger than me guiding this experience.
In teaching history, we made history literally come to life. And in the process, we made history ourselves. On September 25, 2009, ABC World News, featuring a story narrated by Diane Sawyer herself, nailed it down when she named us as their Persons of the Week in a Friday evening broadcast that went out across the nation. Eight million folks tuned in and got to watch as what we did here-students and teachers, soldiers and survivors- in this small town high school.
We tripped the wires of the cosmos.
And many times I come back to the question- how did it all begin?
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The story begins on an April day in 1945. It is rekindled in a summer conversation between an intrigued history teacher- me- and an animated World War II veteran, two generations later. What happens next changes thousands of lives…
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First-off, the old soldier darn near did not tell me the story. I did my interview with World War II US Army tank commander Carrol Walsh in July 2001. For two hours we talked about battles and close calls, friends he lost and those he bonded with. He hated the war, he hated the Army. “Well, I think you had an obligation and you knew it, and you weren’t going to let the guys down, that’s all.” Walsh mentioned the train, almost as an afterthought, and only when prompted by his daughter. He directed me to his friend on the West coast, George C. Gross, who had a negative of that photo, and ten others of the train liberation that he himself took.
I was fascinated. Who were all these people? The soldiers must have had the same thoughts…
With enthusiastic support and heartfelt blessings Dr. Gross gave me his narrative of the liberation , which I posted to my school oral history website in 2002.
So, it sat there for four years-on a solid day my original website might have gotten 25 hits.
Then, the first miracle happened. I heard from my first Holocaust survivor now living in Australia, a grandmother who had been a little girl on the train. In short order I heard from a doctor in London, a scientist in Brooklyn, and a retired airline executive in New Jersey. So I decided to host a reunion for them at our school. Judge Walsh met them with a laugh, and said, “Long time, no see!”
First Reunion, Hudson Falls High School, Fall, 2007. Dr. Peter Lantos, Dr. Micha Tomkiewicz, Fred Spiegel, Carrol “Red” Walsh, Matthew Rozell. Greg McDowell photo.
Chris Carola of the Associated Press (AP) picked up the story, and the school website shut down over the weekend because of the volume of hits! Since then we have had over 10 reunions, with three major ones occurring at our high school for the benefit of students.
Today, with the help of soldier-liberator Frank Towers and survivor’s daughter Varda Weisskopf of Israel, we have tracked down nearly 275 survivors who have been very moved to discover the soldiers who freed them and who also nursed them back to health. More accurately, though is that many of them have found us.
So I’ve created this blog to chronicle the unfolding of this story. A book has been completed. [The blog also includes other items of interest and words of wisdom to the history teacher and teachers in general.]
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Thanks for stopping by! You can learn more at the “Liberation Photos” page, or move right into the blog itself. If you would like to subscribe for updates, there is a button to the right of this page.
~And if you are a teacher or educational administrator, I’ll leave you with a final thought~
Israeli educational psychologist Haim Ginott writes about a letter that teachers would receive from their principal each year:
“I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot by high school and college graduates.
So, I am suspicious of education.
My request is this: Help your children become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.”
MR
Holocaust survivor Ariela Rojek, right, was 11 years old in 1945 when she and 2,500 other concentration camp prisoners aboard a train near Magdeburg, Germany, were liberated by American forces including 1st Lt. Frank Towers, left with his son Frank Towers Jr., center. “You gave me my second life,” Rojek told Towers Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011, at Hudson Falls High School during an event reuniting soldiers and survivors.
Jason McKibben Glens Falls Post Star
Holocaust survivor Leslie Meisels, left, signs a program for Hudson Falls senior Taylor Bump during Wednesday’s “Remembering the Holocaust, Repairing the World” event. Meisels, who currently lives in Toronto, stressed the importance of relaying his experience to young people “so they remember and fight against discrimination, hatred and injustice.”
Jason McKibben Glens Falls Post StarWorld War II infantry veteran Carrol Walsh, top,meets Holocaust survivors at a reunion in New York State, on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2009. Walsh’s unit liberated a Nazi train carrying 2,500 Jewish prisoners, some pictured here, from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany during the war’s waning days.The reunion came about because of efforts of high school history teacher Matthew Rozell.
