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
Chapter 1 Karcag Hungary April 1944 Ma nishtana ha-laila ha-zeh mi-kol ha-lelot Why is this night different from all other nights This night is different because our fathers are not with us Paul listened to the familiar words of the Four Questions the heart of the Passover Seder This night is different because we are celebrating Passover without our fathers He looked around the synagogue social hall where women children and a few elderly men sat at tables draped with white cloth Paul thought of Passovers he and his older brother Oscar spent at their grandparents house when all his aunts uncles and cousins were still together But his father like other men in town had been taken away to some kind of work camp so his mother and some other women had organized this Seder to celebrate Passover the holiday of freedom And tonight as they recited prayers sang familiar melodies and ate matzo unleavened bread chicken soup and roast chicken they tried to forget for a few hours about the missing fathers brothers and grandfathers and this thing called war raging around them The next day the Germans marched into Karcag 13
