If you like World War II films about airmen who survive after being forced to abandon their planes over enemy territory, then you will love this book.
Meticulously researched by Greg Lewis, who has written extensively about espionage, resistance, fascism, and World War II, The Nazi Ghost Train focuses on unheralded British and American flyers, many of whom were young recruits who — unexpectedly, and to their horror — were forced to abandon their planes and parachute into Belgium.
The stories of how these men survived or were betrayed by local spies for the Nazis provide the bulk of the book. The unsung heroes were often farmers and their families who hid airmen in attics, haystacks, or basements, and provided them with clothes and false documents. Some locals were also able to give the airmen links to networks of underground resistance fighters, who were often women. Some of the airmen made it to Spain or Switzerland and back to the UK. But many did not. The stories coalesce around the last moments of the war.
At this point, the Allies had already landed in Europe and were moving toward the liberation of Brussels. The end of the war was imminent, but before heading back to Germany, the SS was desperate to move about 1,500 prisoners from jail to an empty train headed for Neuengamme concentration camp, later known as “the Nazi ghost train.”
The tale of “the ghost train” is riveting. Through a mixture of luck, brilliant sabotage, and courage, the train’s progress was thwarted and, ultimately, reversed. Just as we marvel today over our military’s ability to pluck a downed airmen from a crevice in an Iranian mountainside, so readers will marvel over the ingenious and heroic efforts of captured prisoners of war to free themselves from the SS and the Third Reich. This overlooked, dramatic story deserves telling.
Eleanor Foa is an author, journalist, and corporate writer. Her memoir MIXED MESSAGES: Reflections on an Italian Jewish Family and Exile was published in November 2019. Her work appears in national newspapers, magazines and websites. She is the author of Whither Thou Goest and In Good Company, President of Eleanor Foa Associates (eleanorfoa.com), past president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and received literary residencies at Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
