"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.
Today I received two timely comments on the last book I wrote. You can get it here.
I just finished A Train Near Magdeburg. Very powerful and well written, I thought. Couldn’t help but think about recent events. Hmmm. A good day to finish it.
Veterans Day.
I’ve read and read about the Holocaust the last few years. To the point that family and friends have questioned whether or not it’s”healthy” to do so. So much death and despair. I’ve questioned myself, as well. But as this book has made me see, I’ve barely touched on the history of the Holocaust or WW2. With the world we live in and political winds shifting so much, it is important to learn and to teach. I loved this book and learned so much more and I would recommend anyone with an interest in this history or someone just stumbling across it to read it cover to cover. Thank you!!
As you may be aware, we had an election here in the United States this week. You may or may not be satisfied with the outcome, but in the end, there are plenty of lessons to be gleaned through the prism of time, of historical experience, of detached analysis, of serious study, and yes, maybe of immediate emotion. Some of my profoundest insights spring from moments of intense personal emotion.
Today I’m offering up a chapter near the end of the book, the genesis of which was written on my blog this summer as I studied in Israel. I’d like to think that there is a lot of food for thought in the book, and a lot of ways at looking at ourselves, too. Like a friend said when she paraphrased Churchill, ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going. Otherwise you just stay in hell.’ A nod to the soldiers out there on Veterans Day. My guys in the book called themselves ‘fugitives from the laws of averages’ —’just keep going’ was their mantra. Their friends were being killed. They were killing. Their president had just died on them. And then they stumbled upon this mysterious train.
Maybe we need to remember that sense of purpose, even when we think we have none.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
‘What do you want the world to be?’
I reached some of my final revelations in the summer of 2016 as the writing of this book drew to a close while I was studying in Jerusalem at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. My fellow educators and I heard from dozens of excellent scholars and presenters in the field of the history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; of antisemitism through the ages, and learned from the nuanced dissections what we thought we knew about the Holocaust. One of our final lectures was from was Dr. Yehuda Bauer, who at age 90 I consider to be the godfather of Holocaust historians. Sitting six feet away from me was a man who narrowly escaped the Holocaust himself, coming with his family in 1939 to the Palestine Mandate before the window closed. He became active in the resistance to British rule, and later fought in Israel’s War for Independence. Early in his career he was challenged by Abba Kovner to study the Holocaust when few others were doing it. He mastered many languages and it was he, after years of research, who concluded that the Holocaust was a watershed event in human history.
Dr. Yehuda Bauer. Palmach fighter, 1944-1949. Cow milker on Kibbutz, 41 years. Historian and I dare say, philosopher. Honored today to be in his presence.
Today, sitting in his presence, and listening to him, I got the feeling that I was listening to a philosopher, one who also had been milking cows on a kibbutz for the past 41 years.
So the question came, as it always does—
What is the overarching lesson that we should take away from the study of the Holocaust?
To paraphrase his answer, he simply said, ‘There is no lesson, except not to repeat it. The Shoah is used, all the time, for various agendas and causes…okay, fine. But there is no lesson.’
And I think I get it. When we talk about the Holocaust, its sheer magnitude and ‘unprecedentedness’ denies us the comfort of walking away with an overarching ‘lesson’. ‘Bullying gone wild’ it was not. Instead, he continued, ‘maybe the real question to ask yourself, and ask your students, is this—What do you want the world to be? And then, maybe it is time to introduce them to the study of the Holocaust, because maybe the Shoah is the exact opposite of what they envision for their world, unprecedented in scope and sequence—but it happened, which means it can happen again.’
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When we got back to the hotel to pack our bags and have a final evening to ourselves, we found out that for a few hours, we could not even cross the street to go back out—our hotel was now right on the route of one of the largest ‘gay pride’ parades in the world, right through Jerusalem. Security was tight; last year, a religious maniac stabbed six, and one teenage girl died here. But standing on the second story hotel balcony, I could hear Dr. Bauer’s words echoing in my ears, reminding us that democracy is not only very fragile, it is hardly even out of the cradle in the backdrop of world history. But what sets democracy apart from every other experiment in history, in its pure form and in theory, is its defense of minorities. It doesn’t exist yet, but maybe this form of government needs to be protected, and nourished. And maybe this is what the soldiers were fighting for. The world does not have to be united, and in fact it never has been and never will be. We argue and we disagree all of the time. That is as it is, and as it should be. At the end of the day, we either kill each other, or we live, and let live.
We decide.
Jerusalem, July 21, 2016.
I had never seen a so-called ‘gay pride’ event before, so as I watched, there was another revelation. For over an hour, my fellow educators and I witnessed miles and miles of this parade of young and old, of men and women, smiling and cheering and singing; I’m quite sure that many participants, and maybe even most, were in fact heterosexual. And for me, this experience became a metaphor for our common experience here in Jerusalem—from that hotel balcony, we were witnessing what in fact simply boiled down to a massive celebration of life. In studying the Holocaust together, we have plumbed the depths of the abyss that humanity is capable of, but not because of a fascination with evil and death; rather, it is because of the opposite, because of our commitment to humanity. For me also there is this burgeoning sense of righteousness in promoting the men who made a difference with their sacrifices in slaying the Nazi beast. And these American soldiers who encountered the Holocaust were not some kind of super-action heroes who arrived on the scene to save the day, just in the nick of time. As you have read, there was no plan, and they had no idea. What matters more is what they did when they encountered this trauma deep in a war zone with people still shooting at them, and later committing themselves in their sunset years to reaching out to others, so that, in Dr. Bauer’s words, the formally ‘unprecedented’ watershed event is not repeated. And maybe it’s time for a good long look at the world we live in today.
I have been on a journey that has consumed half the career that I never even set out to have. I have been joined by many along the way, and I thank the reader for also sharing it with me; that afternoon in Jerusalem, I parted with my educator friends with a final word in our closing discussion:
We are the new witnesses. We bear an awesome responsibility when we become aware, when we teach, when we communicate with others; now, more than ever, what we do matters, especially in entering this world of the Holocaust—because there is no past, and it is never over.
We are shaping human beings. We are cultivating humanity. There are always the children, the young; there is hope amidst all the darkness in the world. The tunnel can lead to the light.
