Teaching History Matters

Scene #1: The morning of December 16, 1944. A lonely outpost on the Belgian frontier.

In subzero temperatures, the last German counteroffensive of World War II had begun. Nineteen thousand American lives would be lost in the Battle of the Bulge. “Hell came in like a freight train. I heard an explosion and went back to where my friend was. His legs were blown off-he bled to death in my arms.” The average age of the American “replacement” soldier? 19.

Scene #2: Memorial Day, sixty-plus years later. In a small town in the United States, it is a day off from work or school and it is the unofficial start to the busy summer season. We sit in our lawn chairs, we chat with neighbors and sip our drinks when the gentlemen with the flag march past.

The holiday known originally as “Decoration Day” originated at the end of the Civil War when a general order was issued designating May 30, 1868, “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” When Congress passed a law formally recognizing the last Monday in May as the day of national celebration, we effectively got our three-day weekend and our de facto beginning of summer.

Of the sixteen million American men and women who served in WWII, a half million died on the field of conflict. In 2007, over 1200 veterans of World War II quietly slip away every day. The national memory of the war that did more than any other event in the last century to shape the history of the American nation is dying with them. Incredibly, it comes as a shock to most Americans today that the “Battle of the Bulge” didn’t originate as a weight-loss term.

In the high school where I teach, I have been inviting veterans to my classroom to share their experiences with our students. As their numbers dwindled, I smartened up, bought a camera, and began to record their stories. We’ve spoken at length with a pilot forced to bail out at 28,000 feet of his flaming B-17 bomber, only to watch crew members die in the subsequent explosion and then be taken prisoner himself. We have had conversations with POWs who survived forced marches in brutal weather, and with Jewish infantrymen who were among the first to liberate the death camp at Dachau. We have met men who were handcuffed to Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg and who were assigned to suicide watch guard shifts there after fighting their way across Germany. We can imagine what it was like to sail eerily into Pearl Harbor 36 hours after the Japanese attack and see no lights except the USS Arizona still blazing with the bodies of hundreds of Americans entombed in it. We are with the torpedo bomber pilot as he takes off from the flight deck of the carrier USS Yorktown during the epic battle of Midway, and is forced to land on the deck of another carrier as the Yorktown burns and later slides to the bottom of the sea. We intently listen to a blind Marine describe what it was like to lose his eyesight fifty-nine years to the day of his being struck by mortar fragments, not once, but twice in the same day at Okinawa (and he told us that ” the hardest part was telling my mother”). Across a kitchen table I have discussions with other veterans, including a former 17 year old describing what it was like to share a foxhole with a headless fellow US Marine on Iwo Jima. My students and I are just “one person away” from the shock of Pearl Harbor, the chaos at Omaha Beach and the Huertgen Forest, the horrors of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Peleliu Island.

Sixty-plus years ago these men and women saved the world. I think about this: by the time my teaching career ends in 10 or 15 years, almost all of the survivors will be gone.

It’s not enough that I have an interest in their stories. I have long looked out into a sea of faces, some students mildly interested in what I have to say, but many others displaying a quiet and disturbing apathy about the past. What is infinitely reassuring and comforting to me, however, is that they all seem to have a genuine interest in a “real” connection with the past, with a person who becomes the ultimate source, because he or she was there.

These men and women have helped to spark students’ interest in finding out more about our nation’s past and the role of the individual in shaping it. On our website we have worked to weave the stories of our community’s sacrifices into the fabric of our national history. And that, to me, is what teaching history should be all about. After all, if we allow ourselves to forget about the teenager who bled to death in his buddy’s arms, if we overlook the sacrifices it took to make this nation strong and proud, we may as well forget everything else. Where will we be when there is nothing important about our past to remember? The answer is found in simple study of any other great civilization in history that allowed the collective memory of the past that once bound them together to be trivialized and blurred, to be eroded away and forgotten-

They’re not here anymore. This Memorial Day,

Remember.

This online journal was begun to chronicle the unfolding of something very special in my career that is, I think, profoundly affecting my life and the lives of others- the re-connection of a train transport full of 2500 Holocaust survivors with the American soldiers who liberated them on April 13th, 1945 near Magdeburg, Germany.

I am the history teacher from a small rural town in upstate New York, USA who is caught up in the middle of it all. My students and I don’t have a high profile website, but if you keep reading, you will see that several people’s lives have been changed by it.

On this web log you will find my posts. The first, “Remember”, was written years ago as a reaction to the “commercialization” of the American holiday of Memorial Day. It kind of describes how my World War II Living History Project came about, and I am proud of the fact that it began long before paying tribute to this generation or conducting oral history became fashionable. It’s about time Ken Burns caught up with us.

