A family story of forbidden love in 1930s Finland and a survival story of a Latvian Jew, escaping the Nazis and ending up a German citizen.
Author: René Nyberg
Finnish original: Viimeinen juna Moskovaan
Publisher: Siltala Publishing, 2015
Genre: nonfiction
Number of pages: 250 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, English synopsis
Rights sold: Estonia, Argo; Germany, dtv; Latvia, Jumava; Russia, Corpus Books; Swedish, Förlaget M
When René Nyberg, now Finland’s former ambassador to Berlin and Moscow, was a teenager, he learned a well-kept family secret. His mother Fanny was a Jew, shunned and ostracized by her family and the Jewish community for marrying a Christian man in 1937.
Later he learned also the story of Fanny’s cousin Mascha from Riga, Latvia, who managed barely to escape the advancing Germans in June 1941 with her husband by taking the last train to Moscow. They ended up in Kazakhstan and survived, while all their relatives in Riga were murdered.
Last Train to Moscow takes the reader to pre- and post-war settings in the Baltic states and Finland but also to Belarus, Soviet Union, Germany and Israel. It tells the story of a woman who has to give up her religion, family and friends for love, and of another who survives the war and ends up dying as a German citizen. The stories of them expand into a European panorama of Jewish fates.
“[…] a highly sophisticated, momentous read.”
– Former prime minister Paavo Lipponen in Suomen Kuvalehti magazine
“The strong-minded, principled and intelligent women in Nyberg’s family leave a special impression.”
– Helsingin Sanomat newspaper
“A remarkable and heardt-rending book.”
– Author and director Jörn Donner in Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper
Also available:
Patriarchs and Oligarchs (2019)
About the author:
René Nyberg