Video: Newly found video footage depicts US soldiers freeing Jews from a train

If the train did not arrive in Theresienstadt, the 2,500 passengers—of whom a third were children—were supposed to be drowned in the river by the Nazis.

Instead, American forces from the 30th Division discovered the train abandoned on April 7, 1945, and freed the people confined inside the claustrophobic boxcars.

The “Miracle at Farsleben,” so named for the village where the train halted, was chronicled in a three-and-a-half-minute film clip that American history instructor Matthew Rozell just uncovered.

Photos from the rescue have long been accessible.

The first scene in the video depicts the recently liberated Jews relaxing, eating, and sleeping outside the train.

As Cmdr. George Gross noted, “everyone looked like a skeleton, so starved, their faces sick.” Many of them are severely underweight.

The movie cuts to a scene of troops being surrounded and dragged around by hungry people at the 1:15 mark while they give them smoke and chocolate. As smoke begins to rise in the distance, the final eerie minute captures the surrounding landscape.

Rozell started sharing his discovery with the survivors’ families as soon as he made it. Jacob Barzilai, 90, who was aboard the train and recognized himself, said, “I was at a loss for words” and “It was very emotional to see the footage.

Miriam Mueller, who was 4 years old when she was saved, is now in her early 80s and remarked of the movie, “I had a hard time breathing afterward.

When he was five years old and in his 80s, Bina Schwartz thought back on the discovery and said, “It teaches me that there are always good people in the middle of the road.”