2026-09-13T09:52:00-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News）
作者
赛思·多恩 特派记者
赛思·多恩自2016年起担任驻意大利罗马的获奖CBS新闻特派记者。他报道过欧洲各地的恐怖袭击和突发新闻，随教皇方济各出访报道梵蒂冈事务，并就从移民到气候变化等诸多议题发表过报道。
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更新于：2026年9月13日 / 美国东部时间上午11:39 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News）
当伊丽莎白·康诺利还是个小女孩，从父亲的梳妆台抽屉里拿出一盒玩具士兵时，她只是出于好奇，而非有意去发掘一段鲜为人知的历史。“我会进去把玩它们，把它们全部摆在地板上，”她说。
但在那个抽屉里，与玩具士兵放在一起的还有一信封照片，康诺利觉得这些照片很有意思：“我一直记得当时在想，‘嗯，他们看起来和我们的任何亲戚都不像。我想知道他们是谁。’”
二战陆军军士卡罗尔·沃尔什留存的照片，讲述了1945年德国解放的故事。哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News） 摄
这些照片与她在纽约州北部的生活现实似乎相去甚远。“有一张照片一直吸引着我：一位母亲牵着一个小女孩的手走上山坡，后面还站着一个身材极其瘦弱的女人，”她说。
1945年4月在德国马格德堡附近被解放的大屠杀幸存者。乔治·格罗斯收藏/马特·罗泽尔 供图
她曾问过父亲这些照片的来历：“他只会说这些是他在一列火车上遇到的人，仅此而已，”康诺利说。
她的父亲卡罗尔·沃尔什是二战时期的美国陆军军士，他将一位同为坦克指挥官的朋友赠送的照片妥善保存了下来。“我想当时很多士兵回国后，都把很多故事藏在了心里，”康诺利说。
这也是她儿子的老师马特·罗泽尔发起一项课堂项目，收集退伍军人口述历史的部分原因。2001年，罗泽尔采访康诺利的父亲时，她插嘴问起了那列火车。
“不，我没跟他提过那列火车，”沃尔什回答道。
罗泽尔回忆说，他刚要关上相机，沃尔什却继续说道：“然后他说，‘那是一个美好的四月天。我们正飞速穿过德国中部。我们偶遇了这列火车，里面挤满了大屠杀受害者。’他说他往车厢里看了看，看到人们都处于极度痛苦的状态。”
2500名来自贝尔根-贝尔森集中营的犹太囚犯被塞进车厢，正被押往另一座集中营。1945年4月13日，在战争的最后几周，推进中的美军在德国马格德堡附近发现了这列停下的火车，并为幸存者提供了救治。
罗泽尔当时并未意识到，他正在发掘一段相对不为人知的历史：“我当时是个年轻的历史老师，”他说，“信不信由你，我当时对大屠杀的了解并不够深入。”
罗泽尔将那次采访发布到了网上，最终收到了数十名幸存者和解放者的消息，这启发他写下了《马格德堡附近的火车》一书。
这位来自纽约州哈德逊福尔斯的前教师还组织了重聚活动，将美国士兵与他们帮助解放的人聚集在一起，其中包括后来成为著名神经科学家和作家的彼得·兰托斯。
在伦敦的家中，兰托斯向我们讲述了他年仅5岁时就和母亲一起被送上那列火车的经历。“她当时想，任何地方都比贝尔森好，”兰托斯说，“那里到处都是无人掩埋的尸体，先是几十具，后来是几百具。”
他的父亲在那里死于饥饿。他总共有21名家人在大屠杀中丧生。
兰托斯记得他们被解放的那一天：“先是有一阵嘈杂声，然后突然安静下来。接着人们开始大喊：‘美国人！美国人！’”
他并不太喜欢谈论那段经历，但他说：“这是一种道义上的责任。因为我们是最后的幸存者。我今年86岁了。再过几年，就没人能告诉你‘是的，这是真的，因为我当时就在现场’了。”
伦敦帝国战争博物馆公共历史主管詹姆斯·布尔金表示：“从任何有意义的层面来说，这列火车上的人在美军拦截他们的那一刻，都处于死亡的边缘。”
彼得·兰托斯和马特·罗泽尔最近与布尔金一起参观了他策划的大屠杀展览画廊，其中就展示了这列火车的故事。
布尔金说：“你可能会说，‘哦，他们是从贝尔森被救出来的，他们被送往了其他地方。’但现实是，当然，他们刚上路，纳粹就意识到他们无法将他们送到原定目的地，于是就萌生了杀掉他们的计划。”
布尔金表示，这一事件揭示了战争末期的混乱局面，以及让这段解放与生存故事被铭记的命运巧合。
“马特·罗泽尔在进行采访时，并不知道他会偶然发现这列火车的历史，”布尔金说，“这让我们非常真切地了解到历史实际是如何发生的。”
这一点，获奖纪录片导演迈克·爱德华兹深有体会。在制作即将上映的纪录片《马格德堡附近的火车》时，他的团队找到了一系列当天拍摄的照片，他将这些照片带给布尔金看。在其中一张照片里，一名男子随身带着一张自己的照片，展示了他在大屠杀发生前的模样。
这张1945年4月由克拉伦斯·J·本杰明拍摄的照片中，一名难民在从开往特莱西恩施塔特的火车上被解放后留影。JFCS大屠杀中心 供图
“我以前真的从未见过这样的东西，”布尔金说，“这很有说服力，因为你了解这些事情，也见过一些相关的画面，但看到新的实物影像痕迹，总能带来新的视角。”
迈克·爱德华兹与这列火车并无直接关联，但他已经为这个倾注心血的项目投入了十多年的时间，他已经为一些学生放映过影片。当被问及这个故事中哪些地方打动了他时，爱德华兹回答说：“我认为这是一个关于人性的故事。”
