A story of resistance and rescue

Greg Lewis, author of Defying Hitler, has just released a new book: The Nazi Ghost Train: Evasion, Betrayal, and Escape During World War II. It is a riveting account of an overlooked true story of resistance and rescue that begs to be made into a feature film. 

On Sept. 2, 1944, with the Allies converging on Brussels, heavily armed SS men corralled about 1,400 prisoners in the middle of the night, loaded them onto dozens of trucks, and headed toward a railway station. There, a train was to transport them to Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany, and almost certain death. 

The prisoners were deemed enemies of the Third Reich: members of the armed and intelligence-gathering Resistance; British-trained spies; women and teens who had helped downed Allied airmen evade capture; and the airmen who had been captured—among them Americans, Canadians, Brits, and Australians. 

En route to the station, several prisoners scribbled pleading messages and dropped them out the window. Many read simply: “Stop the train.” 

And that is exactly what a small group of ordinary people risked their own lives to do. They “pledged that the train would never reach Germany,” Lewis writes. “They had the next few hours to work a miracle.” 

It’s a classic race-against-time tale replete with acts of extraordinary heroism—and one despicable villain not even the most skilled screenwriter could credibly create. This was businessman Prosper Dezitter, a Belgian Nazi collaborator. Lewis describes him as “one of the most heartless double agents of all— a traitor of such audacity and means of disguise that he had come to be seen as an almost mythical bogeyman.” 

Lewis’ meticulous research rescues from obscurity heretofore unsung heroes. Some were farmers and their families who hid airmen and, in some cases, connected them with underground resistance fighters. Some were the train’s operators and railroad workers who diverted and delayed the train, ultimately making good on their pledge to prevent it from reaching the German border. The author etches indelible portraits of these memorable characters.  

Air Force flier Henry Wolcott led a squadron that flew behind enemy lines to drop agents and supplies. They flew out of a base in London that an illusionist had designed to look like a derelict airfield to shield its existence from the enemy. 

Saboteur Ted Klenman, a New York Jew, was a prisoner on the train. Following his release, he searched the city for those who had initially helped the train’s “passengers” before their capture, and for the traitors who betrayed them.  

Florent Biernaux and his wife, Olympe, saved more than 60 airmen before their arrest by the Gestapo. Biernaux was one of possibly thousands betrayed by Dezitter and his mistress, Florentine Giralt. Dezitter had created fake rescue networks to entrap fliers and other resistance fighters. He became a millionaire before his 1948 execution by firing squad. 

Lewis is a masterful storyteller, deftly progressing his multi-layered narrative—the airmen’s stories of how they were shot down, the valiant efforts to protect them, the Nazi sympathizers who betrayed them. These events build inexorably to the climactic rescue of the 1,400, made possible in large part by yet another hero, Louis Verheggen, a train driver with no involvement in the resistance, but who knew he had to act. 

In an author’s note, Lewis details how a visit with former RAF pilot John Evans sparked his interest in the Nazi Ghost Train. Evans shared with Lewis a letter he received six weeks after the end of the war from Biernaux, who had rescued him from his downed plane and hid him in his home. 

“Anyone who sat with an evader like John became intensely aware of the esteem and respect in which they held these civilians who had risked everything for them,” Lewis writes. “They viewed them as the real heroes.” 

Donald Liebenson is a Chicago writer who writes for VanityFair.com, The Washington Post, and other outlets.