WHY I LOATHE ‘THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS’By Matthew Rozell | TeachingHistoryMatters.com [revised and updated from the ten-year-old original-most-read-post-on-this-blog, April 2026]
I want to start with an admission; I originally put off writing this post for a long time, because I was worried about coming across as a know-it-all — the teacher who can’t let people enjoy a book without turning it into a lesson. That is genuinely not my intention, and if it comes across that way at any point, I apologize in advance.
But something has kept happening at my book signings that I can no longer stay quiet about.
Time after time, someone picks up A Train Near Magdeburg mentions that they first learned about the Holocaust through The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and seems genuinely surprised — sometimes startled — when I mention that it is a work of fiction. Not based on a true story. Not a fictionalized account of real events. A fable — the author’s own word for it — written by Irish novelist John Boyne, who completed the first draft in roughly two and a half days.
One woman at a signing described scene after scene to me in vivid detail before I gently let her know that none of it had actually happened. She was grateful to be told. Another time I could predict what was coming before the person opened her mouth — sure enough: “It’s like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” I said, as kindly as I could: “But you know it isn’t true, right?” She did not.
I am not alone in finding this troubling, and I will get to what the scholars and major Holocaust institutions have actually said in a moment. But let me first explain the problem as plainly as I can, because I think every teacher, administrator, and parent who has encountered this book deserves a clear and honest accounting.
WHAT THE STORY IS — AND WHAT IT IS NOT
In the two decades since its release, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, the 2006 novel by Irish writer John Boyne, has seemingly become a bellwether of sorts, some middle school rite of passage in “learning about the Holocaust”. It reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list and it is the book that has ‘introduced’ millions to the subject, and apparently not just children, though it is used in tandem with the horrific 2008 film based on it in literally thousands of classrooms across the country. So, I’ll get right to it—
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is NOT a book about the Holocaust and to deploy it in the classroom to ‘introduce children to the subject of the Holocaust’ is pedagogically unsound on several levels.
For those who haven’t read it: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a 2006 novel subtitled A Fable, later made into a major film in 2008. It tells the story of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of a Nazi commandant who has just been placed in charge of Auschwitz. Bored and isolated at his new home near the camp, Bruno wanders the perimeter fence and strikes up a friendship with Shmuel, a Jewish boy on the other side. In the final scene, Bruno crawls under the wire, puts on a striped prisoner’s uniform, and is led with Shmuel into a gas chamber, where both boys are killed as Bruno’s frantic parents search helplessly outside.
The book reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, has sold over 11 million copies worldwide, and has been used in thousands of middle school classrooms across the country. USA Today called it “as memorable an introduction to the subject as The Diary of Anne Frank.” For millions of young people — and, as I have learned at signing after signing, many adults — it has become their primary introduction to the Holocaust.
And that is very troubling to me as a trained Holocaust educator.
WHAT IS HISTORICALLY IMPOSSIBLE ABOUT IT
I want to be careful here, because I know that many teachers who have used this book care deeply about their students and are doing their best with limited time and resources. Nobody can be an expert in everything, and what follows is an observation, not an indictment of anyone’s intentions.
But the story is built on historical impossibilities, and teachers and parents deserve to know what they are.
Jewish children who arrived at Auschwitz were almost invariably sent directly to the gas chambers upon arrival. They were not assigned to labor details, not given striped uniforms, not allowed to move about freely. According to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum’s own historical records, as a rule all children under sixteen were sent directly to be killed upon arrival. Of the more than 230,000 children deported to Auschwitz, only about 23,500 were ever registered as prisoners — meaning roughly 90% were murdered immediately, without ever being assigned a number, a uniform, or a place in the camp. They did not wander the grounds. They did not sit by the fence. They did not make friends. They were dead within hours of stepping off the train.The notion of a Jewish child sitting at the perimeter fence, bored and waiting for a friend, bears almost no relationship to how Auschwitz actually operated. The idea that the commandant’s young son could wander undetected through the camp, put on a prisoner’s uniform, and be herded into a gas chamber without a single guard recognizing him is not dramatic license. It is a fantasy.
Beyond the physical impossibilities, there is another problem the book glosses over entirely. Bruno and his family are depicted as essentially ignorant of the nature of what surrounds them — naive, sheltered, almost innocent bystanders. But as scholars have pointed out, a high-ranking Nazi officer’s family in 1942 would have been steeped in antisemitic ideology from birth. German children were indoctrinated through the Hitler Youth and the school curriculum. The idea that the commandant of Auschwitz had a son who knew nothing of the Final Solution, who called Hitler “the Fury” because he couldn’t pronounce Führer, is not charming naïveté. It is a profound misrepresentation of how ordinary Germans participated in, and were shaped by, the Nazi regime — and it lets them off the hook in ways that are historically and morally troubling.
Boyne has been honest about the gap between his story and historical reality. In a 2006 interview with Bookreporter.com, he explained that because he was changing aspects of concentration camp history to serve the story, he felt it was important not to pretend it could actually have happened. In his own words in the Irish Times, he has always described it as a fable — a story that relies more on moral truth than historical accuracy. That is a reasonable artistic position. The problem is that readers — especially young ones — do not always register what “fable” means, and they walk away believing they have just learned what the Holocaust looked like.
This matters enormously, because the Holocaust is already under relentless assault from people who deny it happened or call it exaggerated. Introducing the subject through a story its own author says prioritizes emotional truth over historical accuracy is, at minimum, a risk worth thinking very carefully about.
Holocaust Centre North in the United Kingdom is straightforward: there are many survivor accounts accessible to young readers, and novels more accurately grounded in fact, that teachers could and should use instead.
WHOSE GRIEF IS THIS, EXACTLY?
Here is what troubles me most, and it goes deeper than the historical details.
After the film’s final gas chamber scene circulated widely online, students began posting their reactions in the comments. I want you to read these carefully:
“My heart felt like it was getting slugged by a bowling ball when the mother was crying.”
“The sad part to me was when Bruno says ‘don’t worry we are just in here to get out of the rain.’ Poor boy.”
“I watched this in my school today and everybody cried.”
Notice who they are grieving for. Bruno — the German boy, the son of the commandant of Auschwitz. The story is so skillfully constructed around his innocence and his tragedy that many students finish it having shed their tears for the perpetrators’ family, while the Jewish victims remain, essentially, a backdrop. Where is Shmuel’s story? Who were his parents? What was his life before the deportation, the cattle car, the camp? What did he love, fear, dream about? The book has almost nothing to say about any of that, because Shmuel exists in the narrative primarily as a mechanism for delivering Bruno to his tragic end.
