August 30, 2025

In his novel “Night,” Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel recalls a horrifying memory: “Around eleven o'clock, the train began to move again. We pressed against the windows. The convoy was rolling slowly. A quarter of an hour later, it began to slow down even more. Through the windows, we saw barbed wire; we understood that this was the camp.”

In the dark shadow of the Holocaust, trains tell many different stories. For some, it was a ticket to freedom. For others, it was a journey from life to death. 

When Elie Wiesel boarded a train destined for Poland, he didn’t understand what awaited him. People boarded trains none the wiser. They had already survived the ghettos. What could possibly be worse? Who could have imagined the horrors at the end of the journey?

In Nazi Germany, trains were weaponized to transport Jewish people out of the country and to their deaths. But they were also a way out. Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer who escaped the Holocaust, recounted taking the train across the United States on his way to safety. He later coined the term genocide.

Today, authoritarian governments use trains to...