The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton

When the novel The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton came across my desk I wondered if I wanted to read yet another book about the Second World War and the fate of those who had to flee the Nazi invasion of Austria. I know that it is still very important that there continue to be books written about this time and that people continue to read them. And, as it turns out, The Last Train to London is not only informative and engaging but a well written and well plotted novel, quite apart from its important story.

We begin in 1936 and quickly move on to what is happening in Vienna in 1938.

I was immediately struck at how very interesting it was to read this novel at this time, and be unable not to think about the United States in the present time. I read about the “lying press” as Hitler called the Austrian papers. One man asking another, “How has Hitler convinced all of Germany that his lies are the truth and the truth is a lie?”

We also read of immigration quotas – also all too contemporary a topic. The United States proposed a global meeting, about refugees fleeing Germany and Austria, to take place in the spring of 1938. Germany at this time was allowing Jews to leave, without their assets, but in the United States the State Department refused to allow even a limited number of these people to obtain visas.

We think of the Second World War as taking place between 1939 and 1945, when Britain and Canada were involved, but for those in Austria, and other European countries, people were already living with Nazi occupation, of fear of it, long before 1939.

The novel moves seamlessly between the life of Geertruida “Truss” Wijsmuller, and her husband Joop, in the Netherlands, and the family of Stephan Neuman in Vienna. Truss is assisting in the immigration of orphaned children from Germany to the Netherlands, and will eventually become instrumental in getting children out of both Austria and Germany, to the Netherlands and on to England.

Stephan Neuman is a teenager, his mother dying of cancer, his father the owner of a famous chocolate manufacturing business in Vienna. There is a much younger brother, Walter. Stephan has ambitions to become a playwright, and as the son of an affluent family he was likely to succeed, if not for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi invasion. The Neuman family may be wealthy and assimilated – but they are Jewish. 

Zofie-Helene is Stephan’s friend. She is a mathematics prodigy and has few friends, but she and Stephan with their different obsessions understand what it is like to be different. Together they attempt o find their way out of danger in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges.

The Last Train to London is another really good book about the Second World War, and the story of a woman who literally made the difference between life and death for many children, when so few in the world really cared if they lived or died. We must never forget.