A New York City English teacher and Holocaust educator wrote in Chalkbeat that rather than centering actual Holocaust victims, the tragedy as the story sees it is that the protagonist was not supposed to be killed. By the end, readers are left feeling sorry for Bruno’s grief-stricken father — who was, to be clear, in charge of running Auschwitz. Jewish Chronicle columnist Tanya Gold wrote in her 2022 review that Jews in Boyne’s work are reduced to landscape rather than real characters — props to a writer’s vanity and his readers’ desire to experience the Holocaust through the prism of a fictional Nazi who cannot be harmed by it. “This is not memorialisation,” she wrote. “It is certainly not teaching. It is erasure.” New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis was equally unsparing, writing in her 2008 review of the film that it “trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked [the Holocaust] for a tragedy about a Nazi family.” It is an emotionally charged story. It is not an honest one — and some of the most respected voices in journalism and Holocaust scholarship have been saying so for years.
THE CRITICAL THINKING IRONY
Here is something that genuinely surprised me when I first came across it. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas appears in the New York State Common Core State Standards materials as a sample student essay — held up as a model of strong analytical writing. The essay compares the book to the film and concludes that the story is about “an incredible friendship that triumphed over racism.” It is presented as rigorous critical thinking.
Nowhere in that essay — nowhere in the entire assignment — is it acknowledged that either the book or the film is a work of fiction. The most basic question you can ask about any text used to teach history — is this actually true? — was never raised. The Common Core held this up as an exemplar of analytical excellence, and the fiction at its heart went entirely unexamined.
I have actually used TBITSP in my own classroom, but deliberately, and for the opposite purpose: to have students identify the historical fallacies embedded in the story and practice the critical thinking the Common Core assignment never actually required. That, I believe, is a legitimate use of the book. Using it as a sincere introduction to what the Holocaust actually was is a different matter entirely — and one that requires students to already have solid historical grounding before they can begin to interrogate the fiction they are reading. If they had that grounding, they would not need the book in the first place.
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY — AND NO, I AM NOT ALONE IN THINKING THIS
I want to be clear: the concerns I have been raising for years are not just one teacher’s opinion. The weight of serious Holocaust scholarship — and the judgment of the institutions built to preserve this history — falls squarely on one side of the debate.
Michael Gray, author of Contemporary Debates in Holocaust Education and Teaching the Holocaust: Practical Approaches for Ages 11–18, conducted an empirical study of 298 students and published his findings in the peer-reviewed journal Holocaust Studies. His conclusion — and again, this is a scholar’s word, not mine — is that The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is principally a curse for Holocaust education. That’s pretty strong language from a respected Holocaust educator. I know another who leads tours of the authentic sites of mass murder in Europe, whose own mother barely survived Auschwitz while her teenage sister was shot in the head in front of her for slipping on the ice and overturning a bucket of soup, who simply labels this story as “reprehensible”.
The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education — the leading Holocaust education research body in the United Kingdom — has published research finding that many young people draw mistaken and misleading conclusions about the Holocaust directly from their engagement with this story, and that over a third of teachers in England are still using it in their lessons. Their Programme Director Ruth-Anne Lenga has said directly: “As a work of fiction and drama this book and associated film may have some worth, but as a resource for teaching this important history it is flawed. The potential for giving young people the impression that ordinary Germans were in some way ‘victims’ of the Holocaust is insensitive and dangerous. With the rise in antisemitism, this book could potentially do more harm than good.”
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum — the institution built on the actual site where over a million people were murdered — stated publicly in January 2020 that the novel “should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches about the history of the Holocaust.” Their specific criticisms include the book’s portrayal of Jewish victims as one-dimensional, passive, and unresisting — a depiction that reinforces exactly the “sheep to the slaughter” narrative that the historical record so powerfully contradicts. That is not a mild reservation from a distant institution. That is the place where it happened telling educators: do not use this book.
The data on what students actually believe after reading this book is perhaps the most sobering finding of all. According to the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, the novel and the film are the most-read book and most-watched film about the Holocaust among students aged 12–18 — with 75% of students who had read anything about the Holocaust having read this book, and 84% of those who had watched anything having seen the film. Those numbers surpass Anne Frank’s diary by nearly 60 percent. A separate 2009 study by the London Jewish Cultural Centre found that 70% of readers thought the novel was based on a true story. And — this is the one that stays with me — many students believed that the death of Bruno brought about the end of the concentration camps.
Read that last sentence again. Students walked away from their Holocaust education believing that the death of a fictional German boy ended the concentration camps.
Art Spiegelman, author of Maus — the Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust memoir widely considered one of the most important works of literature of the past fifty years — was asked about the book at a public event in Chattanooga, Tennessee in February 2022. He said he had no objection to teachers replacing Maus with a different Holocaust book in their curriculum — so long as it wasn’t The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. “The guy didn’t do any research whatsoever,” Spiegelman said. Even Boyne himself, asked to compare the two books, acknowledged that Maus is “better, no question about that. And a much more important book.”
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum does not single out the book by name in its public teaching guidelines, but its framework for evaluating Holocaust texts and films is unambiguous: materials that oversimplify the Holocaust, represent only one perspective, distort historical reality, or risk conveying the impression that it was inevitable rather than the result of human choices should be avoided. Scholars have described the film specifically as a false narrative that can distort people’s understanding of the Holocaust. The USHMM’s teaching resources remain the gold standard for any educator approaching this subject, and I encourage every teacher and parent to consult them before selecting any classroom material on the Holocaust.
DO TEACHERS WHO STILL USE IT HAVE A POINT?
In fairness, I want to acknowledge the other side, because there are thoughtful people who disagree, and I do not think they are acting in bad faith. Good teachers have used this book and defended it, and their concern for their students is real.
Some educators argue that the book functions as a gateway — that it gets students emotionally invested in the Holocaust who might otherwise disengage, and that a skilled teacher can use that emotional opening to guide students toward more accurate material. Boyne himself has said he has always been clear with young readers that it is fiction, and that if it has encouraged some of them to explore the subject further, that is perhaps its most significant achievement. I understand that argument, and I don’t dismiss it out of hand.
