Night Trains [Mass Market Paperback]

Barbara Wood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 12, 1980

From master storytellers Barbara Wood and Gareth Wootton comes the unforgettable account of how an entire town in Poland resists the devastating blow of the occupying Nazi forces, using wit, courage, and determination as its only weapons.

Occupied by the Germans, the strategically located town of Sofia, Poland, stands on the brink of annihilation in 1941. As every arrest and execution brings total obliteration closer to reality, two medical doctors devise an ingenious plan—to stage a typhus epidemic that will force the Nazis to evacuate.

The locals and their enemy swiftly become enmeshed in what soon becomes the most daring act of resistance in World War II.

Jan Szukalski—A brilliant doctor, he masterminds the hoax with his partner, Maria Duszynska, whose work binds them together more strongly than love itself.

Maximillian Hartung—A German officer, he is ruthless in his lust for personal power and determined to win Hitler’s personal attention by breaking the resistance in Sofia.

David Ryz—A young Jewish leader of a zealous band of partisans, he helps incite the town to violence and unwittingly puts the medical hoax in jeopardy.

Gripping and powerful, Night Trains brilliantly illuminates the classic conflict between active and passive resistance in one town’s fight for survival.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Barbara Wood is the author of twenty-three acclaimed novels, including Green City in the Sun, The Dreaming, Virgins of Paradise, and The Blessing Stone. She lives in California.

Gareth Wootton holds a clinical teaching position in the Division of Plastic Surgery at UCLA and has a private practice in plastic surgery in Santa Monica. Wootton and his wife and two sons make their home in Santa Monica, California.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1St Edition edition (July 12, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345288068
• ISBN-13: 978-0345288066
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,782,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valiant Heroes in Deadly Times, March 27, 2002

By 

S. Brand "sandra807" (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Night Trains (Mass Market Paperback)

I have loved every book I have read by Barbara Wood, which now includes Night Trains. Each book has been completely different in plot, although each one so far has some element of medicine involved.

Night Trains is based on actual events that occurred in Poland during WWII. In this fictionalized version, Polish doctors Jan Szukalski and Maria Duszynska perpetrate a grand-scale hoax to protect the Polish town of Sofia from the Nazis. Their resistance does not include any killing; rather,they inject all who complain of any illness with a vaccine that gives the appearance of a positive typhus reading. This leads to the Nazis' quarantine of the town and the surrounding region, which protects the citizens from further harassment, executions, and deportations to death camps.

Meanwhile, a group of Jewish and Polish resistance fighters are devising a plan to ambush a German train to retrieve the ammunitions it carries, and to rescue a train's human freight headed for death camps in order to obtain more fighters for their cause. These heroes put themselves in great danger, and despite their efforts, do not reap the success that the doctors do with their hoax.

The book is continually suspenseful, with public executions, descriptions of tortures, death camp atrocities, and Nazis always on the watch for suspicious behavior.

I searched the internet to find the historical basis for this book and discovered that a documentary is currently being filmed about it, called "A Private War"; the true hero's name is Dr. Lazowski. Night Trains has many details obviously similar to true events. For those interested, related web sites are:

http://www.stjoenj.net/lazowski/lazowski.html
http://www.claytonentertainment.com/privatewar.htm

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing true WW II story, June 28, 2010

By 

shenandoah - See all my reviews

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This review is from: NIGHT TRAINS (Kindle Edition)

This is based on a true story of ordinary people placed in an extraordinary circumstance. These people not only escaped annihilation, but saved an entire town. It's an incridible story that only actual life could produce.

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good read!, May 6, 2010

By 

mzglorybe (Southern CA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: NIGHT TRAINS (Kindle Edition)

We selected this for a book club discussion. There have been a lot of novels written about the Holocaust and the various countries involved fighting the Nazi's but this one differed insofar as the plot plan. Occupied Poland, a little town called Sofia has two doctors working on effecting a "fake" epidemic of typhus, as it is well known that the Nazi's are very fearful of it. One of them has come up with a test for a "false positive" and they put this epidemic in place to keep the Nazi's out of their community. It also has a little bit or romance and enough historical detail to keep us turning those pages.

It is suspenseful and well-written. One of Ms. Wood's older books but a good one for either gender. Moves along at a good and gripping pace and does not give us an overkill on the graphics relating to the extermination of the people by the Nazi army. We liked it.