A journey spent on the chassis of a train

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Jan Wiener, a Czech-German Jew, had escaped in April 1941 to Trieste in Italy. He intended to travel to occupied France, to Marseille, and from there he wanted to get to England, via North Africa, and join the Czechoslovak military units. In Trieste, Slovenian owners of a local dairy shop took care of Jan Wiener and thanks to them he also managed to reach a group of Montenegrins who had uncovered the secrets of illegal travel to him. Wiener recalls: “They advised me to bind myself to a steel plate on the chassis of a train. At the time steam locomotives were being used. I couldn't be in the front of the train, because the steam would blind me there. So I bound myself to a wagon in the middle of the train, but I was directly underneath a toilet, so during the ride, all the sewage was being poured on my head. It was important to keep my head forward, in the same direction as the train was going, otherwise I would be swept away and I’d end up as a hamburger.” Jan Wiener was only a few kilometers away from the French border, when the Italian police in Genoa had discovered and arrested him.

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Jan Wiener

Jan Wiener, a retired colonel, was born on 26.May 1920 in Hamburg. He grew up in a Czech-German Jewish family in Prague, at home they used to speak German. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia he escaped to Yugoslavia (1940), after it was attacked he wanted to cross Italy to get to Marseille, where certain Czechs lived who helped their countrymen to emigrate to north Africa. In Italy he was captured, though, he escaped two times and his second escape was successful. He crossed the front in southern Italy and got to the Allies. He joined the air force and remained there for the rest of the war, in the RAF´s 311. Czechoslovakian bombing squadron. After the war he returned to Czechoslovakia, spent five years in a communistic prison, then he emigrated to USA. In the last period of his life he lived both in the USA and the Czech Republic, taught history at several universities. In 2001 he was awarded the medal "Za zásluhy" 1. stupně (Distinguished Service Medal of the First Grade). He died on November 24th 2010 in Prague.

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Trieste

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The train station was established in the year 1857. During the era of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the railway leading to Trieste provided a significant and frequently used transport connection between the commercial harbor and the central part of the country. Nowadays the Trieste Centrale train station lies on a blind branch of the main railway which runs between Italy and the states of former Yugoslavia. During the Second World War a number of national minorities lived in Trieste, mainly Slovenians and Montenegrins, who fought against the fascist regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. The situation of the Jewish community in Italy was not as tragic as the situation of Jews in Nazi Germany.

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A journey spent on the chassis of a train

Jan Wiener