But I think the gateway argument collapses when you look at the above data honestly. The research does not show students being led through this book toward deeper and more accurate understanding. It shows them leaving with fundamental misconceptions firmly in place — misconceptions that will need to be entirely dismantled before genuine learning about the Holocaust can begin. You cannot use a text to correct the misconceptions it is simultaneously creating. That is not a gateway; it is a sensationalistic detour around the more important discussions which saps classroom time we do not have.
And there is something else worth saying plainly. The Holocaust faces denial and distortion every single day, in classrooms, on social media, even in governments around the world. In that environment, introducing the subject with a story that frames German families as innocent victims of their own circumstances — that asks us to grieve most deeply for a Nazi perpetrator family’s child — is not just a pedagogical problem — it is a contribution to exactly the kind of muddying of the historical record that Holocaust deniers exploit. The UCL’s Ruth-Anne Lenga said it directly: with antisemitism on the rise, this book could do more harm than good.
There are better books. There are real stories. They are more powerful, more honest, and more respectful of the people who actually lived and died through this history.
WHAT TO DO INSTEAD
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum offers free, extensive, age-appropriate teaching guidelines — including a rubric for evaluating any text or film under consideration for classroom use. I strongly encourage every teacher and parent to read them before choosing any Holocaust material. The USHMM suggests three guiding questions worth keeping close before selecting any text:
Why should students learn this history?
What are the most significant lessons they should take from studying the Holocaust?
Why is this particular book, image, or film the right medium for the topics you want to teach?
Those questions, applied honestly to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, provide their own answer.
For an annotated guide to appropriate Holocaust reading for students in grades four through eight, see Karen Shawn’s What Books Shall We Choose for Our Children? — available here as a PDF, with an article of mine beginning on page 94.
For serious teachers of the subject, Essentials of Holocaust Education: Fundamental Issues and Approaches by Totten and Feinberg (2016) is an invaluable guide to the whole field.
I lost a book sale the day I first published this post. The woman I was speaking with set my book down and walked away, and honestly, I understand. Nobody likes to be told that something they found moving is not what they thought it was, and I have never wanted this piece to feel like an attack on readers who loved the book or teachers who used it in good faith.
But here is what I keep coming back to, after decades of conversations with Holocaust survivors, liberators, and the families of both. The real children of Auschwitz — the ones who actually died there, whose names are on record, whose families were torn apart and destroyed — deserve to be known as themselves. Not as a backdrop for someone else’s story. Not as the supporting cast in a fable about a German boy’s innocence and a Nazi father’s grief. They deserve the full weight of honest history, told as carefully and truthfully as we can manage.
The Auschwitz Memorial said it. The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education said it. Holocaust Centre North said it. A peer-reviewed academic study called it a curse. Art Spiegelman said it. And I am saying it too — not because I think I am smarter than anyone, but because twenty years of sitting with survivors and listening to what they endured has taught me that their real stories are extraordinary enough. They do not need to be replaced by a fable. They do not need to be filtered through the grief of the people who ran the camps.
They kept their promise to remember and to bear witness. The least we can do is tell the truth.
Matthew Rozell taught history and Holocaust studies at Hudson Falls High School in New York for over three decades. He is the author of A Train Near Magdeburg and the Things Our Fathers Saw series. The feature film A Train Near Magdeburg is in production, coming 2027. Visit MagdeburgTrain.com to follow its progress.
~”A ‘Must-Read’. A real tribute to the survivors and liberators. I could not put this book down. Highly recommended as a required reading for anyone taking or teaching Holocaust History. Suited for high school / college / adult education settings.”– Rabbi Justin Schwartz
~”If you have any trepidation about reading a book on the Holocaust, this review is for you. [Matthew Rozell] masterfully conveys the individual stories of those featured in the book in a manner that does not leave the reader with a sense of despair, but rather a sense of purpose.”-Cassandra
~”One might think why this book should be read: there are so many books about the Holocaust and yes, we know it happened. But in no book that I have read up to this day, the story comes to life in such a personal way. How the lives of innocent people were impacted, what they went through and how they were formed by their experience. By zooming in on this particular event, you get to know what it was like – not only for the victims, but also for their liberators. Or, as quoted in the book: It is important to have the past in front of you – not in the ‘rearview’ as one moves forward.” -Amazon customer
~”As an Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker I am always looking for good stories; stories that move the heart as well as the mind. This book does that in spades. From the first page to the last it rivets you to the passion of the author’s journey and to the story of the people of whom he writes about. This story is a shining example of the good that people can do to help their fellow man. It is a story of a man who has followed his heart and mind to accomplish great things for others.”-Michael J. Edwards, Searching For Augusta (PBS)
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Below are two more satisfied customers, and excerpts from the book, which features their testimony as well as the testimony of more than 30 other survivors and over a dozen liberators.
kurt-bronner
Kurt Bronner
Kurt Bronner (Chapter 1) was from Hungary. He spent a lengthy amount of time recuperating in Sweden following the war, and later came to the United States. He is a retired graphic designer currently living near Los Angeles.
Two weeks after we arrived, my dad started to cough. One morning, I heard men reciting prayers, and someone said to me, ‘I’m sorry. Your father is dead.’ Eighteen years old, I didn’t know; I never faced death before. Then in the morning they took the bodies out; I tried to follow my dad’s cart, being taken to the so-called cemetery—[but I could not find him, there were so many bodies]. And a week later, I saw my mother through the barbed wire; we started talking, she wanted to know how dad is, and I lied and I said, ‘He’s fine, he’s sleeping’—I didn’t want to burden her with the bad news. [Pause] And then a German woman guard started to beat my mother. [Pause] You are on this side of the fence, and on the other side is your mother, and there is nothing you can do. And that is the last time that I saw my mother; I don’t know what happened to her; I tried to find out, and all they could tell me was, fifteen thousand women died without any names.
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jean-lazinger
Jean Weinstock Lazinger
Sol Lazinger (Chapter 10) was the son of Polish Jewish immigrants. He was decorated with two Purple Hearts and the Silver Star. He was evacuated after being wounded in Belgium. He married Jean Weinstock Lazinger (Chapter 1) in 1950. Jean was from Poland. Until they learned of the author’s first reunion in 2007 through the news media, neither realized that it was Sol’s division which had liberated Jean’s train. Sol passed away in 2012 at the age of 87; Jean lives in Philadelphia.
