THE KASTNER AFFAIR

Rudolf Kastner, who thought he was saving Jews from certain death under the Nazis,
was later accused by fellow Jews in Israel of selling his soul to the devil.
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It is not possible to judge people who had to make decisions under such unspeakable
situations as Nazi occupation. That is how we have to begin the difficult subject of
Rudolf Kastner, who was head of the Zionist movement in Hungary and head of the
Judenrat when the Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944.
It began when Kastner was offered a deal by the Germans to exchange 100,000 Jews
for 10,000 trucks. Historians debate if this was a genuine offer. In either event, many
Jews accepted the offer at face value, and one in particular, Joel Brand, served as a
middle man to broker the deal. Try though he did, his pleas fell on deaf ears. The British
were not sympathetic and the Jews were unbelieving.
At the beginning of the negotiations, as a token of good faith, the Nazis allowed one
train with 1,684 notable Hungarian Jews (among them the Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Joel
Teitelbaum, ztl) to escape Nazi-controlled Hungary. Despite Eichmanns promise that
the train would go directly to a neutral country, the Jews were held in Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp in a special section for some months. Eventually, they were given
passage to neutral Switzerland and most survived the war.
Kastner later claimed credit for saving the lives. However, many felt he was a traitor
and selected only family members or those who paid the most money. Worse, they
claimed, he knew that the Nazis intended to exterminate Hungarian Jewry but said
nothing to warn others. Rudolf Vrba, an Auschwitz escapee and co-author of the first
detailed reports on the Auschwitz camp, summed the feelings of many this way,
Kastner paid for those 1,684 lives with his silence.

One day, in 1953, a person named Malchiel Gruenwald saw Kastner on the street in Tel
Aviv and from then on took up a tremendous campaign of vilification against Kastner.
Finally, Kastner had no recourse but to sue Gruenwald for libel. The suit was actually
brought to court by the Israeli government on behalf of Kastner.
The result was the infamous Kastner trial. All the bad blood came out. Most damning of
all were the accusations against the leaders of the Zionist movement, who it was
claimed knew about the plight of Hungarian Jewry but did nothing to save it because in
their political framework they believed that somehow it would be better if the Jews in
Europe perished. The highly acrimonious trial was described in a famous book,Perfidy,
by American playwright and Jewish activist, Ben Hecht. Though banned in Israel it
quickly became an underground bestseller, especially among anti-Zionist Jews.
Although Kastner won the trial he was awarded one shekel, which was a message that
he really lost. The court ruling said that Kastner had sold his soul to the devil by
selecting some Jews to be saved, while failing to alert the rest of the community to its
fate. Shortly thereafter he was assassinated in Israel. His murderer was never found.
Again, we cannot judge him, because the circumstances under which the Nazis put
people were impossible to imagine. But the entire ordeal expresses the depth of feeling
this event evoked, and still evokes.
************
"JEWS FOR SALE": THE RUDOLPH KASZTNER TRANSPORTS
INTRODUCTION BY PETER LAND AND JOYCE FIELD
BACKGROUND
During the years that the Nazis controlled Germany and then large parts of Europe
there were numerous attempts to bribe officials in order to save individuals, including
large numbers of Jews. These efforts, mostly futile, are described in Yehuda
Bauer's Jews for Sale? : Nazi-Jewish negotiations, 1933-1945 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1994).
Small as they were, compared to the total Jewish population held by the Nazis, two
efforts in 1944 were successful. More than 1,900 Jews, mostly Hungarian Jews, were
delivered by train across the Swiss border. The principal negotiator for these two
transports, Rudolph (Rezs) Kasztner, remains a controversial individual, who was later
murdered in Israel. On the night of March 3, 1957, Rudolph (Rezs) Kasztner became
the first Jewish victim of a Jewish political assassination in the State of Israel, murdered
for determining which Hungarian Jews to save from extermination during the
Holocaust. Persons interested in greater details on Kasztner may wish to read Anna
Porter's Kasztner's train: the true story of Rezs Kasztner, unknown hero of the
Holocaust (2007), and examine a website devoted to Kasztner's efforts
at http://www.kasztnermemorial.com . At this site, the following is written:
"He [Kastzner] was murdered for what some would consider 'playing God,'
determining which Hungarian Jews to save from extermination during the
Holocaust. Like Oskar Schindler, Kasztner negotiated with the Nazis to save

