The Story
April 13, 1945 —
Two US Army tank commanders, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany, accompanied their major in investigating an abandoned train near the town of Magdeburg.
In their two tanks and one jeep they crept forward — and were stunned by what they found: that long train of boxcars was crammed full of human beings.
They were sick, starving, and had been expecting nothing but death … until they saw the white stars on the jeep, on those tanks: the symbol of the United States Army.
In that moment, more than two thousand prisoners of the Nazi regime, Jews from all over war-torn Europe, knew they had been saved.
Disheveled survivors of every age swarmed, if they could, up the hillside to their saviors.
The major stood in the jeep and snapped a photograph that has become one of the iconic images of the Holocaust.
The moment of liberation as drawn by train survivor Ervin Abadi.
Could a small group of American soldiers care for more than two thousand sick and starving former prisoners?
Not by themselves …
The soldiers pulled together every resource they could — beginning a complex humanitarian action in the middle of a shooting war.
Aided by infantrymen and doctors from nearby units, the people from the train made their way to an abandoned hospital several miles away, where at long last they could be properly fed and, if at all possible, have their injuries and diseases treated.
American soldiers and doctors saved the lives of thousands of Jews who had been on a literal road to annihilation.
But as World War II came to a close, and as the eyewitnesses — Holocaust survivors and the soldiers alike — went on with their lives, the incident at that railroad siding in April 1945 was essentially buried…
…forgotten by the world at large.
July 26, 2001 —
High-school history teacher Matthew Rozell sat down with 80-year-old former World War II tank commander Carrol Walsh to record an oral history. After two hours of conversation, they both thought the interview was over and were ready to turn the camera off —
— when Walsh’s daughter interrupted…
… asking her father to tell about “the train.”
Walsh told about the discovery of the train and the liberation of the people it carried.
It was enough. After learning about “the train near Magdeburg,” Rozell was stirred with a passion to search for the other members of the tank crews, the infantrymen and medics who came to the scene, and to share their stories with the world.
He began work on what would become the book A Train Near Magdeburg — and the website “Teaching History Matters.”
And then another miracle happened.
More and more people learned about Matthew Rozell’s work, about his efforts to contact people who were part of the liberation of that train … and soon the word had spread around the world …
… and Rozell began to hear from survivors of the train.
This led to a powerful triumvirate: researcher — and herself the daughter of a survivor — Varda Weisskopf began a search of her own and found roughly 100 survivors, mostly in Israel.
Frank Towers — the Army liaison officer who had supervised the transportation of the freed prisoners to places of safety — added his own efforts, locating and contacting even more liberators and liberated.
Together they connected more than three hundred survivors of the train — and organized reunions in which the freed captives could meet again with the soldiers who saved them.
The 2011 reunion in Israel, organized by Varda Weisskopf, was attended by nearly 500 people from all over the world, including 55 survivors, countless children and grandchildren of survivors, representatives of the U.S. Embassy in Israel, and a delegation from the Bergen-Belsen Museum in Germany.
Varda raised funds to bring Frank Towers to Israel for the reunion. For many of the survivors this was the best part: being able to thank a liberator in person for — as many of them put it — giving them their second life.
Now, in 2023, we keep going back to the words of Frank Towers, the soldier who arrived the day after the train was discovered and organized the transportation of the survivors to shelter, food, and medical attention. Towers told us:
Never in our training were we taught to be humanitarians.
We were taught to be soldiers.
And yet, when faced with a humanitarian crisis, these battle-hardened men of war turned all of their energy and resources into saving lives of the innocent victims of tyranny and oppression.
These soldiers had already been through some of the bloodiest combat in all of human history… one nightmare after another, testing the endurance of every human soul, experiences that might have been enough to drive the humanity out of almost anyone.
But … suddenly presented with the opportunity to do some good, to bring hope and health and safety to more than two thousand people … their humanity blossomed into full flower.
That’s the story we want to tell.
A triumph of the human spirit.
And, we hope, an inspiration to everyone who sees and hears it.