We went to Bergen–Belsen in July 1943. And we were the first civilians in that camp. We used to get a slice of bread and coffee in the morning. And we used to get this turnip soup. Sometimes we used to get spinach soup with white worms on top. And there were a couple doctors there, they said, ‘You better eat it, because it’s protein.’ But I was unable to do that.
They separated the men from the women, but we were able to see each other through the day. After 5:00 the men had to be in their barracks and the women had to be in the women’s barracks. We had bunk beds… but, as they were bringing other people from different [places], our camp got smaller and smaller. We were divided by the wires and we were able to speak to the people on the other side, and I remember exactly when the train came from Holland. There was hunger, there was cold, then they brought the Hungarian Jewish people… it was right in the next barrack from us, we had a hard time because they spoke a different language than us, but some people spoke German, so we were able to communicate a little bit.
Sol Lazinger
I was a rifleman. I was young. We [look back, and] try to compare ourselves after sixteen weeks of basic training—and we went into combat fighting German soldiers who had a minimum of five years’ worth of army experience. It was not the easiest thing in the world, but we did the best we could.
I fought my way through France. I was very lucky because I was in combat for most of the time. I went through many battles all through France, Belgium, and Holland; and when the big officers came around, they used to tap me and say, ‘Oh, you’re still here?’
When we broke through the Siegfried Line and attacked, many of my friends were killed. One fellow by the name of Ben Shelsky, was a replacement soldier [like me]; he went over the Siegfried Line, too. He got a telegram from the Red Cross that said his wife gave birth to his child. The next morning a sniper killed him; the telegram telling him that he became a father was sticking out of his pocket.
So we went across the Siegfried Line and went to a town by the name of Lubeck, Germany. After the first day there, I was wounded in street fighting; I spent on and off almost two years in the hospital—I had most of my left ankle blown out by machine gun bullets.
When someone lost a friend, we sort of tried to stick together even though we were all from different parts of the country. And you get sort of down with everything, but as I say, you know, we did the best we could, but it was an uphill battle fighting against the soldiers who were trained for longer periods of time. But I think the American boys did very well.
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On Liberation:
Kurt Bronner
What I remember is that suddenly the doors of the cattle car were opened, and we were out there, hearing the machine guns, and the gunfire, very close by. We didn’t have any food, we didn’t have any water—but we were alive! We saw the German guards running; and we saw them taking their clothes off and changing into civilian clothes… and we were waiting. And suddenly we saw some convertibles, and some tanks on the road above and looking up from the small valley, and seeing the white stars on the jeeps—we thought they were Russians, you know— ‘stars’. Then one soldier came and started to speak in English. Very few of us spoke English, and he said in Yiddish, ‘I am a Jew, too’—excuse me [puts hand over heart, gets emotional]—memories coming back [pauses]… we were given our lives back. We were taken to the Hillersleben village, and I remember one of the American soldiers came by, and pointed us to a room. And twenty, twenty-five of us went into the room—and the first English expression I learned was, ‘One only!’ [Laughter] And it was a room for one person!
I go to schools and talk to the students, and one of them asked me, ‘When did you know that you were free?’ And I tell them, when I went to the bathroom, and closed the door, by myself, alone, in privacy; that is when I knew I was free; [I had my dignity]. And after the DDT, the new clothes, the white sheets on a bed-we felt free.*
*DDT– insecticide used later in WWII to control malaria and typhus among civilians and troops. A white powder was generally sprayed on the subject; it was banned for agricultural use in the USA in 1972 as a threat to wildlife.
The incredible TRUE STORY behind an iconic photograph, taken at the liberation of a death train deep in the heart of Nazi Germany, brought to life by the history teacher who reunited hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their children with the actual American soldiers who saved them.
From the book:
– ‘I survived because of many miracles. But for me to actually meet, shake hands, hug, and cry together with my liberators–the ‘angels of life’ who literally gave me back my life–was just beyond imagination.’–Leslie Meisels, Holocaust Survivor
– ‘Battle-hardened veterans learn to contain their emotions, but it was difficult then, and I cry now to think about it. What stamina and regenerative spirit those brave people showed!’–George C. Gross, Liberator
– ‘Never in our training were we taught to be humanitarians. We were taught to be soldiers.’–Frank Towers, Liberator
– ‘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 Walsh, Liberator
– ‘[People say it] cannot happen here in this country; yes, it can happen here. I was 21 years old. I was there to see it happen.’–Luca Furnari, US Army
– ‘[After I got home] I cried a lot. My parents couldn’t understand why I couldn’t sleep at times.’–Walter ‘Babe’ Gantz, US Army medic
– ‘I grew up and spent all my years being angry. This means I don’t have to be angry anymore.’–Paul Arato, Holocaust Survivor
– ‘For the first time after going through sheer hell, I felt that there was such a thing as simple love coming from good people–young men who had left their families far behind, who wrapped us in warmth and love and cared for our well-being.’–Sara Atzmon, Holocaust Survivor
– ‘It’s not for my sake, it’s for the sake of humanity, that they will remember.’–Steve Barry, Holocaust Survivor
-From the back cover-
THE HOLOCAUST was a watershed event in history. In this book, Matthew Rozell reconstructs a lost chapter–the liberation of a ‘death train’ deep in the heart of Nazi Germany in the closing days of the World War II. Drawing on never-before published eye-witness accounts, survivor testimony and memoirs, and wartime reports and letters, Rozell brings to life the incredible true stories behind the iconic 1945 liberation photographs taken by the soldiers who were there. He weaves together a chronology of the Holocaust as it unfolds across Europe, and goes back to literally retrace the steps of the survivors and the American soldiers who freed them. Rozell’s work results in joyful reunions on three continents, seven decades later. He offers his unique perspective on the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations, and the impact that one person, a teacher, can make.
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–Featuring testimony from 15 American liberators and over 30 Holocaust survivors
–10 custom maps
–73 photographs and illustrations, many never before published.
502 PAGES-extensive notes and bibliographical references
A Teacher’s Journey into the Holocaust, and the Reuniting of the Survivors and Liberators, 70 years on
COMING FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 16, 2016
*****
–From the author of ‘The Things Our Fathers Saw’ World War II narrative history trilogy–
From the Preface:
The picture defies expectations. When the terms ‘Holocaust’ and ‘trains’ are paired in an online image search, the most common result is that of people being transported to killing centers—but this incredible photograph shows exactly the opposite. And there are many things about this story that will defy expectations. Fifteen years after I brought this haunting image to the light of day, it has been called one of the most powerful photographs of the 20th century. It has been used by museums and memorials across the world, in exhibitions, films, mission appeals, and photo essays. School children download it for reports; filmmakers ask to use it in Holocaust documentaries. Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, even employed it as the backdrop for Israel’s state ceremonies in the presence of survivors, their president, prime minister, the entire government, top army brass, and chief rabbi in a national broadcast on the 70th anniversary of the liberation and aftermath of the Holocaust. I know, because they reached out to me for it—me, an ordinary public school teacher, six thousand miles away.
