For my husband Paul and in memory of his brother Oscar and their beloved parents Lenke and Ignaz
Introduction My name is Rona Arato My husband Paul was a survivor of the Holocaust that occurred during the Second World War I knew some of Paul’s story he his brother Oscar and their mother Lenke were in the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp and on a death train that was liberated by the American Ninth Army But many of the details from that awful time were missing It was only after we learned about the Teaching History Matters project and met other train survivors and the soldiers who liberated them that we were really able to put the pieces of his story together To tell it I listened to many testimonies and read the memoirs of the survivors and soldiers from that fateful event and the camp Matt Rozell the teacher who created Teaching History Matters and brought us all together and the historians at the Bergen Belsen Memorial were all generous with information In 1994 Paul and I attended a memorial service in the Karcagi Synagogue commemorating the 50th anniversary of the German occupation and I had the opportunity then and on subsequent trips to get to know the people who appear as children in this book 9
What you read here is all based on actual events I have tried to honor the integrity and truth of everyone’s story The dialogue is mostly imagined but the account it tells is true The main characters are real people This has been a difficult book to write but one that I knew I had to write It is a tribute to the train survivors the soldiers who liberated them and to Matt Rozell Rona Arato 10
Prologue Toronto Canada Spring 2008 The picture on the computer screen shows a woman running toward the camera arms outstretched her face a mask of surprise Yet what catches Paul’s attention is in the backdrop an abandoned freight train Sixty years earlier he was on that train He was six years old on April 13 1945 when two American soldiers in a tank liberated him his mother his brother and thousands of other prisoners For sixty years he has thought about that day and about the soldiers who saved their lives 11
