It is 1941. If the Nazis are coming to a small village somewhere in Czechoslovakia, should the Jews calmly await their fate? In Train of Life, a French film (“Train de Vie”) directed by Radu Mihaileanu, the village idiot Shlomo (played by Lionel Abelanski) has an idea: The townspeople should buy a train and ride to Israel via the Soviet Union, though under the pretext that they are on a special train destined for the concentration camps. The village meets under the leadership of the town Rabbi (played by Clément Harari), accepts Shlomo’s suggestion, and makes preparations, including outfitting several German-speaking Jews with German uniforms. Once underway, the train encounters a few problems. Bona fide German soldiers stop the train twice, but the fake Nazi out-argues the real German soldier, and they continue. Communist partisans try to blow up the train, but the conductor takes unexpected detours and avoids disaster until the partisans view those wearing Nazi uniforms participating in the Jewish Sabbath. Gypsies, pretending to be Nazis, stop the train, then realize the charade, and board the train, bound for the Soviet Union. Next, the train reaches the no man’s land between the German and Russian troops. In the final scene the village idiot is in a German concentration camp, trying to tell us that those on the train went in various directions, but we know better. The narrow-gauge rails in the Soviet Union would have stopped the train. The delightful film that ends on a sour note shows how democratic the Jewish townspeople were and how they cooperated fully to get ready for the train trip, though they had different ideological and religious convictions. As a humorous treatment of the plight of Jews under the Nazis, the film is on a par with Jakob the Liar and much more of a tribute to the Jewish people than Life Is Beautiful, whose lead actor turned down the part of Shlomo in Train of Life. Mihaileanu, who was deported from Communist Romania at the age of 22 but returned to make the film, was inspired by Schindler’s List to make Train of Life as an antidote to neo-Nazis who currently deny that the Holocaust ever took place. Some subliminal aspects of the film dominate our consciousness after seeing the film. Mordechai, the fake Nazi (played by Rufus), however, becomes more authoritarian as he plays his role, suggesting that Germans went along with anti-Semitism only because the Nazis organized society to reward that kind of attitude, a widely accepted social psychological theory. Unlike other films on the Holocaust, Train of Life points out the immense tragedy of incineration of five million of these remarkable people; history does not record how many Beethovens, Einsteins, or Shakespeares we have missed as a result. With music reminiscent of Fiddler on the Roof, we experience some of the lost joy until the film brings us back to reality. MH