The Train to Warsaw by Gwen Edelman

Gwen Edelman’s 2014 novel The Train to Warsaw is a compelling story about a couple who physically escaped the horrors of the Holocaust but still carry the trauma of being imprisoned in the Jewish Ghetto. The novel is an elegy to Warsaw, their once beloved city. A city whose citizens inexplicably betrayed their Jewish neighbors. 

Jascha and Lilka are returning to Warsaw forty years after the end of WWII. It is December, the dead of winter. Jascha has been invited to speak about his acclaimed wartime novel, The Way Down. He mocks the invitation, “First, they want me dead. Now I’m a native son, an esteemed Polish writer.” His lover, Lilka, pleads with him to accept the invitation. She wants to return to the beloved Warsaw of her childhood. As Jascha predicted, they arrive in a Warsaw that no longer resembles the pre-War city from which they escaped. The War ravaged the town, and the Communists are now in charge.

The novel takes place over three days. When they arrive in Warsaw, they are on edge. They flinch when they see a dog. They recoil when they see the police. They wince when people ask them their background. They can’t forget the savagery perpetrated against Jews after Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939. While in the ghetto, Jascha and Lilka had begun a romance. In the chaos, they each escaped separately by taking on non-Jewish identities. Seven years after the War, they reunite by chance in London. And though they find each other, they are hardened, distant and damaged. Why wouldn’t they be? They lost so much and feel guilty for surviving. 

During their brief stay in Warsaw, they share previously unshared stories about their lives before the War and the gruesome tales of their parents’ deaths. At the literary event when Jascha begins reading from his novel, something surprising occurs. It seems the Poles do not want to hear about their disloyalty to their Jewish neighbors.

Gwen Edelman’s sparse and haunting prose powers this novel. Through the use of compelling dialogue, she captures the complicated nuances of memory, betrayal and the complexity of moving forward after trauma. Her gripping novel succinctly depicts the confusion, rage and existential pain that Jascha and Lilka felt upon their return to Warsaw. And due to Edelman’s impressive skills, we feel that anguish as well.