有一个问题一直萦绕在爱德华兹心头：“‘你希望人们从这个故事中收获什么？’我说，‘你知道吗，你们每个人在自己的人生中，都会经历一个“马格德堡附近的火车时刻”。你将面临选择：是关心他人，还是不把他们当作人类对待。愿你铭记这个故事。’”
现已退休从教的马特·罗泽尔表示，这个火车故事给了我们一个宝贵的教训：“他们本可以不停下来，本可以不帮助这些人。但他们还是这么做了。”
他表示，这也给我们所有人上了一堂关于教育价值的课：“这个故事几乎没有美国人了解，但他们应该了解。我们都说，‘永不忘记。永不忘记。’这是一句很棒的口号，非常重要。但如果我们从一开始就从未学习过这段历史呢？”
要观看《马格德堡附近的火车》的预告片，请点击下方的视频播放器：
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70a67_hBNIU
《马格德堡附近的火车：预告片与教育愿景》，2026年 马修·罗泽尔图书 出品 于YouTube
Uncovering a Holocaust survival story
2026-09-13T09:52:00-0400 / CBS News
By
Seth Doane Correspondent
Seth Doane is an award-winning CBS News correspondent based in Rome, Italy since 2016. Doane has covered terrorist attacks and breaking news across Europe, traveled with Pope Francis as part of his coverage of the Vatican, and has reported on issues ranging from migration to climate change.
Read Full Bio
Updated on: September 13, 2026 / 11:39 AM EDT / CBS News
As a young girl taking out a box containing toy soldiers from her dad’s dresser drawer, Elizabeth Connolly was just curious, not trying to unearth a little-known piece of history. “I would go in and I would play with them, and I would set them all up on the floor,” she said.
But tucked in that drawer next to those toy soldiers was an envelope of photos, which Connolly found intriguing: “I always remember thinking, ‘Hmm, they don’t look like any of our relatives. I wonder who they are.’”
Photos kept by World War II Army Sgt. Carrol Walsh told a story of liberation in 1945 Germany. CBS News
They appeared quite removed from her reality in Upstate New York. “There was one that just always drew me: It was a mom holding a little girl’s hand, coming up the hill, and there was another woman standing behind that was very, very thin,” she said.
Holocaust survivors liberated in April 1945 near Magdeburg, Germany. The George Gross Collection/Matt Rozell
She’d asked her dad about them: “He would just say they were people that he came upon in a train, and that was it,” Connolly said.
Her dad, Carrol Walsh, a U.S. Army sergeant in World War II, kept the photos given to him by a friend, a fellow tank commander. “I think a lot of the soldiers during that time, they came home and they held a lot of those stories in,” Connolly said.
