MAKING THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME

THE BANALITY OF EVIL

OLIVER THOMSON

By the time I retired from the General Roca Railway Company in 1960 I had achieved what other people had thought impossible, a reliable train service from Buenos Aires to Patagonia that took less than 12 hours 54 minutes This despite ten stops, and never running at a loss. My second wife Carlotta was very pleased with my achievement and even President Peron expressed his approval. But I had always been interested in railways and as a child had a toy train-set which my father, who like me was a career railway man, had given me.

But even now people seem to be amazed at how well I managed the Patagonia train service, so, after a long silence on the matter, I am going to explain how I learned to do it so efficiently. I started my career as an apprentice with the Deutsche Reichsbahn, specialising in track maintenance and rapidly moved up the ranks. Partly for health reasons and partly because my experience was so valuable, I was rejected for military service and in 1941 was assigned to the special train division of the Transport Ministry. This was to assist with the resettlement programme to the east and it involved very complicated logistics, thus very useful experience for my later career. For this I was quite well paid and settled down very happily with my first wife, Helga, We bought a smart flat in Berlin.

One of the problems was that our trains were not allowed to move if the track was required for troop movements or other military personnel. We also had to work with a minimal staff despite the huge size of the operation. The SS actually produced a useful manual which dictated that each engine should pull fifty trucks, each holding fifty people, With the boxcars locked we only needed a couple of guards and two men to drive the locomotive. Thus we managed regular loads of 2,500 people, but occasionally managed even to double that number.

I was particularly responsible for two main services, both of them important. The first was from Berlin to Oswiecim near Krakow in Poland. This also involved liaising with the Baltic ports, as Berlin became a collection point for resettlement people coming from Norway and Denmark. The second man route was from Narva coming through Estonia and Lithuania to Krakow junction and then Oswiecim.

This was a very demanding position for me and I was frequently working all night coping with the complexities. Sometimes my trains had to be shunted into goods yards as the military expresses all had priority use of the tracks. I was perpetually on the phone checking progress of each train for often there were delays in loading, which meant I had to reschedule. This was extremely difficult. There were times when we were desperately short of boxcars and we took over cattle trucks or antiquated Third Class coaches. There was also the problem of running empty trains back from Poland to the collection points. All this I managed successfully for three years We had a few minor accidents with dehydration problems and cold, but generally we delivered all our resettlement passengers safely and my two routes alone must have shifted well over a million people.

|Meanwhile Hilda had our first son, who I felt sure would grow up to have a career in the railways, and we were very happy.

Occasionally I had to visit my main locations and it was at Krakow in January 1945 that I was unfortunately cut off by the sudden advance of the Russian army. Luckily I ran into a couple of SS men who had the same problem, and they had already concocted a plan to head south through Austria to Italy. They had plenty of money and I had some too, so they let me join them. It was a long hard journey in the depths of winter, but we eventually made it to Trieste. After that it was a succession of slow-moving coastal steamers till we at last found one to take us across the South Atlantic.

The rest of my story you already know. I was welcomed by Ferrocarriles Argentinos who appreciated my experience and I worked happily for them for fifteen years. I never found out what happened to Helga, but with Carlotta I have two delightful teenage daughters.