Teaching History Matters

Steal A Pencil For Me is the title of a film recently released at Netflix. Shortly after the reunion Dr. Gross , liberator, received the following email:

Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 10:53 AM
Subject: Train Magdeburg 1945

I was born in Amsterdam, Holland. We, my parents, older sister and I had been sent to Bergen Belsen from Westerbork where my father died in February 1945. At the time I was 10 years old and was together with my mother and older sister on the train you liberated, . I seem to remember that, coming back from searching for some food together with a cousin, we saw “somebody” with a gun running down a low hill and being told that this was an American soldier and that we were free!!!!! My memories are very vague, probably as a result of not talking about the camps for about 50 years until I realized, like many other people, that it was time to tell my children and grandchildren as much as I could remember. Last week I read the article in the Jerusalem Post, (in Israel) about you and Judge Walsh liberating “my train” on 13. April 1945. There are no words to say “thank you” that will express my feelings while reading about your experiences.. I sent the article together with links from the internet to my cousins Jack Polak and Ina Polak-Soep in New York and I am sure they will contact you directly. Thank you!!!!!!! J.W-S

I got a call from Ina about a film that was about to be released concerning her and her (future) husband’s Holocaust survivor story. It is a love story set in Bergen Belsen. Later, Jack was on the train liberated by the Russians and Ina was on the train liberated by the Americans.

Anyway, it is a beautiful story set against the tragic background of Belsen, although it has a happy ending… 60+ years of marriage. The production, storyline and cinematography is all top notch. The synopsis from the website:

“STEAL A PENCIL FOR ME is a compelling documentary feature film by Academy Award® nominee Michèle Ohayon about the power of love and the ability of humankind to rise above unimaginable suffering.

1943: Holland is under total Nazi occupation. In Amsterdam, Jack, an unassuming accountant, first meets Ina at a birthday party – a 20-year-old beauty from a wealthy diamond manufacturing family who instantly steals his heart. But Jack’s pursuit of love will be complicated; he is poor and married to Manja, a flirtatious and mercurial spouse.

When the Jews are being deported, the husband, the wife and the lover find themselves at the same concentration camp; actually living in the same barracks. When Jack’s wife objects to the relationship in spite of their unhappy marriage, Jack and Ina resort to writing secret love letters, which sustain them throughout the horrible circumstances of the war.

Jack: “I’m a very special Holocaust survivor. I was in the camps with my wife and my girlfriend; and believe me, it wasn’t easy.”

Soldiers reunite with Nazi death train survivors
By OMAR AQUIJE, Glens Falls Post-Star

Friday, September 14, 2007 9:09 PM EDT

HUDSON FALLS, NEW YORK-
The audience stood, applauded and cheered after five men shook hands, smiled and faced the packed crowd.

What the audience witnessed was history — an unexpected chapter to an extraordinary tale that began 62 years ago in Germany, at the end of World War II, and continued Friday at Hudson Falls High School.

The experience was overwhelming for Carrol Walsh, who was among the five men on stage.
After all, it made him recall the events of April 13, 1945, when he and his tank battalion investigated a train that German troops had abandoned near Magdeburg, Germany.
The battalion discovered 2,500 Jews crammed in boxcars en route to a death camp.
The Jewish families had been held captive for two years, during which they survived the infamous concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen and were forced to live with little food in unsanitary conditions under German military watch.
But on that fateful, April day, they were liberated, thanks to Walsh, his buddy, Sgt. George Gross, and others in the battalion, which included two tanks.
If not for their help, Fred Spiegel, Micha Tomkiewicz and Peter Lantos may not have survived to see the end of the war, let alone the emotional connections made during Friday’s event.
“I feel very emotional about the meeting and the get-together, never having ever to imagine that I would meet anyone who was on that train,” said Walsh after the morning program. He is now a retired judge who moved to Hudson Falls in July after living in Johnstown.

“To see these people in the flesh is simply an overwhelming, emotional experience,” he said.

Tomkiewicz, who is now the director of environmental studies at the Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, could only remember pieces of his liberation because he was a child at the time. Therefore, he and other survivors started searching for more details to fill in the blanks.
But the information he obtained left him with a broad and abstract image of the past — until Friday.
“Suddenly, we have names. We can shake hands. We can put our own background in a context we couldn’t put before,” Tomkiewicz said after the morning program. “Suddenly you have an event that crystallizes that scenario.”