For over half a century, copies of this photograph and others were hidden away in a shoebox in the back of an old soldier’s closet. By spending time with this soldier, I was able to set in motion an extraordinary confluence of events that unfolded organically in the second half of my career as a history teacher. Many of the children who suffered on that train found me, and I was able to link them forever with the men who I had come to know and love, the American GIs who saved them that beautiful April morning. A moment in history is captured on film, and we have reunited the actors, the persecuted and their liberators, two generations on.
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In picking up this book, you will learn of the tragedies and the triumphs behind the photograph. You will enter the abyss of the Holocaust with me, which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines as ‘the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.’ You will meet the survivors of that train as they immerse you into their worlds as civilization collapsed around them. We will visit the camps and authentic sites together, and we will trace the route of the brave Americans who found themselves confronted with industrial scale genocide. And I will lead you safely out of the chasm as we witness the aftermath, the miracles of liberation and reunification, seven decades later.
In many respects, this story should still be buried, because there is no logical way to explain my role in the climactic aftermath. Somehow I got caught up in something much bigger than myself, driven by some invisible force which conquered the barriers of time and space. I was born sixteen years after the killing stopped, a continent away from the horrors and comfortably unaware of the events of the Holocaust and World War II for much of my life. I was raised in the sanctuary of a nurturing community and an intact family. I am not Jewish and had never even been inside a synagogue until my forties. I’m not observantly religious, but I am convinced that I was chosen to affirm and attest to what I have experienced. In this book I rewind the tape to reconstruct how indeed it all came to be—the horrors of the experiences of the Holocaust survivors, the ordeals and sacrifices of the American soldiers, and the miracles of liberation and reunification.
As the curtain begins its descent on a career spanning four decades, consider this one teacher’s testament—this is what happened, to me. I became a witness, and is what I saw.
Matthew Rozell
Hudson Falls, New York
September 2016
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–Featuring testimony from 15 American liberators and over 30 Holocaust survivors
-10 custom maps
-73 photographs and illustrations, many never before published.
Yesterday in Jerusalem29 other educatorsfrom all over the world and I wrapped up our 19-day study at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. And for me, the most profound speaker out of the dozens of excellent scholars and presenters we heard from was Dr. Yehuda Bauer, age 90, the godfather of Holocaust historians.
Dr. Yehuda Bauer. Palmach fighter, 1944-1949. Cow milker on kibbutz, 41 years. Historian and I dare say, philosopher. Honored today to be in his presence. Jerusalem, July 21, 2016.
When he was asked today, what is the lesson of the Holocaust, he simply said something to the effect of-There is no lesson, except not to repeat it. It is brought up for various agendas and causes…ok, fine. But ask your students, ‘what do you want the world to be?’ And then, maybe it is time to introduce them to the study of the Holocaust. Because maybe it is the exact opposite of what they envision, unprecedented in scope and sequence, but it happened, which means, you know, it can happen again… So let’s look at how, and why. This is important (me: and in many ways, urgent).
Jerusalem, July 21, 2016.
When we got back to the hotel to pack and have a final evening here, I found out I could not even cross the street- our hotel was now right on the route of one of the largest ‘gay pride’ parades in the world. Security was tight; last year, a religious maniac stabbed six, and one 16 yr. old little girl died here.
So now I recalled the words of Dr. Bauer just hours ago, who had reminded us that democracy is not only very fragile, it is hardly even out of the cradle in the backdrop of world history. The world does not have to be united, and in fact it never has been and never will be. We argue and we disagree all of the time. But that is as it is, and as it should be. And at the end of the day, we either kill each other, or we live, and let live.
You decide.
Jerusalem, July 21, 2016.
For me, this was not a gay pride march; it was miles and miles of humanity celebrating life, despite our differences, and a fitting cap to my educator’s journey back into the Holocaust, and safely out again.
I am studying in Jerusalem at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, for 19 days with 29 other educators from all over the world.
I went to the Great Synagogue here in Jerusalem as a guest for Shabbat services. I had a guidebook with English, but I just followed the service in Hebrew, even though I don’t understand. Somehow this symbolizes my state of being right now. Almost half a world away, the last liberator Frank W. Towers is being bid goodbye by his friends and family, as the cantor wails here. My eyes well up, and a single tear begins its run. I am powerless to push it away.
It has been an extraordinary day. It began with a tour of the Old City on foot with a very knowledgeable guide who is also an archeologist here in Israel. We walk near the ruins of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70AD, see the remnants of the ritual purification baths before one could go near the Temple. We walk up the steps hewn into solid bedrock where a young rabbi named Jesus strode. At the Western Wall, I take it all in, and approach the site which for Jews is closest to the Holiest of the Holies. This has great significance; God dwells here. For the souls of Frank, and Carrol, and George, my friends, the liberators, for my survivor friends who have passed, for my own parents and loved ones I place a scrap of paper with my prayer for their souls into a crevice in the millennia old stones.
Western Wall, Jerusalem, Friday, July 8th, 2016.
We move on to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the church built over Christ’s Crucifixion and Tomb. Incense blasts us as we move into the doors. Jesus entered into Jerusalem the day after Shabbat, Palm Sunday, in very tense political situation. We know how that turned out, and I am at the very place where a Jewish sect shortly after his execution would grow to become one of the world’s largest religions. I’m free to walk about and drink it all in. And at this place I leave the same petition for God.
At the Great Synagogue at sunset, I try to enter into God’s presence again in a more focused way, but I am finding it difficult. Thoughts come rushing forth, the same thoughts and questions I have entertained for years, but right now they hit me like a steamroller.
The last liberator has passed. And the mystery of the role I played in bringing the liberators and survivors, hundreds of them now, together with these old men in the sunset of their lives does not become clearer, but remains hidden somehow behind a fog that I cannot push away.
The sun has set.