lives. Unlike Schindler, however, Kasztner's actions and motives were

questioned by Hungarian Holocaust survivors whose families were not included
in the select group of Jews to be saved."
The memorial site, the purpose of which is to resuscitate Kasztner's reputation, and is
thus sympathetic to him states:
"The prospect of saving Hungarian Jewry through ransom, odious as it appears,
proved an alluring chance at beating the final solution to Kasztner and his
associates.... A number of historians have also credited Kasztner and the Vaadah
with saving the remnants of the Budapest ghetto and Kasztner in particular with
saving the Jews who remained alive in places like Bergen-Belsen immediately at
war's end. Despite the many lives saved and the heroic efforts expended it was
clear at war's end that the grand plan of saving Hungarian Jewry failed. The
record of Kasztner's heroism was buried under the rubble of that failure."
Particularly interesting is the transcript of the interview by Claude Lanzmann with Hansi
Brand, wife of Joel Brand, one of the members of the Relief and Rescue Committeee of
Budapest (the Vaadah, or Vaadat Ezra ve'Hatzalah, generally referred to as the Vaadah,
or the Committee). Hansi describes how the Hungarians thought they would escape the
"Holocaust"; however, when the Germans invaded Hungary in 1944, their illusions were
shattered.
The Committee was established in 1943 to help Jewish refugees, particularly those from
Slovakia and Poland, who had fled to Hungary to escape the Nazis. The leaders of the
Committee were Rudolph (Rezs) Kasztner, a Zionist from Cluj; Joel Brand, also from
Transylvania and, in the words of Saul Friedlander, "something of an adventurer in
politics" ( Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 , p. 621), and Otto Komoly, an
engineer from Budapest. Around March/April 1944 the focus changed to negotiations
with Eichmann for the exchange of Hungarian persons for military trucks.Eichmann told
Brand that 10,000 Jews could be saved for every truck delivered to the Germans. The
final proposal was the exchange of 800,000 Hungarian lives for 10,000 trucks. Brand
was to be allowed to go to Istanbul to raise the funds along with Bandi Grosz, another
Hungarian Jew. On May 19, 1944 Brand met with the Yishuv (Jewish community in
Mandate Palestine) representatives in Istanbul. The intricate details of the meetings of
all parties-in Turkey, Palestine, and Syria -- are described by both Brand and
Friedlander. Hansi and her children remained in Hungary, as hostages one
presumes; but Hansi describes her meeting with Eichmann, which surprises
Lanzmann. Brand's mission ultimately was not successful.
Hansi brought Kasztner to meet Eichmann, which began the negotiations to bring the
Jews from the provinces -- including Cluj -- to Budapest.
"She says that Eichmann told her husband that he should hurry on his mission
to Istanbul, because 12,000 Jews per day were taken to Auschwitz. Lanzmann
questions Hansi Brand about the highly controversial rescue mission, the
Kasztner Train (Lanzmann does not use this term), especially about the
"privileged" nature of the transport and the 388 passengers from Cluj,
Kasztner's home town."

"Lanzmann says that Kasztner is sometimes criticized for not warning the Jews
in Cluj, for example, about what would happen to them in Auschwitz. Hansi
Brand says that is the most evil lie and gives examples of Jewish leaders from
Cluj (she uses the German name of the town, Klausenburg) who knew quite well
what Auschwitz meant. Lanzmann says that some people from Cluj who
survived Auschwitz later complained that they were not told what it meant to be
sent to the camp. Hansi Brand says that many people did not want to know that
the Jews were being exterminated. She finds it impossible that anyone could not
know by 1944 what was happening in German-occupied areas. She talks about
the postwar Kasztner trial, in which Judge Benjamin Halevi believed the
witnesses against Kasztner. They continue to talk about how much information
was or should have been given to the Jews of Cluj."
A timeline of events is available at http://www.kasztnermemorial.com/apr44.html . A
small part is excerpted below.

April 5, 1944: Rezs Kasztner and Joel Brand meet for the first time with
Wisliceny and members of the SS. Wisliceny demanded $2 million dollars to
implement in Hungary what was known as the "Europa Plan" - a suspension of
deportations to concentration camps.

April, 1944: The first installment of 3 million Pengos (Hungarian currency

equalling about $92,000) is delivered by Kasztner to close associates of Adolph
Eichmann.

April 21, 1944: Kasztner delivers the balance of the $200,000 demanded as
downpayment on the "Europa Plan."

An offer is presented to allow the 600 holders of Palestine immigration certificates to

leave Hungary and to permit an additional 100 to leave with them if Kasztner can
provide a per capita payment of 100,000 Pengos (about $3,000 a head).

April 25, 1944: Eichmann enters the negotiation process, inviting Joel Brand to
be with him. Eichmann offers to "sell" one million Jews in exchange for certain
goods to be obtained outside of Hungary.
o

10,000 trucks

200 tons of tea

800 tons of coffee

2 million cases of soap

unspecified amount of tungsten

May 15, 1944: Mass deportations of Hungarian Jews to concentration camps

begin.

May 27, 1944: Kasztner, his wife, Hansi Brand, Sholem Offenbach, treasurer of
the Vaada, and his wife were arrested by the Hungarian police. Hansi Brand was

beaten so savagely that she could not stand for a week. Six days after their
arrest, the group was freed through the intervention of the SS.

