NY teacher’s Holocaust train rescue project subject of book

HUDSON FALLS, N.Y. – An upstate New York teacher’s effort to reunite Jewish survivors of a Nazi concentration camp train with the U.S. soldiers who rescued them is told in a newly published book.

“A Train Near Magdeburg” compiles years of research and interviews by Matthew Rozell, a history teacher at Hudson Falls High School.

A student project he started years ago led him to the story of American soldiers who liberated 2,500 starving Jewish prisoners from a German train in April 1945.

Nine years ago this month, one of those soldiers and three of the survivors held a reunion in Rozell’s classroom. Since then, scores of other train survivors and their children have come forward, and several other reunions have been held.

A documentary film on the story is in the works by Emmy Award-winning director Mike Edwards.