*
I came to the Holy Land the first time for a 2011 reunion here with Frank, where he met 500 people who would not have been alive today had it not been for the swift arrival the soldiers of the 743rd Tank Battalion and 30th Infantry Division of the US Army. People are able to meet one of the actual soldiers who saved their families from annihilation; a woman was sobbing right behind me through much of the ceremony. Another woman, a granddaughter of one of those survivors whose name I cannot recall, stopped me. She thanked me and told me that my name meant something along the lines of ‘mystery of God’. This struck me hard, and it remains something that now roars forth in my turbulent state of mind. I don’t understand it all.
At the Friday evening communal Shabbat meal with the educators back at the hotel, we continue our mediation on entering into God’s grace and allowing Him to dwell us. We break bread, have the meal and conversation together. I’m very quiet because at the end of this long day, the mystery remains.
The hotel this evening in Jerusalem is jam-packed with Jewish families settling in for Shabbat-noisy, crowded, together to bring in the Sabbath. Underlying the ebb and flow of this activity all around, inside me there is the disquieting undercurrent about the fact that this day has arrived, the day that the last liberator is being buried. I know that it will really never end, this story of the liberators and the survivors of the train near Magdeburg in April 1945, their precipitous fateful encounter, and their reuniting six/seven decades later. But tonight I am engulfed in a profound heavyheartedness, this loss, this questioning, this wondering. What does it all mean?
The giant dining room next door breaks out in rhythmic hand clapping, voices singing a song of happiness symbolizing the togetherness and communal unity that closes out the Shabbat meal. I glance at the time; at this very moment back home, Frank is being lowered into the earth.
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Later, I awake with a start in a bed that is not my own. A newborn is wailing somewhere, nearby. The hotel here in Jerusalem is filled with Jewish families in town for Shabbat, full of young families, of young children. Crying babies at 2 AM. But though I have been jolted awake, nothing close to annoyance enters my being. Lying in the dark, deep within my soul I am warming with joy through the sadness; through the crying of the baby and the voices of the children outside my door I hear the song of the angels carrying Frank, and all the liberators I was privileged to know, onward and upward. The children are their legacy, and in this moment I know that I will perhaps never understand why God chose me to bring them together with the thousands of people alive on the earth today because of their deeds, but it does not matter:
He wanted me here in Jerusalem for this moment, when the last liberator left me.
I’m in the City of God now, Jerusalem. The last time I was here was in 2011, with Frank Towers, his son Frank Jr., my ten-year-old son, and Varda Weisskopf, a Holocaust survivor’s daughter.
Survivor’s daughter and reunion organizer Varda Weisskopf, liberator Frank Towers, Matthew Rozell at Yad Vashem, May, 2011.
Why am I here? I am studying at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, for 19 days with 29 other educators from all over the world. And although we just started, one of the early takeaways is, think about what the world lost.
“I often wonder what this world would be like, if those 6 million had never perished.” Frank Towers, 30th Infantry Division, Liberator
We talk about the story of human beings. Of the ‘choiceless choices’, in the ghettos and the camps. About the will to live, about what it means to have nothing, from the perspective of the survivors. Maybe also the ”survivors’ guilt”, but also the victory over Hitler and Nazi ideology, as seen in the 2nd and 3rd generations of Holocaust survivors alive and flourishing today.
Matt Rozell, survivor Bruria’s son Dan F., Frank Towers, two survivors Bruria Falik (of Woodstock, NY) and her sister at Israel’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem.
I am learning so much, and I am eager to learn more. But yesterday I learned that Frank Towers, Sr., age 99, passed away peacefully with his family by his side in Florida, on July 4th, 2016. Independence Day.
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Frank was born on June 13, 1917. Think about that for a minute. John F. Kennedy also came into the world, less than a month before Frank. ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody left the world. American involvement in WWI was just getting underway, and Frank’s future 30th Infantry Divison was formally activated. Gandhi was tromping around India, investigating the poor conditions of local farmers. The Russian Revolution was just getting started. American suffragettes that summer were arrested for picketing the White House for the right to vote for women.
So into this world came Frank W. Towers. And Frank Towers came into my life after he had already lived a good, long one, in September, 2007, shortly after he turned 90. But he had more things to do before the Almighty called him home.
He did not know me, and I did not know him-I have never even been to Florida, where he lived. But, from the news he learned of a reunion that we had recently done at our high school. He read about how I had reunited World War II tank commanders from the US Army 743rd Tank Battalion and 30th Infantry Division with the children of the Holocaust who he also had helped to liberate. And Frank said to himself, “Wait, I know about this. I was there, too.”
Frank reached out to me and we began a fruitful partnership in trying to locate more of the survivors who were on that train. He invited me, and the survivors, to the 30th Infantry Division Veterans of World War II reunions that they held annually down south. And these were powerfully moving events, to see the soldiers touched by the gestures of the survivors; and for the survivors to laugh and cry with their liberators was a gift that they, their children and grandchildren, will never forget. We also held additional reunions at our school, for the sake of making students the new witnesses to what happened during the Holocaust.
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]
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Today in class I was given the opportunity to speak in an open forum, ostensibly to comment on my thoughts about our collective, moving experience in being guided through the museum by our program leader Ephraim. He knew I had just lost Frank, and I think he knew that I needed to talk about it.
So I began. I told the group that I had been to Yad Vashem before, and that it was because of something very special in my life. In 2011, I was accompanying a then 94-year-old American liberator, who had just met over 500 people who were alive because of the liberators’ intervention and efforts at the ‘Train Near Magdeburg’ on April 13, 1945. Over 50 survivors were present, and later, Frank, his son, my son, Varda, and some survivors had a personal tour of Yad Vashem.
Frank W. Towers, Yad Vashem, 2011.
The museum is designed almost as a triangular tunnel, from which, as you move from prewar Jewish life to increasing persecution and eventual mass murder, gets purposely more bottlenecked and constricting and troubling as you move through the wings of increasing destruction. But in the course of this harrowing encounter with the past, always you draw nearer to an opening, a triangular apex of light that gets bigger, as you pass through time. And I tell the group that for me, the image I so recall, was the image of Frank and survivor’s daughter Varda, in the light and in the opening. It is highly likely that Varda would not be alive today, had it not been for Frank and the soldiers of the 30th Infantry Division and the 743rd Tank Battalion. So now she gave him a great gift, to be able to come to Jerusalem, the City of God, and see the fruits of victory, six and a half decades later-the hundreds of children and grandchildren he met and shook hands with. And I got to witness it all.