June 10, 1944: 388 Jews (out of 18,000 in the Kolozsvar ghetto) were brought
to Budapest on a special train and placed in a "privileged camp" built in the
courtyard of the Wechselmann Institute for the Deaf on Columbus Street.

June 30, 1944: The Kasztner transport (1,685 persons) leaves Budapest.

July 8, 1944: The Kasztner transport arrives in Bergen Belsen.

July 18, 1944: Hungarian gendarmerie units arrest Kasztner and keep him
incommunicado for nine days.

August 21, 1944: First meeting between Saly Mayer, Swiss representative of
the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Switzerland, Kasztner, and Kurt Becher
on a bridge linking Switzerland and Austria.

The first 318 Jews are released from Bergen Belsen and transported to Switzerland.

December 7, 1944: The second group of the Kasztner transport, consisting of

1,368 Jews, arrives in Switzerland.

In the Kasztner Report, Lanzmann feels that Kasztner seems to express some
guilt. There has been the accusation that Kasztner "saved certain people from Cluj (his
own family and Zionists)." Lanzmann asks Brand to explain how people were chosen for
the transport to Bergen-Belsen (the so-called Kasztner Train rescue mission). "She says
that the types of people chosen varied greatly but included the most endangered
refugees, Zionists, Jewish intellectuals, orphans, and rich people, whose wealth helped
pay the $1,000 per-person ransom demanded by the Germans." Lanzmann asks Hansi
why she thinks her husband's mission to Istanbul did not succeed and she replies "that
the English did not want to help the Jews because they did not want to deal with the
problem of Palestine. She says further that the Jews in Palestine were not informed as
to what was happening. She ends the interview by defending her husband against
historians who say that he did not return to Budapest out of fear for himself (Joel Brand
was arrested by the British in Aleppo and eventually ended up in Palestine)."
Leora Bilsky, in "Judging Evil: New Departures in Israeli Legal History," quotes the judge
in the trial of Kasznter:
"The judge derived from this contract the main explanation for Kastner's
subsequent betrayal of his people: The benefit that K. gained from the contract
with the Nazis was the rescue of the "camp of prominent Jews" and the price
that he had to pay for this was a complete surrender of any attempts at real
rescue steps benefiting the "camp of the people." The price the Nazis paid for
this was to waive the extermination of the "camp of prominents." With this
contract to save the prominent Jews, the head of the Aid and Rescue Committee
made a "concession" with the exterminator: in return for the rescue of the
prominent Jews K. agreed to the extermination of the people and abandoned
them to their fate."

SOURCES:

1996.166 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum purchased the Shoah
outtakes from Claude Lanzmann on October 11, 1996. The Claude Lanzmann
Shoah Collection is now jointly owned by the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum and Yad Vashem - The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance
Authority. Joint copyright belongs to the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, Yad Vashem - The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance
Authority, and the State of Israel.

Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination (NY:
Harper Collins, 2007), pp. 620-627.

Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale?: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1994).

Anna Szigethy Porter, Kasztner's Train: The true Story of Rezso Kasztner,
Unknown Hero of the Holocaust (Canada, Douglas & McIntyre Publishing Group,
2007).

www.kasztnermemorial.com .

Leora
Bilsky,
"Judging
Evil:
New
Departures
in
Israeli
History," http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/19.1/bilsky.html .

Legal

DATABASE
Separate lists exist for each of the two transports. The transport in August 1944 (List I)
includes approximately 300 Jews, and the transport in December 1944 (List II) includes
approximately 1,600 Jews. Both lists are combined in this database but identified by list
number.
A list of the persons on the larger transport has long been available
on http://www.kasztnermemorial.com, but the names of the persons on the smaller
transport have been more difficult to find. Both lists were recently located in a World
Jewish Congress collection held at the United States Holocaust Museum archives, (RG
39.013M reel 10). The information on the December transport is given as it appears on
the above cited website. The August transport list required considerable editing and
complete dates of birth were added. If the information on the World Jewish Congress list
differed significantly from Bergen Belsen records, both were included. This database
includes a total of 1,939 individuals from both lists:
List I: 318 Records
List II: 1,621 Records
The fields for this database are as follows:

Source (List I or List II)

Surname

Maiden Name

Given Name

Date of Birth

Place of Birth

Occupation

Nationality

Comments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The information contained in this database was indexed from the files of the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM File RG 39.013M reel 10). The Hansi Brand
interview is at Story RG-60.5002, Tape 3109-3111. The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum purchased the Shoah outtakes from Claude Lanzmann on October
11, 1996. The Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection is now jointly owned by the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem - The Holocaust Martyrs' and
Heroes' Remembrance Authority. Joint copyright belongs to the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem - The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance
Authority, and the State of Israel.
In addition, thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise
to make this database accessible. Special thanks to Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias for
their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy. Particular thanks to the Research
Division headed by Joyce Field and to Nolan Altman, coordinator of Holocaust files.
NOLAN ALTMAN - AUGUST 2008
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