Teaching History Matters 
A former student of yours posted links to your websites in response to a Holocaust Remembrance Day posting I made on a woodworking forum I frequent. I’ll be returning there to thank him shortly, but stopped off to thank you for the work you and your students are doing. It is important that the individual stories of those who were there be told. Thank you for your efforts in this.
As the husband of a High School English Teacher, gotta differ with you about what subject matters the most. Gotta be able to read in order to learn history, but I’ll give History (not social studies) second chair.
Over at the woodworking forum we have a saying, “Better to learn from the mistakes of others since we don’t have time to make them all ourselves.” Would that more of those who have the microphones and soapboxes in our world would bother to learn from the mistakes of history, but it seems they are often more intent on rewriting it than in learning from it.
Again, thank you for your efforts on this most important subject.
Jerry Palmer
Cedar Park, TX
Jerry,
Some of my most informed students are non-readers. History Channel, I suppose…that said…
One can’t minimize the importance of being able to read and write well. But, what is “English” anyway? The study of language and literature, inexorably linked to the experience of man, which is history. There is no first or second chair.
Thanks for your comment and your support. Matt
Hello Matt,
Pete at USHMM asked me to contact you and send you a link to my Quad City liberators’ website which was my project as an MTF. The Quad Cities includes four main cities, two on the Illinois side and two on the Iowa side (Rock Island, IL; Moline, IL; Davenport, IA; Bettendorf, IA). and the surrounding area.
http://www.qcliberators.com/
Sincerely,
Terri T.
MTF 2005
I never realized how important history is, and that there is so much around us, that is until this year.
My grandmother took care of a ww2 veteran for many years. For as long as could remember, he would tell me stories about fighting during ww2 and the wounds he had gotten. Because I was just a kid, I never realized he had faught in ww2, and now it seems much more important.
I guess what I’m trying to say, is that you are an amazing teacher. You make people want to care about History, the good and the bad. In one year you can change lives. Especially with the Holocaust reunion.
Keep up the website! I’m no psychic, but I think your grandmother was trying to tell you something. Maybe the “Lucky Penny” will bring you some inspiration and you will figure it out.
Hey Mr R,
I’ve been reading your blog for awhile now and I have to say I am very touched with your devout love for humanity.
You are one of those special teachers students can never seem to forget, myself included 😉 I hope you will still be teaching at HF when my kids get into 10th grade… 5 more years! That would make me very happy indeed.
There are so many beautiful stories posted on this site! Thanks again for sharing them.
Mick
WOW! i’m impressed. what a great effort on your part, the school district and your student’s to put this reunion together. i commend you, especially, mr. mozell for having the vision, inspiration and leadership to make something of this great magnitude happen in a small corner of the U.S. it takes the courageous voice of people like you in every corner of the world to echo the refrain of so many survivors, “Never again!”
Thank you and shalom.
Chris
Never Again! blog administrator
December 28, 2009
Hello
During the World War in 1945 in Belgium, my father saw the soldier Julius M. HELDER (36,459,331) during the month of December 1945. He left the 8-January-1945, the village of Stavelot-Francorchamps and killed 27-March-1945 in Germany at the age of 20 years, buried in Margraten, Limburg, Netherlands. By internet, I was able to verify that Julius Helder property belonged to the 743th Tank Battalion and therefore participate in the great feat of arms (landing on the front line, pierced to Belgium, Battle of the Bulge in Stavelot – Malmedy). I would like to know more exactly the platoon of this company where it belonged and what was its functions during the transition near Stavelot and also its exact route during the war. You can answer me directly to this email “jbfontaine@vincotte.be”.
Thank you for your cooperation
(Google translation)
I am 53 years old and my mother, who was a holocaust survivor died about 32 years ago. Just in the past 48 hours I found out some information about her parents and sisters.
They were all sent to Riga but her sisters were eventually transported to Stutthof Concentration camp. Now I also have their date of birth. Please please tell me how do I begin to look for information about them?? Their names were Herta and Hannelore Stein. They both died in 1944. Could someone please help me get started on this quest. Thank you kindly
I hope someone has responded with assistance before me. Start with finding as many documents on your mother as you can. Some will give you family and transport information: death, marriage certificates; petition and application for citizenship/naturalization; transport records from Europe; yizkor books, etc.