And then I paused, and told them that the world had lost Frank Towers only 36 hours before. And here I was, six thousand miles away, and unable to go to his services in Florida. Instead I am here at Yad Vashem, sitting in a classroom, pouring out my heart. And it hurts.
But this is not a lament. As I speak, the reason why I can’t go to Frank now crystallizes and becomes clarified for me. You see, led by Frank, the veterans of World War II have paved the way many times for me to travel abroad to study the Holocaust. Think about that. The American soldiers who encountered the Holocaust as young men in 1945, open their wallets to send a teacher to study, so that this history is not lost to upcoming generations. Of course, the survivor community has also been very generous in this regard, but the soldiers, led by Frank Towers, are so grateful, that the Holocaust-and their sacrifices in slaying the beast-will never be forgotten.
So, I’m at Yad Vashem studying the Holocaust when Frank passes for a reason-this is right where he would want me to be. And as I close with my new teacher friends, after a very long and emotionally charged day, I remind them that we all bear a collective responsibility as teachers to carry on doing what we do when we teach, especially in teaching the subject of the Holocaust:
Frank Jr, Frank, Varda. Yad Vashem, 2011
We are creating human beings. We are cultivating humanity. There is no past, and it is never over. There is hope amidst all the darkness in the world. The tunnel will lead to the light.
This is the transformation that I feel, when I look at the photo of Frank here at Yad Vashem. I’m grateful for the words that I see as the backdrop for this sharing time in the classroom today:
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken. -Albert Camus
That’s a tall order, today. Godspeed, Frank Towers. Candles on almost all the continents are lit for you. The short newscasts below are a part of the legacy, of the last liberator.
I am in Israel now to embark upon two and a half weeks of study at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. I am humbled. But I was here before, in 2011, with liberator Frank Towers as he was recognized for his efforts 70 years ago, on behalf of American liberators everywhere. Here in Israel he met with statesmen and the head of the IDF, as well as over 50 survivors and their families who were liberated on April 13, 1945, an event that Frank had a direct hand in.
Varda Weisskopf, liberator Frank Towers, Matthew Rozell at Yad Vashem, May, 2011.
It’s a long story, but my work as a teacher has been here, too. In the background, note the Benjamin photo at the 2015 70th anniversary state ceremonies.
“The anguish of the liberation and return to life”. Note the Benjamin photograph on the banner. Yad Vashem, April 2015.
The short version of the story:
Fifteen summers ago I sat down to listen to an old gentleman in a rocking chair. A war weary tank commander in 1945, he told me stories of his World War II experiences and then led me to his fellow tank commander, who showed me a picture that their major had taken on April 13, 1945. You see, those two were there, and their two tanks had liberated a concentration camp transport deep in the heart of war-torn Germany.
It would be the first time in decades that this picture had seen the light of day. And because of its discovery, and what we would do with it, thousands of lives were about to change.
Yad Vashem contacted me in December 2014 to inquire about using the Major Benjamin photo. I immediately sent them a copy. My friend Varda in Israel writes, ‘[The photograph above was taken] during the main ceremony at the Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem. This photo shows the President of Israel Reuven Rivlin make his speech. You can see your photo there at the middle (banner) and I now think it was there throughout all the ceremony.’
Below, a post from the time of the event in April, 2015..
My good friend in Israel let me know that the April 15th commemoration of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem in Israel was a moving event and sent me the link to the video of the ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation. While the narrative behind the Major Benjamin photograph was not a focus, the photo that which now seems to be becoming a cornerstone of the history of Holocaust liberation is all throughout the ceremony, and especially at 8:31. One of my friends, a survivor who had been a six-year old boy on this transport that Major Benjamin photographed at the moment his jeep arrived at the train, notes,
The photograph wouldn’t be there if not for your effort. It was presiding on 1.5 hrs of national ceremony in the presence of Israel’s president, prime minister, the entire government, the top army guys, survivors, chief rabbis and was nationally broadcast. You have a direct hand in this.
Me, a lowly teacher, whose work for an evening is presiding as the backdrop for presidents and prime ministers. I am proud and hope that the story is told over and over, and that it serves the memory of the victims, the survivors, and the liberators well. I just can’t believe sometimes this path I have been down, since the day over a dozen years ago when I took the time to listen to a war veteran, and began to backtrack his story. There are other forces at work here, I think… and there is a cosmic force that reverberates in you when you teach the Holocaust from the heart.
Teachers out there, you all know the power of what we do. I hope this serves as an affirmation.
Matthew Rozell is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Teacher Fellow and teaches history at his alma mater in upstate New York. His work has resulted in the reuniting of 275 Holocaust survivors and the American soldiers who freed them.
His first book, ‘The Things Our Fathers Saw’, was released to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. His second book, is on the power of teaching, remembering the Holocaust, the Benjamin photograph and this ‘Train Near Magdeburg’.
Victory, 1945. Watercolor, Ervin Abadi. Train Near Magdeburg survivor. Hillersleben, Germany, May 1945.
I am in Israel now, getting ready to study at the International School for Holocaust Studies for several weeks. On Thursday, back in Washington DC, USHMM Chief Acquisitions Curator Judy Cohen met with a person who contacted me over a year ago with a question about some artwork that her grandfather had brought back from World War II, serving in the 95th Medical Gas Treatment Battalion, helping out with Holocaust survivors at the captured Luftwaffe base at Hillersleben, Germany. Chriss Brown wanted to know more about the artist, and I think because she had typed his information into a search engine, found me through this website. I immediately recognized the artist’s hand, and I told her that he was on the Train Near Magdeburg, and also sent her more information about him. Later in life, the artist stated,
“Let these drawings serve as proof of my everlasting gratitude towards those to whom I owe my life. … To the soldiers of the United States Army, particularly to our immediate liberators, those soldiers of the 9th regiment [sic] who first entered the village of Zilitz and gave us bread, milk, chocolate, and cigarettes….”
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was pretty thrilled about the acquisition, and received the donation from Chriss and her family with gratitude.
Good in the world. Amidst all the evil and darkness forces at work, it is here today. And we are reminded that it saved the world 70 yrs. ago.
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You can read the serendipitous backstory/role I had in it all, here:
Teaching History Matters 