That’s partly why her son’s teacher, Matt Rozell, started a class project to collect the oral histories of veterans. While Rozell was interviewing Connelly’s dad in 2001, she interjected to ask him about the train.
“No, I didn’t tell him about the train,” Walsh answered.
Rozell recalls he was just about to shut down his camera when Walsh continued: “And he said, ‘A beautiful April day. We were zooming like crazy through the middle of Germany. We came across this train, and it was full of Holocaust victims.’ He said he looked inside the train cars. He saw the people in a very distressed state.”
Twenty-five-hundred Jewish prisoners from Bergen-Belsen were crammed inside, on their way to another concentration camp. On April 13, 1945, in the final weeks of the war, advancing American soldiers came upon the stopped train near Magdeburg, Germany, and provided care for the survivors.
Rozell did not realize at the time that he was uncovering a relatively unknown piece of history: “I was a young history teacher,” he said. “I was not schooled enough, believe it or not, in the Holocaust.”
Rozell posted that interview online, and eventually heard from dozens of survivors and liberators, inspiring him to write a book, “A Train Near Magdeburg.”
The former Hudson Falls, New York, teacher also organized reunions to bring together American soldiers with those they helped liberate, including Peter Lantos, who became a renowned neuroscientist and author.
In his London home, Lantos told us how he was just five years old when he was put on that train with his mom. “Her thinking was, anywhere can be better than Belsen,” Lantos said. “There were dead bodies lying around unburied, first by dozens, then by hundreds.”
His father died of starvation there. In all, he lost 21 family members in the Holocaust.
Lantos remembers the day they were liberated: “There was kind of a noise, and suddenly it became quiet. And then people started to shout, ‘Americans! Americans!’”
He does not really like talking about what happened, but, he said, “It’s a moral obligation to do it. 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, the head of public history at the Imperial War Museum, London, said, “The people on board that train are, in every meaningful respect, on the brink of death at the point in time that the Americans intercept them.”
Peter Lantos and Matt Rozell recently joined Bulgin in the Holocaust galleries he curated, which feature the story of the train.
Bulgin said, “You might say, ‘Oh, they’re being saved from Belsen. They’re being sent somewhere else.’ But the reality is of course, as soon as they get along the way and then the Nazis realize they’re not going to be able to get them to where they’re gonna get to, then the plan emerges to kill them.”
The episode reveals the chaos at the end of the war, Bulgin says, and the quirks of fate that lead to remembering this story of liberation and survival.
“Matt Rozell, when he was doing his interviews, didn’t know that he was going to stumble across the history of the train,” Bulgin said. “It tells us so much about the way history actually happens.”
That’s something award-winning filmmaker Mike Edwards knows well. While working on his upcoming documentary, “A Train Near Magdeberg,” his team unearthed a series of photos from that day which he brought to show Bulgin. In one picture, a man wears a photograph of himself showing what he looked like pre-Holocaust.
In this April 1945 photo taken by Clarence J. Benjamin, a refugee is depicted after being liberated from a train headed to Theresienstadt. JFCS Holocaust Center
“I’ve literally never seen anything like that before,” Bulgin said. “It’s compelling, because you know about these things and you’ve seen some of it, but to see new things, every new kind of physical visual trace, gives a new insight.”
Mike Edwards has no direct connection to the train, but he has spent more than a decade on this passion project, which he’s screened for some students. Asked what about the story has struck him, Edwards replied, “I think it’s a story of humanity.”
One question posed to Edwards stays with him: “‘What do you hope people take away from this story?’ I said, ‘You know, each one of you, in your own lives, is going to have a “train near Magdeburg moment.” You’re going to have a choice of whether to care about somebody or not, to treat them as a human being or not. May you remember this story.’”
Now retired from teaching, Matt Rozell says the train story teaches a valuable lesson: “They didn’t have to stop. They didn’t have to help these people. But they did.”
He says there’s also a lesson here for all of us in the value of education: “Here’s a story that very few Americans know anything about, that they should. You know, we all say, ‘Never forget. Never forget.’ And it’s a great mantra. It’s very important. But what if we never learned it to begin with?’”
To watch a trailer for “A Train Near Magdeberg” click on the video player below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70a67_hBNIU
A Train Near Magdeburg: Trailer and Educational Vision, 2026 by MATTHEW ROZELL BOOKS on YouTube
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