Synopsis:
I wipe the tears streaming down my darling son’s face, my heart shattering into a million pieces. “I promise I will find you, my love. No matter what . . .”
Berlin, 1938 Ever since the Nazis came to power, violence has spread through the city Esther Spielmann once called home. Each night she prays her family will be spared, but when her husband and father are murdered during Kristallnacht, she has no choice but to send her beloved son, Sascha, away to safety.
His tear-stained face as she insists that he board the departing train breaks Esther’s heart. But she knows letting him go is her only choice. Tormented, she watches his thin legs trembling in the cold as he is ushered with the other crying children toward Kindertransport. As the train pulls out of the station in a cloud of smoke, she vows that this will not be the last time she sees her beloved son.
Has Esther made a promise she can’t possibly keep?
When Esther is taken to a concentration camp, her world feels devoid of hope. But each day she thinks of the promise she made Sascha, the hope of finding him burning like a flame in her chest. The war has taken everything from Esther, but she is determined it will not take her child.
In the ashes of war, can Esther make her way back to her son? And if, after so long apart, they do meet again, will either of them be prepared for what they find?
The Train That Took You Away is the story of a family torn apart by war . . . and the hope that can sustain us through the darkest times.
Review:
Most of author Catherine Hokin’s fascination with history began when she was a child, and she earned a degree in the subject at Manchester University. She says she “followed a rather meandering career, including marketing and teaching and politics . . . to get where I have always wanted to be, which is writing historical fiction.”
Hokin frequently finds inspiration for her books while performing research. She makes note of information she discovers, “from specific historic events to personal anecdotes – which aren’t relevant to the story at hand but interest me,” and returns to it later.
The genesis for her eleventh novel, The Train That Took You Away, was a photograph she saw in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin of the damage the building sustained during World War II. She discussed with the museum’s curator how the gallery had been restored, as well as the fate of many of its pictures during the reign of the Nazi regime. She was reminded of an exhibition she visited previously of art that was banned by the Third Reich. When she returned to the Neue Nationalgalerie to view it again, she was intrigued by a 1930s painting of a young woman. “On the opposite wall was another of a boy who could have been her son. That likeness and the physical separation between them eventually looped back to the Kindertransport notes and a story began to brew,” Hokin recalls. She reviewed the photos she took while touring the Plaszów concentration camp. When she read an article detailing how art that was stolen by the Nazi is still, so many years later, being recovered, The Train That Took You Away began to fully take shape.
Hokin describes The Train That Took You Away as the story of “a lost child, a hidden painting, and two women from very different worlds trying to put their broken hearts back together again.” The story opens in Berlin in 1936. Esther Spielmann, thirty-four years old, has worked hard and established her reputation as one of the city’s best gallerists, recognized as adept at finding new talent and providing collectors pieces that perfectly match their tastes. Esther’s family founded the Mandelbaum bank and her husband, Caspar, will one day manage it. Esther’s father, Albert, believes that Hitler simply made “empty promises” to garner votes, but it remains unclear to what extent the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 will impact the daily lives of Jewish citizens. So, as Esther is sitting with her energetic six-year-old son, Sascha, for a portrait, her offer to exhibit the work of the Jewish artist — who snaps photos of the two from which he will create the painting — at her gallery is met with consternation and skepticism. He inquires if she is concerned about the gallery’s future status, given the number of Jewish businesses that have already been shuttered, not to mention the Nazi “crackdown on modern art.” Thus far, Esther and her family have not sustained significant changes to their lifestyle since the Nazis’ rise to power, and her husband and father naively believe that, given their successful businesses and social standing, Jews in their “circle” are not under threat. They are about to discover how wrong they are.
Following an interaction with a Schutzstaffel (Hitler’s personal troops) officer at a restaurant, they are denied admission into the stadium to watch an Olympic football match. Seeing her father humiliated and her disappointed son sobbing, Esther demands to know precisely why. The officer informs her a call was received from SS headquarters instructing that they be barred from attending the event because the Fuhrer will be there and “you’re not loyal Germans fit be in his presence; you’re Jews. And they don’t want the stadium polluted.”
