20TH TRAIN

One day in April 1943, a young doctor and Jewish resistance fighter Youra Livchitz discovered the departure date of the next transport train to Auschwitz. With only one weekend in which to organize a raid, Youra recruited two school friends, Jean Franklemon and Robert Maistriau, to pull off one of the most daring rescues of the entire war. Equipped with only three pairs of pliers, a hurricane lamp covered in red paper, and a single pistol, the men ambushed the train, which was transporting 1,618 Jews to Auschwitz. Marion Schreiber's gripping book about the only Nazi death train in World War II to be ambushed draws on private documents, photographs, archive material, and police reports as well as original research, including interviews with the surviving escapees. Like Schindler's List, The Twentieth Train creates a vivid, moving portrait of heroism under impossible circumstances.