Danny Cohen examines the idea of secrets and lies in his book Train., showing how the difference between them is minute. This deeper understanding of these secrets proves that in life, one must decide whether the secrets and lies they keep are good or bad. The biggest secrets in Train. are that all of the characters are hiding something from the Nazis because of their religions, homosexuality, disabilities, or simply being an enemy of the Regime. The fact that all secrets are bad, and you should always tell the truth can be the most common conceptualization of the theme. Secrets can be a bad thing. However, Danny Cohen suggests that secrets can also be a good thing. Secrets can change who a person can be and how they act. An example of a good secret is in chapter 2 of Train., When Ruth finds Alex’s letter to his parents: “Dear Mama, Dear Papa, I have some exciting news and opportunity … my only regret is that I couldn’t say goodbye to you in person.” When Ruti realizes that she will never see her brother again when Alex writes, “I couldn’t say goodbye to you in person.” This crushes her, but at the same time, it was necessary because she would have been even more crushed if he said bye to her in person. The secret that Marko keeps from Tsura of Marko being gay exemplifies a bad secret: “Marko likes men … the truth was jarring.” the word Tsura uses, “jarring”, in this quote brings up questions about Tsura’s way of thinking. Although she is an anti-Nazi, she only cares about the Romani. Instead of seeing Marko as her brother and another person hiding from the Regime, she gets mad at him for not being able to continue their family.

     As Danny explains, Marko and Kizzy are cousins and both hiding from the regime. Under pressure, they both tell lies. Kizzy tells a good one and Marko tells a bad one. In chapter 2, Go, in Kizzy’s section, when she goes to the hospital to drop off Professor Duerr, she tells the guards a lie to convince them that she does not have Romani origins. “‘Girl, what’s your name?’ … Kizzy almost smiled when she told them her-well practiced lie. ‘Franziska Scholz.’”. Her almost smiling shows that she was either really getting into her character or she thought that tricking the soldiers was funny. One option shows her almost being so scared she felt the need to overdo the fear with the acting, or she was so at ease that she almost laughed. Secondly, when Tsura realizes that Kizzy cannot be found, Marko doesn’t say that he sent her to the hospital instead of doing it himself which was what he was supposed to do. Marko told a bad lie because Marko knows what happened to Kizzy and doesn’t tell Tsura, even though telling her would be the safer option. the bad lie that Marko tells makes him extremely depressed at the end of the book because his boyfriend and his cousin have both been sent off to Nazi camps, and Marko being partly responsible for both of those cases. Shown in the chapter titled “The Train” Marko encounters the Nazi guard for a second time and accidentally reveals Alexander and himself to the officer, thus jeopardizing both of them.