The Last Train: A Holocaust Story
The Last Train: A Holocaust Story
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Publishers Group West
Annotation: The Last Train is 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.
Genre: [World history]
 
Reviews: 3
Catalog Number: #6628622
Format: Paperback
Copyright Date: 2020
Edition Date: 2019 Release Date: 03/15/20
Pages: 142 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates
ISBN: 1-7714-7396-7
ISBN 13: 978-1-7714-7396-5
Dewey: 940.53
LCCN: 2012945654
Dimensions: 21 cm.
Language: English
Reviews:
ALA Booklist

Arato makes clear that although this title's dialogue and details are fictionalized, the family's experiences detailed in this volume are rooted in fact and based on the childhood memories of her husband, Paul Auslander, who was just five years old in 1944 when the Nazis invaded his home in Hungary. For middle readers, the viewpoints of Paul and his older brother, Oscar, 10, bring the Holocaust history very close, as his family is moved first to a ghetto and then separated from their father and placed on packed transports to Bergen-Belsen in Germany, where he and Oscar witness unbearable atrocity and try to care for their ailing mother. Hundreds die every day until, finally, after being locked for days in stifling boxcars, the family is liberated by American soldiers. From the prejudice against Auslanders (outsiders) in Hungary, and the brutality of the transports and the camps, to the dramatic liberation and the amazing reunion with the rescuing soldiers 65 years later, the personal account with many photos will stir readers to find out more Holocaust history.

Kirkus Reviews

Arato fictionalizes the painful, true story of brothers Paul and Oscar Auslander, 5 and 10 respectively, along with their mother, Lenke—Hungarian Jews who survived Nazi concentration camps during the final years of World War II. The story follows the family as they are forced to move repeatedly, ending up at the horrifying Bergen-Belsen camp. They are transported in cattle cars packed with terrified fellow Jews. The clarity of specific recalled events crystallizes their reality. Tiny Paul, momentarily separated from his family, is shoved onto a different train than Oscar and his mother; miraculously, they find one another again. The book has three distinct parts: the inhumane camps, the dramatic rescue and the powerful reunion in 2009 of Paul and his American liberators. Most revealing are the photographs and author's notes, conveying both historical details and the personal conflict of remembering—Paul is the author's husband. Less successful is the delivery of the narrative itself; an emotionally flat writing style and awkward shifts in perspective from young Paul to an omniscient narrator serve to distance readers. The maladroit placement of a sheaf of images, the first of which reveals the happy family reunited in 1947, in the middle of the titular journey is especially unfortunate. Nevertheless, this is a good introduction to a difficult topic—give it to readers for whom a "true" survivor's story will carry more weight than a wholly fictional account. (introduction, photographs, author's notes) (Historical fiction. 9-13)

School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up-In 1944, Paul Auslander's town of Karcag, Hungary, is occupied by German soldiers. The Nazis have taken his father to a labor camp, and the 5-year-old, his 10-year-old brother, and their mother are moved to a ghetto. Their lives there and in a series of concentration camps, in cattle cars, and on a sugar-beet farm are presented from the points of view of the two brothers: Oscar, as he tries to shield his rambunctious brother from the guards and support his sick mother in the interminable check-in lines, and Paul, whose exuberant curiosity threatens his life. It is on a train from Bergen Belsen to what is sure to be certain death that the prisoners are liberated by the Americans. This fictionalized story is told by Paul's wife, who was inspired to do so by the coming together of survivors of that last train and their liberators at a symposium at Hudson Falls High School, New York, in September 2009. It was a photo of the last train discovered on the Internet in 2008 that prompted the survivors to speak at last of their terrible ordeal. The author relates the thoughts of the children as they experience the horrors of the camps: hunger, beatings, starvation, disease, and death of other prisoners. The vivid content is frightening, the language clear. Informative black-and-white photos include the family before and after the war, the survivors on the day of liberation, and American soldiers. The last two chapters offer a moving account of the reunion of survivors and liberators. Jackie Gropman, formerly at Chantilly Regional Library, VA

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School Library Journal
Word Count: 26,382
Reading Level: 4.1
Interest Level: 4-7
Accelerated Reader: reading level: 4.1 / points: 4.0 / quiz: 171657 / grade: Middle Grades+
Lexile: 580L
Guided Reading Level: X
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.


Excerpted from The Last Train: A Holocaust Story by Rona Arato
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

The Last Train is 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.


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