The second, “A Train near Magdeburg”, is a brief summary of this special story, showing how the power of the Internet is changing lives.

You will also find several news articles that describe the Holocaust survivor/liberator reunion our high school hosted on September 14th, 2007, as a byproduct of this educational project. The Associated Press article by Chris Carola was picked up and run either in print or on the Web by almost every major newspaper in the United States, and many abroad, including the Jerusalem Post. The CBS Evening News even did a story on it.

In short order I was hearing from survivors who were on that train transport from every “corner” of the globe. These conversations and emails were full of emotion, and I try to imagine the feelings as many of them contacted their actual liberators for the first time. Of course I can’t- only they can. Yet in speaking to many of them it is apparent that April 13th, 1945 was the day they were reborn. Some have actually discovered themselves in these amazing photographs taken on that day. The detail that many of them remember is amazing. And as one of them told me yesterday, the gratitude they feel is indescribable.

What follows is the unfolding of this story. I hope you will find them as moving as I have. Let me know what you think.

Matthew Rozell
Spring, 2008
marozell@hfcsd.org

“A Train Near Magdeburg”

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

We have organized several reunions for them.

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

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

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

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

CBS Evening News Story

 ABC World News  Persons of the Week

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum film on our project

SUNY Geneseo magazine cover story

Liz Bishop of CBS 6 Albany came up to our school twice to interview me and the students. My school principal (who, along with Dr. Gross, wrote a letter of recommendation for me) told me on April 10th that I am one of 14 teachers in the nation who will be attending the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Teacher Fellowship Program this summer! The Museum called me later in the day to congratulate me.

Her interest was piqued by the AP article below that appeared on March 27th.

Local Survivors of Nazi death train to attend WWII vets’ NC reunion

Several Holocaust survivors plan to attend a reunion of the American army unit unit that liberated them from a Nazi death train 63 years ago.

And a high school history teacher from upstate New York played a key role in reuniting the survivors and the veterans. Teacher Matt Rozell’s class project on World War II led to a reunion at Hudson Falls High School last September between several survivors of the train and an upstate veteran who helped liberate them.

Rozell says news stories about the reunion have led about 20 other survivors to contact him and offer their stores for his school’s World War II Web site.

Rozell is headed to Fayetteville, North Carolina for Friday and Saturday’s reunion of the 30th Infantry Division. Members of the unit’s tank battalion liberated the 2,500 Jewish prisoners from the Nazi train.

Rozell says the train survivors attending the reunion include a man who emigrated to America and went on to serve as a U.S. Army Ranger.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Written on the 63^rd anniversary, to the survivors, and the liberators.

Two weekends ago about 15 surviving members of the 30^th Infantry Division met in Fayetteville, NC with five of the survivors whom they had liberated, as well as all the families.

I went with my 10 year old son, Ned. As you can imagine it was pretty powerful.

Here are links to a North Carolina TV news video and news photographs that were taken. I am also sharing a few photos taken by Rob Miller who was at the gathering and shared them with me. Blessings to you and yours…I hope to meet you all someday. Matthew Rozell

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2647639/

http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/HF80KExp0aw/WWII+Soldiers+Bergen+Belsen+Prisoners+Meet/NqKDrW_aLS3

Matthew A. Rozell
History Teacher/NHS Adviser
Hudson Falls Senior High School

Hudson Falls, New York 12839

This statement was read at the reunion by my good friend and comrade in arms, Tara Sano.

Dear Matt, George, Carrol, Teachers, Students and my fellow Survivors,

I will never forget the day when I opened the Website of the Hudson Falls High School ‘WW2 Living History Project’, and before my unbelieving eyes I was looking back to 1945 – more accurately to April 13th 1945 – the day of my Liberation by the 9th US Army.

The 11 photographs before me were taken when I was 6 1/2 years old (younger than either of my two little granddaughters). The Train had stopped at the siding of the small station Farsleben, some 16 km from Magdeburg. I had been on this train with my parents and some 2,500 people all from the Camp Bergen Belsen. I had been incarcerated there from July 15th 1943 till April 7th 1945. In the camp we had the unusual classification of ‘For Exchange to Palestine’, most were classified as ‘Jew’. I think that this is the only reason that we were kept together and survived as a family for nearly two years in the most horrific of circumstances.

