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In 1951, many Czech people longed for freedom from the Soviet Union-driven Communist oppression that had arisen after World War II. Several of the most daring formed a dangerous plan to hijack a train that traveled near West Germany and use it to smash through the border barriers to freedom. This was a true story. Author Marie McSwigan, author of the perennial favorite junior historical novel Snow Treasure, has written a similar middle school-level historical novel based on this true incident, titled All Aboard for Freedom. She takes the point of view of a group of teenage friends, who work with their parents on the plan. The book also spends significant time showing the reader what life was like under the early years of the Marxist tyranny in 1951 in Czechoslovakia. Young people in the US need to know what life is like under Communism so that they are never tempted to allow it here. And we all need to read stories about people willing to risk their lives for freedom in order to inspire us to remember that freedom is worth our sacrifice.
Note to the reader: in 1993, a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union, when freedom came to most of the Warsaw Pact countries, Czechoslovakia split back into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The united country had been formed after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I and was a functioning democracy until the World War II occupation by Nazi Germany and then the domination by the Communists after 1948.