Amalie Eden’s parents have urged her to return to safety in London, but the headstrong twenty-six-year-old has refused. She loves her work at Berlin’s National Gallery where she is helping set up a conservation department. After completing her studies, she returned to the city in which she loved to spend summers with her maternal grandparents. A stunning new painting is being hung that depicts a group of women in a park on a sunny day. The way he has captured the light leaves Amalie “spellbound.” The artist, Laurenz Kleber, and his wife, Rebecca, are unnerved and reluctant to speak in response to Amalie’s clumsy but well-intentioned inquiry about if and how the new laws and restrictions imposed upon Jews are changing their lives. Amalie’s earnest impulsiveness continues to compel her toward danger. She dares to voice her disapproval when artwork created by Jews is removed from galleries and only Nazi-approved paintings are permitted to be displayed and becomes determined to ensure that precious works of art – including Laurenz’s beautiful painting — are not destroyed or sold by the Nazis into private collections where they will never be seen in public again. By the time she next encounters Laurenz, his studio has been raided, and he has been forbidden from painting or exhibiting his work.
Employing alternating narratives, Hokin details how the two women are impacted as Hitler’s reign of terror expands and intensifies. As Esther desperately – and futilely – tries to obtain visas so her whole family can escape, they are stripped of their businesses and most other assets. On a cold night in November 1938, Albert and Caspar go out for dinner with clients of the bank but never return home. Nazi troops destroy Jewish-owned stores and synagogues, and the raid becomes known as Kristallnacht (night of broken glass for the shards of glass left behind). Esther is later told that her father and husband died of “heart complications.” Amalie observes a synagogue burning while firefighters watch and cheer as books and prayer shawls are tossed into the flames. Her companions warn, “It’s not our place” to intervene, but Amalie’s impetuous nature and revulsion propel her to confront the soldiers. She soon finds herself in a jail cell and is deported the next day.
In December 1938, Esther makes the heart-wrenching decision to send Sascha to London to live with a family that has agreed to take in Jewish refugee children. He does not have a specific sponsor, and Esther has no idea when she will see her eight-year-old child again, but it is clear that Jews are not safe in Germany. Dispatching Sascha to England is the best way she knows to protect him.
Hokin’s tale spans the next eight years of her characters’ lives. Sascha is initially placed with a family who lost a son about his age to diphtheria and knows he is meant to serve as a replacement. His name is changed to Alex as part of his foster family’s efforts to help him become a true English boy and not miss his home or mother. But Sascha carries with him the photo that the painter snapped of him and his mother on what he now remembers as his family’s last happy day. And although it helps him remember Esther, it also causes him great pain and turmoil because, as he recalls that day, it was his behavior in the restaurant that attracted the attention of the SS officer. And thereafter, their lives began to unravel. Was he sent away as punichsment? Did his mother abandon him? He questions go unanswered.
Esther is evicted from the family home and, at first, put to work in a card factory as an illustrator. By September 1940, German bombs are bombarding London, where Amalie was lucky enough to get back her job in a research laboratory and has become an expert in art storage techniques. When she left Germany, she smuggled out key information about the Nazis’ activities pertaining to precious works of art and she is intent on eventually being part of the recovery efforts of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives team, commonly known as the Monuments Men.
Each of the narratives is an engrossing tale in its own right. For Esther, survival becomes her only goal when her circumstances grow progressively more dire as the world goes to war and the Nazis inflict her and so many others to previously unimaginable suffering. Sascha’s memories of his mother fade and the trauma of his separation from her deeply affects him as he matures, and his self-concept is transformed. More and more with the passage of time, he thinks of himself as English, not German. Amalie throws herself into her work to find peace, but her efforts put her life in jeopardy.
When the war ends, the survivors begin the herculean task of establishing new lives for themselves. Berlin is decimated, but the National Gallery still stands, and many works of art remain intact. In what is arguably the most riveting part of the book, Hokin’s characters summon their remaining strength, courage, and resolve. For Amelie that means not just the restoration of the National Gallery and its treasures, but also the pursuit of justice. For Esther, whose own gallery has been reduced to a pile of bricks, there is nothing more urgent than finding the son with whom she lost contact so long ago. Records were destroyed, communication lines obliterated, and rebuilding is a slow process. Still, Esther is undaunted, spurred on by her devotion to her only child.
But where is Alex? Did he survive the war, given that he was perhaps in London during the Blitz? Hokin’s clever plot developments are credible and her illustration of her characters’ emotional turmoil believable. Their fears are as grounded in all that they have endured as is their resilience. And Hokin does not evade depicting their complicated feelings and the psychological impact the war has had upon all of them. Rather, she relates their story in an uncompromising and highly effective manner that is both heart-breakingly authentic and resonant.
Hokin says “nothing fascinates me more than a strong female protagonist and a quest. Hopefully, those are what you will encounter when you pick up my books.” Indeed, Esther and Amelie are strong, multi-layered, and fully developed characters – as is Sascha – and The Train That Took You Away is another compassionately crafted, educational, and deeply moving work of fiction about a period in history that must never be forgotten . . . or repeated.
Also by Catherine Hokin:
