The Last Train by Rona Arato

The story open in April 1944, as Paul Auslander's father has been taken away to a work camp along with all the other Jewish men. Five-year-old Paul and his ten-year-old brother Oscar live in Karcag, Hungary. Their small town had a Catholic and a Protestant church as well as a synagogue. Everyone got along regardless of their religion. However, their last name means foreigner and Paul's father has often stated that they will always be Jews first and Hungarians second. 

At the synagogue, Paul and his family as well as the other Jewish families are told that they must adhere to a five-o'clock curfew and that their businesses and schools are now closed. They are to go home to await further instructions.

On April 27, the Jews of Karcag were told that they would be moved to an area at the edge of town, creating a ghetto. Along with Paul, Oscar and their mother, their Auntie Bella and six-year-old Kati and four-year-old Magdi would be living with them.

In the ghetto, Oscar's friend Gabor informs Lenke and Aunt Bella  that he has heard that the Jews are being placed on trains. Terrified the two women are determined to remain strong and not show their fear to Paul and the others. The gendarmes order everyone into the street and march them to the town square where they stand for hours in the hot sun without food or water. Eventually everyone is placed into the back of six canvas covered trucks that take them to the Szolnok Sugar Factory. Here a line of boxcars sat on train tracks. After three hungry days, Paul and his family were ordered into the boxcars by the gendarmes and the dreaded Schutzstaffel or SS. 

At the train station in Vienna, Austria, Paul becomes separated from his mother and Oscar. Oscar and his mother were forced into a new boxcar, while Paul ended up in another. Eventually they were reunited at the Strasshof Concentration camp in Austria. There are stripped and hosed down. For two weeks they remained in the cold barracks at the camp, fed stale bread and watery soup. In July 1944 they are taken to Guntersdorf, Austria and trucked to work on a farm growing and harvesting sugar beets. However, by September Anyu, Paul and Oscar's mother becomes ill.

On October 30, Paul turns six years old. His mother however, is growing weaker every day. In December 1944, Paul and his family were transported back to the Strasshof camp. On December 7 1944, Paul and his family along with his Aunt Bella and her two daughters arrive at Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany. Still dressed in summer clothing, Paul and Oscar shiver uncontrollably as they are made to walk to the filthy, rank barracks where this is no stove for heating. Every day they were marched outside to stand for hours in the cold.

One day Anyu saw that Uncle Elemir was in the men's camp. Despite being forbidden to sneak to the men's area, Paul goes to visit Uncle Elemir who teaches him how to whittle. By March of 1945, news that Germany was losing the war came to the camp. In April, 1945, despite the fact that the Germans were losing the war, more and more prisoners were being transferred to Bergen-Belsen. Every day hundreds died of typhus. Paul saw the pits with dead bodies whenever he went to visit his uncle. On April 9, Paul, Oscar and Anyu were put into one boxcar, one of many on a train that travelled slowly with many stops. Outside of Farsleben, Germany the soldiers were setting up machine guns to kill them when suddenly they flee ahead of an American tank.

The American soldiers help Paul, Oscar, Anyu and all the others out of the boxcar. The train has stopped in the middle of a field with a low hill nearby. The American soldiers bring people from the nearby German town to the train. When the Germans refuse to help the Jewish people, the American soldier threatens to kill their mayor if they do not provide the Jews with food, clothing, soap and a place to stay. Anyu was taken to a special hospital in Hillersleben along with Paul and Oscar. They remained there for four months until they were sent back to Hungary by the Russians who now controlled Eastern Europe. 

On the train ride to Budapest, Anyu has recovered along with Bella, Kati, Magdi, and Paul, but Oscar has a bad cough. In Budapest, Anyu and Oscar are taken to hospital as they are both still very ill, and Paul is allowed to stay, only if he has his tonsils out. Apu returns to Budapest

Discussion

The Last Train tells Paul Arato's family's story in a gentle way that still captures some of the fear and confusion his family experienced when their native Hungary was invaded by the Nazis in 1944. Prior to this, Hungary was pro-fascist and had been allied with Germany, supporting its Nazi policies. Until that time, Jews in Hungary were mainly protected from the Nazi's Final Solution policies, although they faced economic and political sanctions. Hungary participated in Hitler's invasion of communist Russia. But when Hitler discovered that Hungary was attempting to broker a peace treaty with the Allied Forces, he invaded and almost immediately began rounding up the Jewish population. This is where Paul's story begins. Paul's story, like that of many Holocaust survivors would remain untold but never forgotten, for years. The Last Train recovers one such story and how it came to be told is worth revealing.

In 2001, students at Hudson Valley High School were assigned to interview local residents and family members about World War II as part of a history class run by teacher Mark Rozell.  He wanted to make history come alive for his students in a more meaningful way and he also believed that history has some important lessons to teach young people. When the students interviewed American veterans they came across an unbelievable story about the liberation of a train holding 2500 Jewish prisoners, many sick, all starving and filthy.

It was during an interview in July, 2001 with Carrol Walsh, who on April 13, 1945, was a 24 year old American tank commander with the American 30th Infantry Division, that Rozell learned about the American liberation of a large transport train near Magdeburg. Walsh had not thought about the train until his daughter urged him to tell the history teacher about it during the interview. Soldiers had uncovered an incredible situation; boxcars jam-packed with starving Jewish prisoners. The historic liberation was recorded in photographs taken by George C. Gross, a friend and fellow tank commander who, unlike Walsh, stayed with the train overnight and into the next day. Gross' unit went to the local German's and ordered them to provide food and lodgings for the Jewish survivors.

Survivors leaving the train.

Walsh also related that he received the 30th Division newsletters and one of those newsletters had published a letter from a survivor of a "death train" asking if anyone was there when it was liberated. It turned out that this was the same train near Magdeburg that Walsh, Gross and also Major Benjamin had liberated. Walsh wrote to the editor and advised them that a better contact would be George Gross.

Rozell then contacted tank commander George Gross who was now living in San Diego, California and working as a professor of English. Dr. Gross had a negative of the most famous picture as well as ten other photographs of the liberation of the train. Rozell was then able to hear Gross' account of his time spent at the train near Magdeburg. The teacher created a website containing the interviews where they sat for four years before being noticed by a survivor from Australia. Since then the website interviews, along with help from 1st Lt. Frank Towers, has been a focal point for reuniting survivors and their liberators in a series of reunions. Many of these survivors had searched for years, in vain, for some information about their liberators and the train. 

This background sets the stage for this tiny but very informative narrative nonfiction book, The Last Train, which has been written for children, by Rona Arato who is the wife of Paul Arato, who was on the Magdeburg Train when he was just five years old.  These trains were called "the last trains" because they contained the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps who were being shunted around in an attempt by the Nazi's to exterminate the evidence of their crimes against humanity.

Arato writes that her husband's story only came out after his son, Daniel, found Rozell's website. Although she knew about Paul's past, he had never told their children, Alise, Daniel and Debbie. It was a haunting memory that she did not press him to divulge. Arato's retelling of Paul's experiences as a young child in the concentration camps is simple yet compelling. The Last Train is not graphic yet convey in some measure the terrible conditions endured, the cruelty of the German SS troops who would murder simply on a whim. This is seen when a young boy, happy that it is his birthday, is shot point blank in the head by an SS officer. Although The Last Train is about a real event, Arato has recreated much of the dialogue based on interviews and research. This has resulted in a well-written, concise account of a little known event in the liberation of Europe.

Paul's immediate family was lucky in that they all survived, although his mother never fully recovered her health and died in 1951. However, most of his extended family were murdered in the Holocaust. Eventually Paul and Oscar escaped communist Hungary, with Paul coming to Canada and Oscar travelling to Australia. Arato has included many photographs both of her family before and after the war, the liberation of the transport train near Magdeburg and the reunion of Jewish survivors and American liberators some sixty years later which help young readers understand this important historical event. 

Image of mother and child: https://teachinghistorymatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/moment-of-liberation1.jpg

Book Details:
The Last Train by Rona Arato
Toronto: Owlkids Books Inc.     2013
142 pp.