So now some 61 years on in January 2006, in front of my computer at my home, I was confronted with photographs of the day of my Liberation. I found this experience so raw and emotional that I screamed and then burst into tears. I studied the photographs looking and searching for myself. I thought that I could be one of the little girls, sitting in the group photo – I dismissed this for I assumed my mother would be somewhere nearby, but I did not see her.

I looked at the bleak, miserable geography of the site, the horrible train carriages, the skeletal human shapes – fortunately my memory is still a blank. I do not remember being in the train for 6 days, I do not remember being hungry or thirsty. All I remember is being out of the train, standing on the ground and watching the German guards fleeing and dropping their guns. I picked up one of these guns and before I could do anything – it was snatched from my hands. That is my only memory of that day. However, the events of the day are documented visually and that is incredible to believe. For no written words could describe so vividly the happenings of that day as do these 11 photographs. It is a historical miracle that Major Benjamin and Tank Commander George Gross had their small Kodak camera – and that on that day there was film left to use and record the day.

With today’s incredible technology anyone on our planet can see this photographic evidence of my Liberation. It is the foresight of that other man of goodwill – your History Teacher Matt Rozell that these photographs were posted on Hudson Falls High School Internet Website – for all to access.

Following a series of events, I have developed a warm email relationship with Professor George Gross, with Judge Carrol Walsh and Carrol’s daughter. It is a great joy for me to hear about their lives today and of their family happenings. The fact that this connection was made some 61 years after the event is very difficult to believe possible. But it is so.

The friendship I have developed with these two wonderful men has helped me to bring some sort of closure to that unfortunate time in my childhood. The interest they, as well as Matt, have shown in wanting to know my story has given me the encouragement I needed to write about some of my experiences. I did do so, and my story will be published in an Anthology of some twenty stories of the members of my Child Survivors group here.

Thank you Matt Rozell, for teaching your students about tolerance and the evils of prejudice. I applaud and compliment you on your good work. You have touched the lives of your students and a growing number of Survivors. You have also I think affected the lives of the two Liberators – George and Carrol.

Your history course on this Train at Magdeburg is teaching your students the evil that was perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust, against innocent people whose only sin was that they were Jews.

I hope one of the messages that your course has instilled in to the psyche of your students is that ‘Evil Happens When Good Men Do Nothing.’

I wish you all great success in your future endeavours.

Lexie September 2007

NEWS STORY OF HER DISCOVERY

This statement was read at the reunion by my good friend and esteemed colleague, Rene Roberge.

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

Greetings first to all the admirable survivors of the train near Magdeburg, and our thanks to you for proving Hitler wrong. You did not vanish from the face of the earth as he and his evil followers planned, but rather your survived, and grew, and became successful and contributing members of free countries, and you are adding your share of free offspring to those free societies. You have vowed that the world will never forget the horrors of the Holocaust, and you spread the message by giving interviews, visiting schools, writing memoirs, and publishing powerful books on the evil that infected Nazi Germany and threatens still to infect the world. I have met and enjoyed the company of Dr. Peter Lantos and Drs. Micha and Louise Tomkiewicz, and I carry on a rewarding conversation with Lexie Keston, Fred Spiegel, and Micha Tomkiewicz’s niece Elisabeth in France by E-mail. I am enriched by the friendship of such courageous people who somehow have maintained a healthy sense of humor and a desire to serve through all the evils inflicted upon you. I am very sorry that I am unable to meet with you today.

Greetings also to the dedicated teacher whose efforts have brought us all together through the classes he has taught on World War 2 and the web site he maintains at the cost of hours of time not easily found in his duty as a high school teacher. I know that several of you found your quest for knowledge of your past rewarded by the interviews and pictures Matt Rozell and his classes have gathered and maintained. Selfishly, I am grateful to Mr. Rozell for leading several of you to me, bringing added joy to my retiring years.

My grateful greetings and thanks, too, to the administration of Hudson Falls High School, who have allowed Mr. Rozell the latitude to teach special classes and maintain the web site that has been so important to the survivors gathered here and to the message they bring to the world. Greetings also to all the faculty, staff, students, parents, and friends of the school at which this important gathering takes place. Thank you for your interest in the survivors of the Holocaust and their message.

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

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

I wish I could be with you in person at this celebration, as I am with you in spirit. I hope you enjoy meeting each other and getting to know Matt Rozell and Carrol Walsh. I look forward to seeing again my friends whom I have met and to meeting the rest of you either in person or by E-mail. My experience at the train was rich and moving, and it has remained so, locked quietly in my heart until sixty years later, when the appearance of you survivors began to brighten up a sedate retirement. You have blessed me, friends, and I thank you deeply. May your lives, in turn, bring you the great blessings you so richly deserve.

