Author's Note
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Author’s Note:
Europe in July 1944, and the context of The Berne Train
The dispossessed and the frightened flee for their lives, but are stopped by walls of wire, earth, stone and men with guns. Jews are savaged as scapegoats, corralled and slaughtered. Many of the righteous have been killed or driven to silence by fear. Lies are promoted as truth. Truth twisted and used to control millions. Tens of millions are dead, and more tens of millions will be.
On the battlefield, the Nazi war machine is reeling. In France, Allied armies are poised to break out of Normandy. On the Italian Peninsula, other Allied armies have passed Rome and are moving north. In the east, the Russians are advancing across a massive front. Germany is going to be beaten. Only the total cost in men, Jews and other innocents remains to be counted.
For reasons more practical than noble, some senior German military men and diplomats plan to assassinate Hitler and attempt to save what can be saved of Germany. The July 1944 plot to kill Hitler reaches into Paris where, upon hearing of the Führer’s death, the senior German officer is to round up the SS and Gestapo in France to ensure that these Hitler loyalists cannot mount a counter-revolt. The American OSS (precursor to the CIA) has its European headquarters in Berne, Switzerland, and Allen Dulles leads the effort to undermine the Third Reich. The Germans and their French allies are shipping Jews to the east and their death. Young Jewish men and women, mostly French, are running convoys of Jews, mostly children, from France into Switzerland at immense risk. And, in Paris at the Jeu de Paume in the Tuilleries, the Germans have collected stolen art and books for shipment to Germany while a French woman working there is clandestinely cataloging what is stolen in the hope it can be recovered upon a German defeat.
Europe and the world missed or ignored the warnings that came before the horror of World War II and the Holocaust. We forget at our risk. We ignore the descent toward absolutes at our risk. W.B. Yeats was one of many who warned Europe after World War I: “the centre cannot hold…the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” The Berne Train is a story of what happens when the warnings are missed or ignored.
