The Last Train A Holocaust Story

by Arato, Rona

• ISBN13: 9781926973623
• ISBN10: 1926973623
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-03-12
• Publisher: Owlkids Books

Summary

The Last Trainis the harrowing true story about young brothers Paul and Oscar Arato and their mother, Lenke, surviving the Nazi occupation during the final years of World War II. Living in the town of Karcag, Hungary, the Aratos felt insulated from the war — even as it raged all around them. Hungary is allied with Germany to protect its citizens from invasion, but in 1944 Hitler breaks his promise to keep the Nazis out of Hungary. The Nazi occupation forces the family into situations of growing panic and fear: first into a ghetto in their hometown; then a labor camp in Austria; and, finally, to the deadly Bergen Belsen camp deep in the heart of Germany. Separated from their father, 6-year-old Paul and 11-year-old Oscar must care for their increasingly sick mother, all while trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy amid the horrors of the camp. In the spring of 1945, the boys see British planes flying over the camp, and a spark of hope that the war will soon end ignites. And then, they are forced onto a dark, stinking boxcar by the Nazi guards. After four days on the train, the boys are convinced they will be killed, but through a twist of fate, the train is discovered and liberated by a battalion of American soldiers marching through Germany. The book concludes when Paul, now a grown man living in Canada, stumbles upon photographs on the internet of his train being liberated. After writing to the man who posted the pictures, Paul is presented with an opportunity to meet his rescuers at a reunion in New York — but first he must decide if he is prepared to reopen the wounds of his past.

Author Biography

RONA ARATO, a former teacher, is an award-winning children’s author with a strong interest in the field of human rights. From 1994 to 1998, she was an interviewer for Survivors of the Shoah, a Steven Spielberg project that recorded the histories of Holocaust survivors. She is the author of Courage and Compassion and the On a Day Story Voyages series, among others. She lives in Toronto.

Excerpts

Chapter One

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. As the rabbi chanted, 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, German soldiers marched into Karcag.