Fondly yours,

George C. Gross

From: Avital P.
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 5:00 PM
To: Rozell Matt
Subject: A Train Near Magdeburg

Hi Mr. Rozell,

First, on behalf of my mother Ariela Rojek, I would like to wish you and your family a very Happy and Healthy New Year….

Several weeks ago my mother received a copy of your DVD and we all sat down to watch it with her. I must tell you we had chills up and down our spines. It is mind boggling to even imagine what transpires in our survivors’ and liberators’ minds when such a reunion takes place.

My mother was inspired to put her memories down on paper regarding the liberation and I have attached it in this e-mail. She has also asked me to include a couple of pictures that she took when she went back to visit the site a few years ago. Please add her story to the few that you already have and if you would like to share with the rest of the group you may go ahead.

Please continue to stay in touch and send us any other news that you may have in the future.

Thanks again for the great work that you have done.

Sincerely,

Avital P., on behalf of Ariela Rojek

Dear Mr. Rozell,
After speaking with you in October and watching the reunion DVD, I decided to write down some of my memories and send them to you. I hope that they will contribute to the research that you have done.
I was born in Poland, where I spent time in the ghetto and a prison. I then spent two years in Bergen-Belsen.
When told to prepare ourselves for the departure in the train I was already very weak and sick. Two weeks prior I had very high fever. I was with my aunt, my father’s sister, as by then I had lost my entire family.
The Germans let us know that all those who could not walk would have to stay behind. My aunt wanted to stay because she knew that I was already very weak; however, I insisted on going. I said to my aunt, “You know that they kill the weak and the sick. We will go with the healthy people.” Although I was only 11½ years old, my aunt listened to me. I probably had a very strong will to live.
Although this might not be relevant, I would like to tell it anyway:
Before we left, they gave each of us a raw potato, and somehow we managed to bake them over wood. My aunt then said to me, “You know that now is the Passover holiday” – we barely remembered what day of the week it was, let alone the date. “On Passover, according to the story, our forefather Moses took us out of Egypt. Maybe G-d is bringing us to freedom, and maybe we will live.”
We walked a few kilometres to the train, and out of weakness we dropped most of the things that we still had with us. We reached the first car in the train, and there were a few women who saved us a spot. The train slowly moved but stopped every few kilometres because the tracks were destroyed from the bombings.
In one of the stations we saw a cargo train carrying beets. A good friend of mine convinced me to go steal the beets, and with my last strength I went. (I am actually still in touch with her today. Her and her brother are in the same picture as me, and she is the one who confirmed that I am the girl sitting on my knees on the right side of the picture). The beets tasted like the Garden of Eden, and my aunt said they tasted like melon. Of course, I didn’t remember how melon tasted.
The train continued to some place and stopped – on one side there was a forest and on the other side the Elba River. I remember the place exactly as it looks in Dr. Gross’s photograph.
After awhile, some Germans rode by on bicycles, and when they heard it was a train full of Jews they ordered the German guards to kill us. In the meantime, American planes flew low above us and apparently took pictures that showed people and children. The German guards that were still there to watch over us started to shoot with machine guns at the planes. Our people asked them to stop shooting, but they refused. We got off the train and hid under the wheels.
I would now like to add something personal. My aunt sat with me under the wheels and took out a little notebook that contained the names and addresses of our relatives in America. She told me to learn all of this by heart because you never know who the bullet will hit – and when the war would end I should contact these relatives and ask them to take me in. I listened to her and learned everything by heart. Until today, I remember some of these names and addresses.
As you know, the Germans didn’t get a chance to kill us, and you, the American angels, came on time. The children started to run to the small village to ask for food, and again my good friend dragged me with her and we managed to get some milk and bread.
After a day or two, the American army asked us to get on trucks and go to a village called Hillersleben. We were all afraid because we had learned from the past that every transport means death. In the end, they found a Jewish American soldier who announced in Yiddish over the loudspeaker that we had nothing to be afraid of and that we would be moving to nice and clean houses. And this is how the chapter of the train ended. But for me, on a personal note, my story continued…
I want to point out that in 1995 I went with my husband to Bergen-Belsen for the 50th anniversary of the camp’s liberation. From there we went to Hillersleben. The place looked very different from what I remembered, probably as a result of the Russian influence for 50 years. We managed to find a Jewish monument in the yard of a church. On it was written: In memory of 138 Jewish survivors of Bergen-Belsen.

With regards,

Ariela Rojek
Toronto, Ontario
Canada