A Story of Two Trains

It is fitting, perhaps, that the great Jan Wiener and the great Arnošt Lustig went down to Sheol within a couple months of each other. Both were known and celebrated for their survival of an awful period of history, and were wise enough to realize that their continued examination of that time could profoundly influence successive generations to avoid making the mistakes of their era. It could not have been easy to carry that burden, to examine and reexamine the loss, tragedy, and heartbreak of it. It is like picking up and analyzing a hot coal, trying to determine why it glows. And the first time you encountered it was when it woke you up in your bed.

The fates of Jan Wiener and Arnošt Lustig can be perhaps traced to a story of two very different train rides. When Lustig was young, he was ushered into a cattle car bound for Theresienstadt outside of Prague; from there, he would be transported to a place whose very name sends shivers down spines and stands synonymous as the standard of the darkest of those dark times. Only the strongest could have gotten out there alive; Lustig did, only to be sent to Buchenwald, and it is bitter irony that a place like Buchenwald can be considered a place for survivors. The clicking of the rails underneath during his journeys ticked off seconds, minutes, days, lives, cultures. Jan Wiener's train ride was a little different. Upon realization that the Nazis had come to town, Mr. Wiener applied for an exit visa, vowing never to return to his native Czechoslovakia. Times were hard, and bureaucrats were scarce. A (Czech) functionary read his application and the things he intended to to take to Yugoslavia, which was consider safer.

"I'd like to take four shirts," explained a young Jan.
"You can take two."
"And I've got four pairs of shoes."
"Jew, you'll be lucky to wear out one! You can take the ones on your feet. We'll confiscate the rest anyway. You might as well pack light."

Wiener went to Yugoslavia with a small bag. From there, he started experiencing problems similar to those he was experiencing in Czechoslovakia. This time, however, he was denied an exit visa at all, and it was time to escape. His family told him to run; his father committed suicide. But how does one cross the frontier into Italy (hardly a sanctuary for people in his position)? Jan Wiener took the train too.

In Ljubljana, Wiener snuck into the train yard and identified the trains heading west. A ticket wouldn't really do any good. So he climbed under the carriage, and held on.

For 18 hours.

Under the toilet, where it was most secure, and there were the most handholds.

In Italy, he could go no longer; the dogs missed him at the border. Dogs can't smell you if you no longer smell human. He broke into an Italian's house, stole the man's rifle, and promised to send it back after the war. He did. But only after joining the RAF and raining bombs down on those who drove his father to suicide, scorched most of Europe, and drove boys like Lustig to the gas chambers.

For Lustig, the train was a rendez-vous with fate, death, injustice; for Wiener, a chance at revenge, life, justice. Neither deserved their train ride; both would hear the world's clicking rails, feel the rush of the air of the world's tunnels, and move to the rhythm of the world's wagons for the next 60 years.

Lustig and Wiener both returned to Czechoslovakia after the war. Lustig promptly joined the Communist Party (it gave him the opportunity to become a journalist) and Wiener went to jail (for opposing them). Eventually, both left for the USA, Wiener as a historian (who wrote a book on the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, but whose historical experise was more accurately captured in his lectures to students about the intricacies of fascist resistance and RAF tactics) and Lustig as 68'er (who quickly became a subtle critic of the regime in the 50s). Lustig withdrew his membership, and continued to look at the world as an ironic place where the default reaction was a smile and a joke to even the most horrible circumstance; Wiener was a harder man (your correspondent remembers once in Prague when he balanced himself on a pub's bar with his hands, his feet outstretched like a gymnast, perfectly prone, after three glasses of wine, at the age of 80) and even his handshake was a sign that this is a man who would fight and disagree and persevere.

These two men, so profoundly different in their experiences of that time and so different in their demeanor, help us recognize the density of human nature. Both were appalled, and rightly so, about their formative years. They managed it the way that they could. They were both idealists, and both realists. They both survived, and used all their resources at hand to do so. The denouement of this story has largely been written; they have given their lectures, written their books, fathered their children. We treasure, and we honor their memory. They have run their race; it is for us, in turn, to transfer their wisdom to our posterity. Let us hope we are up to the task. R.I.P.