I am only now learning the ropes of genealogy research, so would suggest finding others who can provide more guidance from a Jewish genealogy society in your area or a national group to help you research European and holocaust records. There are discussion blogs where others are often willing to give time, search local records, as volunteers. Debbie
I have been to Strutthof. Here is a link to their website newsletter
http://www.struthof.fr/uploads/tx_artificanewsletters/20140306-newsletter-42.htm
Good luck. I have many pictures of Strutthof if you wish me to share them with you.
hello
I came across your website while trying to find people who were liberated from a train by American soldiers on Apr 30, 1945 in Staltach (today’s name: Iffeldorf. next to Starnberg see in Bavaria).
Can anyone help me with the mission of finding any survivors or soldiers who were there?
If anyone from the American soldiers, has taken any pictures from the liberation, it will help me a lot.
thanks
hana (israel)
hello hana,
first at all I apologize for my incorrect english. I live in Iffeldorf since 2005 and I am doing researches about the train with prisoners from Dachau, which has ended in Staltach. So far I could make interviews with old people from Iffeldorf and also make some researches at the archives of KZ Dachau but it would be extremly helpful to find people who were in the train.
Was your request from January successfull in any way?
thanks
Hans
Shalom Hanna,
I have found the Army-unit and Names of Soldiers having been involved in the liberation of that train in Staltach. But no pictures so far.
I also found several survivors still alive.
Mail me, if you are interested.
Hans
My uncle-by-marriage was in the Warsaw Ghetto in early 1943, and ended up in Bergen-Belsen, possibly via the Hotel Polski fiasco. He survived and emigrated to Israel. He would have been about 45 years old at the end of the war.
I don’t know his name – possibly Yosef Berg/Barg. His wife — my father’s sister — Franka/Francezska and daughter died in the ghetto. I am trying some long-shots in case someone might remember him.
Thank you.
Roma Baran
Roma,
Start with records at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (ushmm.org), Yad VaShem (yad vashem) in Israel, and JewishGen.org. In addition, there are staffer at the two museums and at other Jewish historical societies who can help you research these people and events if you hit a brick wall.
This is historical education at its best. In the words of philosopher and writer George Santayana, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Humanity has learned nothing from the Holocaust – witness Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. Neo-Nazis and skinheads promote the concept that the Holocaust never occurred, or that Jews somehow deserved their fate. They now teach another new generation to deny the Holocaust.
As we continue to live in an age of prejudice, genocide and ethnic cleansing, we must repel the broken ethics of our ancestors, or risk a dreadful repeat of past transgressions. A world that continues to allow genocide requires ethical remediation. We must show the world that religious, racial, ethnic and gender persecution is wrong; and that tolerance is our progeny’s only hope. Only through such efforts can we reveal the true horror of genocide and promote the triumphant spirit of humankind.
Charles Weinblatt
Author, Jacob’s Courage
http://jacobscourage.wordpress.com/
Thanks for your support of my work. I appreciate also your efforts in educating and combating the scourge of Holocaust minimization/denial. MR
My grandfather’s name (Miklos rosenfeld) was in “1945 Manifest List-Names of those liberated at Farsleben, Germany, April 13th 1945”. i’m from brazil. Where can i get more info?
Contact Bernd Horstmann at the Bergen Belsen Memorial in Germany. You may also wish to try the Survivors Registry at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Thiago: Please contact me at: towersfw@windstream.net
I may have some info of interest to you.
My name is Haim Guttman my father name is :Guttmann Dezsoe (david) was born at 09.10.1921 in Tornalya and arrived to Bergen Belsen at 14.12.44 was on that train.Unfortunatly he died three years ago.
I am trying to locate sombody who knew or meat him.
My e mail addres is : haim.guttman@doralon.co.il
Thanks.
Thank you for creating this miracle, Mr. Rozell!
I posted this on my FB account along with the blog link: “Do you remember about a month ago when I was so excited about a photograph of a woman and her child being liberated from one of the Nazi trains (see thumbnail below)? (I found it on Pinterest.) Well, I have been following a rabbit hole to discover the people behind the photo. I found him! Mr. Rozell is a history teacher – this is his blog. He lives and works one town over from where I was born! There are NO ACCIDENTS! Read, comment, share! THIS is something special and YOU have an opportunity to be a part of it! Carpe Diem, people! Be part of a miracle!!!”
If you hung around long enough in GF, you would have had the old man as your history teacher. see https://teachinghistorymatters.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/so-i-am-suspicious-of-education-and-history-should-always-be-taken-in-the-morning/
My loss for sure, Mr. Rozell! My parents divorced, so Mom, little sister, and I moved to be with Mom’s parents who retired to Florida in 1975. 😦
…but I did find you!
Kim,
I’m reading the story & comments & found you, a Mogilvesky!
Perhaps we are distant mispocha, as my grandpa John was from Mogilev, Russia. I have a wee bit more information when you reply.
Laraine Mogill
Farmington Hills, Mi USA
Hi, Laraine, I forwarded your message to my father-in-law (my married name is Mogilevsky). Here’s what he replied back:
“I asked my Dad about his name once, he told me that he did not know of any direct evidence to indicate that our Mogilevskys came from MOGILEV, although that is now moot, as all Jews from that part of Europe were murdered by the SS Eizatsgruppen. As immigrants were arriving on Ellis Island, the Immigration officials, who were predominantly of Anglo-Irish descent, used to mangle the immigrants’ names; therefore, they assigned names to them often by the names of the towns/cities/regions they originally came from; hence the “Mogill” name might have been for a family who came from the shtetl of Mogilev. By the way, the town of Mogilev has an interesting history: During the First World War (1914-1918), the Tsar Nicholas II once had his army headquarters at Mogilev, where he had his generals conduct the war in the East against the Kaiser.”
I do know that my father-in-law’s family had converted from Judaism to Russian Orthodox to save their skin in the distant past. My maiden name is Potter (not Jewish), but my mother’s maiden name is Morgenstern. I am Jewish because my mother is.
My father-in-law was born in Java (his parents fled the Bolsheviks and were traveling musicians), raised in pre-WWII Japan and immigrated to the US via California in 1950. His mother was not Jewish, but his dad’s people were. I consider him part of the “tribe” anyway. 😉
I’d love to hear about your family!
Sincerely, Kim
You rock and make the world smile. Thank you!!!!!!
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Belsen was liberated on April 15th so I think you have the date incorrect. 1945 would also fall 68 yrs ago. If he was liberated on May 13 that is 5 days after the war ended.
Hi my name is Sandra from Toronto,ontario. My father -Zelig pilzmacher was from krakow.. death marched to Gross rosen and Dora and finally to Bergen Belsen. He was liberated by the British on May 13, 1945.-70 th anniversay today- I would like to connect with anyone who knew my father from that period.I did speak the curator of the holocaust memorial in Bergen Belsen. But did not find a lot of information.
HI MY NAME IS GUNTHER GLASER,I WAS BORN IN BERLIN,JAN.3 1934,MY FATHER CAME TO THE U.S.A IN 1938,BECAUSE HE HAD RELATIVES THERE(N.Y.)MY MOM & I WERE ALLOWED IN NOV.1939,AFTER HE HAD A JOB 7 APT.AT 4.1/2 I WAS PUT IN A GERMAN HOSPITAL WHERE THEY BURNT MY BACK & PRACTICED PLASTIC SURGERY.WHEN THE GESTOPO SAW MY MOM ON THE STREET “THEY SAID WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE YOU HAVE A VISA GO,SHE TOLD HIM IM IN A HOSPITAL “TOLD HER GO SAVE YOURSELF WE;LL TAKE CARE OF YOUR SON.MY MOM WAS FROM ZURICH SWISS.HER SISTER ALSO MARRIED A GERMAN & HAD 2 CHILDREN,SHE WAS ALLOWED TO LEAVE,BUT NOT HER GERMAN BORN KIDS,MY SWISS UNCLE WANTED TO TAKE THEM OVER THE MOUTAINS AT NITE ,BUT SHE SAID NO,WE;RE GOING THE RIGHT WAY,WELL THEY ENDED UP IN SOME CONCENTRATION CAMP & DIED.READING THESE THINGS NIM SITTING HERE CRYING.I GREW UP IN BKLYN.N.Y.BEEN LIVING S.FLA,NOW IN THE VILLAGES IN CENTRAL FLA.GUNTHER
Matt,
You never cease to impress and amaze me. I am proud of all your efforts and glad to have been along for the ride with you for many years…yeah maybe we did not hang out that much but I am honored to still call you my friend. Great job!
Phil C.
Wow! How fortunate for all of your students to have had such a dedicated and wonderful teacher.
Their lives have been touched by a great person! And they will always remember what you taught them.
I believe a Coworkers mother was on this train. I sent her a text today and suggested she look up your web site.
Dear TEACHER.
I received a copy of “A Train Near Magdeburg” as a Christmas present. My first thought was that it was a strange Christmas gift. It was not a book that I would have bought for myself, but I am so thankful for having received it and for all that I learned from your book.
When I first started reading it, I could only read a few pages before the tears started to blur the print and I had to put it down for the rest of the day. When I got to Chapter 8, I was able to relate to you as a teacher. I had those same feelings of inadequacies when I returned from Vietnam and started teaching a group of hearing impaired students who also had a number of other disabilities. I only hope that I had as much influence upon their future lives as I am sure that you continue to have on your students.
As I read about the arrival of the US soldiers at the train and the days after that, it made me proud to be an American and a veteran. My time as an infantryman in Vietnam cannot be compared to what the soldiers of WWII experienced, but I believe that it made me appreciate them even more.
In 1985 I had the opportunity to chaperone a group of high school students on a trip to Europe. Part of our tour included Poland, Czechoslovakia, East and West Germany as well as an afternoon at Auschwitz. It was the one part of the trip that we did not have to correct the students. Although I am sure that most of them had heard or read of the concentration camps, those three or four hours were a very sobering experience and generated lots of questions about how could this have happened?
Thank you for all that you have done for your students as well as the survivors and the GIs who were the subject of your very moving book.
Harry Bahr
Dear Harry, thank you for writing. I appreciate the feedback and your honest emotions. You get the point of the book, and thank you for the comment and for visiting the site. Look for our documentary when it is completed. We are trying to heal the world, one story at a time. MR
Dear Mr. Rozell: I have just ordered your book about Magdeburg. A few years ago on a sleepless night I was googling my favorite professor (both undergrad and graduate), George C. Gross. I knew Dr. Gross really well, and took every class of his I could. I visited him during his office hours often just to hang out and chat. We had many conversations that touched on WWII, but not one single time did he mention Magdeburg. I have waffled for years on buying your book because I sort of felt that if Dr. Gross didn’t want to talk about it when he was alive, it wasn’t for me to pry. Now my grown-up daughter has expressed interest in Dr. Gross’ experience, so it is time. I want to thank you for getting his story out into the world where I could find it and hold on to someone who was incredibly important to me. Thanks, Charlotte Bansal
he did talk about it. wrote about it. he wanted you to know. and especially your daughter. you’ll see. I am glad but not surprised you held him in high regard. thanks so much for sharing 😊
Dear Mr. Rozell,
Since my father was a highly decorated Ball Turret Gunner who flew 48 missions in Colonel Steed’s ‘Flying Colts’ (15th Army, 456th Bomb Group), I purchased and read the 6 volumes of ‘The Things Our Fathers Saw’ with great interest. Having finally gotten my father to record and detail his experiences from enlistment on 12/8/1941 until ending service in 1945, I was totally immersed in the stories of the men and women who had similar experiences.
It was while reading these wonderful accounts that I learned of your book ‘A Train Near Magdeburg. I just finished reading this amazing account of the survivors and liberators this week.
I am very ‘protective’ of certain words such as ‘coach’, ‘mentor’, etc. and most especially of the word ‘Patriot’. Mr. Rozell, YOU are a Patriot of the highest order. I salute you for your work as teacher, author and contributor to retaining the lessons from ‘our fathers’ and more specifically those who suffered innumerable and unmeasurable treatments at the hands of the enemies of humanity.
Thank you, sir for all that you have done. I look forward to reading more from you.
Kind Regards.
D Jemella
Thank you Donald. People sometimes ask me if I ‘served’, when they are really asking if I am a veteran of the US Armed Forces. Yes, I served my country with 30 plus years of history remembrance and teaching in the classroom. With each new volume I continue this mission. God bless your dad, and thank you for reading, and for recognizing this. MR