Chapter 34

Toronto, Canada
Spring 2009

Paul took a deep breath, blinked hard, and tried to steady his nerves. Despite his initial hesitation, he had finally written to Matt Rozell, the New York state teacher who had posted the pictures of the train—his train—on the internet.

In response, Matt had written this back:

Dear Paul,

Please contact Frank Towers. He has all the information about the liberation and the soldiers who were involved.

Paul, meet your rescuer.

     All the best,

     Matt Rozell

Now, Matt was organizing a reunion. Paul would meet the soldiers who had liberated him. For almost 65 years he had thought about the train. Had things really happened the way he remembered? He’d been so young. Were there two soldiers on a tank or one in a Jeep, or both?

He remembered that the Americans had given him candy. It was a Tootsie Roll, he recalled. Another soldier let me play with his gun. That totally freaked out Oscar and my mother. He smiled. For so many years, I’ve searched for information about that train.

And now here it is.

Since liberation, Paul’s life had taken many turns. His mother never recovered from her illness and died in 1951, when he was thirteen. Three years later, his father married Olga, a woman from their town. Although the Germans were gone, they continued to suffer under a cruel dictatorship. After the war, Russia occupied Eastern European countries, including Hungary. These countries were said to be “behind the Iron Curtain,” because their citizens could not leave.

The Russians closed Jewish schools in Hungary, so Ignaz Auslander started teaching in a public school. The Russians had many rules—one was that anyone holding a public position, such as a teacher, had to have a Hungarian name. Auslander was German, so in 1952, Ignaz chose the name Arato—it started with an “A,” was short, and was easy to spell.

In 1956, Paul and his brother were living in Budapest when public resentment against the government erupted into a violent revolution. Fed up with tyranny and war, they joined thousands of refugees and fled the country. They escaped at night by crossing fields studded with landmines. Once free, they went to England and then to Canada. Oscar eventually settled in Australia, but Paul remained in Toronto.

Even as he struggled to suppress his wartime memories, Paul suffered their effects. Except for his father and Oscar, his whole family had died. His father stayed behind in Hungary. In Canada, he met other Hungarian refugees, but, at first, no one would talk about their experiences during the war. There was no one with whom to share the deep-seated feelings of anger, sadness, and fear that haunted him.

Then, suddenly, thirty years after liberation, people began talking about what was now being called the Holocaust. There were reminders everywhere—in books, movies, on television, and in the stories survivors were beginning to tell. Still, Paul kept silent. Except about one story: how he was liberated from a train by American soldiers.

Paul wanted to thank the soldiers for what they had done for him and his family, but he knew there was no way to find them. And then, one day, he read an article about Americans liberating a train in Germany. As he looked at the accompanying pictures, he began to shake. I was on that train. I recognize the valley where it’s stopped. His heart pounded.

Do I want to reopen the wounds?

Can I live with the memories that will come back?

The answer, he finally decided, was “Yes.”