The Train Near Magdeburg: How a Teacher’s Interview Unearthed a Hidden Holocaust Story

In 2001, former New York teacher Matt Rozell was conducting an oral history interview with World War II Army Sgt. Carrol Walsh for a class project. Walsh had long kept a box of photographs hidden alongside toy soldiers in his dresser drawer, images his daughter Elizabeth Connolly had questioned as a child because they did not resemble any known relatives.

During the interview, Walsh revealed he had never shared the story behind the photos. He described an “beautiful April day” in 1945 when his unit was moving rapidly through central Germany and encountered a stopped train near Magdeburg. Inside, he found 2,500 Jewish prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, crammed into cars and in a state of extreme distress, awaiting transport to another camp.

Rozell, who admitted he was not sufficiently educated on the Holocaust at the time, realized he had stumbled upon a significant piece of history. After posting the interview online, he received responses from dozens of survivors and liberators. This discovery eventually led him to write the book “A Train Near Magdeburg” and organize reunions between American soldiers and the people they helped free.

Among those reconnected was Peter Lantos, now 86, a renowned neuroscientist and author who was five years old when he was placed on that train with his mother. Lantos recalled the horrific conditions at Bergen-Belsen, where unburied bodies lay around, and his father had died of starvation. He lost 21 family members in the Holocaust. Recalling the moment of liberation, Lantos said the noise outside suddenly ceased, followed by shouts of “Americans! Americans!”

“It’s a moral obligation to do it,” Lantos said. “Because we are the last survivors. I’m 86. In few years’ time, no one can tell you, ‘Yes, it is true because I was there.'”

James Bulgin, head of public history at the Imperial War Museum in London, noted that those on the train were on the brink of death when intercepted. He explained that while the Nazis claimed to be relocating the prisoners, their actual intent was likely extermination. The episode highlights the chaos at the end of the war and the serendipitous nature of how history is preserved.

Filmmaker Mike Edwards, who has spent over a decade working on a documentary about the event, recently uncovered new photographs from the liberation, including one showing a refugee holding a pre-Holocaust portrait of himself. Edwards emphasized the story’s broader message about humanity and choice.

“You’re going to have a choice of whether to care about somebody or not, to treat them as a human being or not,” Edwards said. “May you remember this story.”

Rozell stressed the importance of education in keeping such histories alive. “They didn’t have to stop. They didn’t have to help these people. But they did,” he said. “What if we never learned it to begin with?” The book is available in multiple formats, and the documentary is currently in production.