About the project

Transnational and biographical approaches in research

During the pilot study, the project partners are investigating the files on the liberation campaign in their respective countries and partly index and digitalize the extensive source material. In the following Research Project, the biographies of the 1,200 rescued Jews form one of the central pillars. The research contributes to a deeper understanding of the effects that persecution and forced migration had on individual life trajectories, biographical narrations, and constructions of identities.

Output in public history and history education

The findings of the research will be facilitated through building a multilingual website on the topic and developing teaching materials adapted to the respective curricula of the participating countries. Permanent exhibitions and/or memorial sites are also planned in the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Germany to bring the “Train to Freedom” and its memory into the public sphere. With the Hadwig building in St. Gallen and the planned multi-generational Else Ury Campus at Gleis 17-Memorial in Berlin, access to specific locations is already available. In the Czech Republic, the goal is to situate the site of remembrance close to the Terezin Memorial or along the route of the “Train to Freedom”.

Historical Context

From Theresienstadt to St. Gallen

In the final months of World War II, several successful attempts were made to save a few thousand Jews from systematic murder by Nazi Germany. Among these were some 1,200 former inmates of Theresienstadt concentration camp, who departed the camp by train on February 5, 1945. Most of the passengers were elderly people, but there were also children present. The liberated prisoners came from Germany (including Austria), the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia. They reached Switzerland early in the morning of February 7, 1945, via Kreuzlingen and St. Gallen, where they were quartered for several days in the school building Hadwig, which today is part of the campus of the St. Gallen University of Teacher Education (PHSG).

The effects of Swiss refugee policies

In accordance with the harsh Swiss refugee policies at the time, the 1,200 rescued Jews onboard the “Train to Freedom” had to leave the country as quickly as possible. Some returned to their home countries and many emigrated overseas or to the British Mandate territory of Palestine. Only a few of the passengers, most of them of advanced age, were allowed to remain in Switzerland.

A rescue operation based on a private initiative

The liberation of the prisoners began as a private initiative of the Swiss couple Recha and Isaac Sternbuch, who, though based in Europe, worked for the North American “Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States of America and Canada” (UOR) and its relief committee “Vaad Ha-Hatzalah”. In October 1944 they had gone to the former Swiss Federal Councilor Jean-Marie Musy with their rescue plans. Musy had personal contacts in Nazi circles due to his sympathies for fascism, and he had already succeeded in having individuals released. Plans for the rescue of the Jewish prisoners finally took shape when Musy met several times with Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler in Germany to negotiate the liberation. The negotiations also included discussions of a plan to rescue of 1,200 Jews from concentration camps each week. However, this extension of the rescue operation failed.

The first days in St. Gallen

During the first days the liberated prisoners spent in St. Gallen, Swiss Photographer Walter Scheiwiller took a series of photographs for the agency “Photopress Zürich” (today: Keystone).

Team

Mamlock Foundation

Michael Mamlock is one of the initiators of the project, a relative of a passenger of the “Train to Freedom”, and an official project ambassador in Switzerland, Czech Republic and Germany. Michael Mamlock is a self-employed businessman with many years of project development experience. Alongside this he has played a consistently active role in initiating various projects concerning National Socialism and the Holocaust.

St. Gallen University of Teacher Education

Thomas Metzger is Professor of History and Co-Director of the Centre of Democracy Education and Human Rights at the St. Gallen University of Teacher Education. Project-related research interests include: cultural, social and intellectual history of antisemitism, Swiss refugee history 1933-1945, history of fascism.

Johannes Gunzenreiner is Professor of History and Political Education and Co-Director of the Centre of Democracy Education and Human Rights at the St. Gallen University of Teacher Education.

Helen Kaufmann is a graduate secondary school teacher with an additional master’s degree in history didactics and public history education. In 2022 she began doctoral studies at the Center for Democracy Education and Human Rights at the St. Gallen University of Teacher Education.

Freie Universität Berlin

Martin Lücke is Professor at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin as well as Academic Director of the Margherita von Brentano Center for Gender Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. His project-related research interests include: holocaust and historical learning, empirical historical culture research and public history.

Cornelia Chmiel is a research assistant at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin. Her project-related research interests include: historical learning in memorial sites and Holocaust Education.

Charles University Prague

Kateřina Králová is an Associate Professor of contemporary European history, Deputy Director of the Herzl Center of Israel Studies and the Head of the Research Centre for Memory Studies at Charles University, Prague. From 2019 to 2021 she was the Chair of the Department of Russian and Eastern European Studies. In her research she focuses on reconciliation with the Nazi past, post-conflict societies, the Holocaust, the Greek Civil War and historical migration.