One of his students was Walsh’s grandson, which is what led Rozell to interview Walsh in 2001. During the interview, Walsh’s daughter suggested he tell Rozell about the train.
Afterward, Walsh put Rozell in contact with Gross, who lived in California.
Gross provided photos and narratives of the liberation for Rozell to post on the project Web site.
Four years later, Rozell received an e-mail from Lexie Keston, a Holocaust survivor who was on the same train. She was 6 at the time.
The Web site, located at http://www.hfcsd.org/ww2, also led Tomkiewicz, Spiegel and Lantos to Rozell, and ultimately spawned Friday’s reunion.
Lantos, an emeritus professor of neuropathology at the University of London, traveled from England to attend Friday’s event, while Spiegel, an author and lecturer, came from New Jersey.
“It’s really a humbling experience,” Rozell said after the morning program. “To be able to share it with the school and the students — for me, that’s where the gratification is.”
The two-part reunion included speeches from the three survivors. Spiegel and Lantos each spoke about the books they wrote on their Holocaust experiences.
Dr. Gross, an emeritus professor of English who lives in San Diego, was unable to attend the reunion because of health reasons. He did, though, provide a letter that was read to the gathering by English teacher Rene Roberge. The reunion was recorded, and a copy of the recording will be sent to Gross.
Ms. Keston, who lives in Sydney, Australia, also was unable to attend, but she also wrote a letter that was read aloud by history teacher Mrs. Tara Sano at the gathering.
“I found the experience so raw and emotional that I screamed and burst into tears,” she wrote of her reaction on finding the liberation photos on Rozell’s Web site.
The morning program included the showing of “A Train Near Magdeburg,” a DVD by seniors Troy Belden and Eric Roman, that included the photos and narratives by the liberators of the train scene.
The dozen photos showed families leaving the train and some children smiling at the camera despite being weakened from starvation. The project really had an impact on the students who worked in it. “Meeting these people that came from the worst of the worst, and they just have the most positive attitude about it,” said Hudson Falls senior Troy Belden.
Later on, Lantos and Spiegel sold copies of their books outside the auditorium. Hudson Falls senior Adam Armstrong, who bought a book, was surprised his school could play a role in Holocaust history.
“I still can’t believe that our school — that not a lot of people will know about because we are a small town — can do this much for history itself, that we can be history in the making,” Armstrong said. Those involved in the event said the chance meeting has changed them as well.
“Sixty-two years ago, as those events happened, I never in my wildest imagination thought I would ever meet anyone from that train again,” said Walsh.
Though the photos and narratives have been on the Web for four years, more people have been viewing them recently, Rozell said. He expects more soldiers and survivors will come forward with their own stories of the Magdeburg train as the reunion gains publicity, he said.
Tomkiewicz said he is trying to convince the education department at his school to invite Rozell for a presentation.
“When he started the project, he had no idea where it was going to lead to,” Tomkiewicz said of Rozell. “It is an excellent manifestation of what education can do.”

Thanks to Omar Aquije and the Glens Falls Post-Star for permission to use this story, as well as Albany, NY’s Capital News 9’s Kaitlyn Ross for filling in some detail.
The 800 students of HFHS set the standards of respectfulness and decorum at this important occasion.-MR 12-3-07

World War II veteran Carrol Walsh talks to a history class at Hudson Falls High School in Hudson Falls, N.Y., Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007. The retired state Supreme Court judge will be reunited with three of the survivors of the Nazi death train Walsh’s unit liberated near Magdeburg, on the Elbe River about 50 miles southwest of Berlin. (AP Photo/Mike Groll) 

In and around the abandoned line of freight cars milled some 2,500 emaciated and ragged Jewish prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. There were scores of children.

“They were just jammed, crammed in there,” said Walsh, a 24-year-old tank commander in April 1945.

On Friday, the now 86-year-old retired state Supreme Court judge reunited with three of the survivors of the Nazi death train his unit found near Magdeburg, about 50 miles southwest of Berlin. The train was on its way to another concentration camp.

The veteran and the survivors were to take part in a daylong program hosted at the high school in this Hudson River village north of Albany.

The reunion has its roots in a class project launched by Matthew Rozell, a history teacher at Hudson Falls High School. In the early 1990s, he created a special project to collect stories from local veterans and post them on a Web site.

One of Rozell’s students was Walsh’s grandson, who told the teacher about his grandfather’s wartime service. Several years ago, Rozell interviewed Walsh and George Gross, a fellow tank commander from Spring Valley, Calif.

Their account of the train liberation was posted on the project’s Web site, along with black-and-white photographs taken that day by Gross and the major leading their patrol.

That’s where some of the child survivors of the Nazi train, now in their 60s and 70s, found their story.

“All of this to a large degree came out of a high school project. This to me is fascinating,” said survivor Micha Tomkiewicz, a Polish Jew from Warsaw who was 6 when he and his mother and uncle were liberated.

Tomkiewicz had an earlier reunion with Gross and his family. He said he’s looking forward to meeting Walsh, and he credited Rozell for the reunions.

“It’s pretty humbling,” Rozell said.

Tomkiewicz was to be joined by fellow survivors Peter Lantos, a neurologist from London, and Fred Spiegel, an author from Howell, N.J.

Friday’s program includes a viewing of “A Train Near Magdeburg,” a 10-minute DVD produced by two of Rozell’s students, followed by talks from each of the three survivors.

For Walsh, it will be his first face-to-face meeting with anyone from the train since he came upon them on what turned out to be their lucky day — Friday the 13th, April, 1945.

“I had almost forgotten about the incident itself, really, over the years,” Walsh said. “It was almost like another day in combat. Nothing surprised me by then.”

~As a result of the worldwide publicity garnered by the attention to this story, eighteen more child survivors have contacted our school and their liberators since the reunion took place on September 14th, 2007. Read on… Special thanks to Chris Carola of the Associated Press for his interest in the story.