Rudolf Kastner

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Rudolf Rezső Israel Kastner
Born	1906 Kolozsvár, Hungary
Died	March 3, 1957 Tel Aviv, Israel

Rudolf Rezső Israel Kastner (or Kasztner) (1906 – March 12, 1957) was the de facto head of a small Jewish organization in Budapest known as the Va'adat Ezrah Vehatzalah (Vaada), or Aid and Rescue Committee, during the Nazi occupation of Hungary in World War II.

Kastner became one of the conduits between the Nazis and the Hungarian Jewish community, who between May and July 1944 were deported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz at the rate of 12,000 people a day. On behalf of the Vaada, Kastner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS officer, to allow almost 1,700 Hungarian Jews to leave for Switzerland — in exchange for money, gold, and diamonds — on what became known as the Kastner train. Israeli historian Yechiam Weitz writes that, in so doing, "[w]ith his own two hands Kasztner saved more Jews than any Jew before him or since."^[1]

Kastner moved to Israel after the war, becoming a spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1952.^[2] In 1953, he was accused in a little-read pamphlet self-published by Malchiel Gruenwald, an amateur writer and stamp collector, of having been a Nazi collaborator, because of the nature and extent of his relationship with Eichmann, and with Kurt Becher, another SS officer. The Israeli government sued Gruenwald for libel on Kastner's behalf, resulting in a trial that lasted two years, and a ruling in 1955 that Kastner had indeed, in the words of the judge, "sold his soul to the devil."^[3] The judge ruled that, by saving the Jews on the Kastner train, while failing to warn others that the "resettlement" promised by the Nazis was in fact deportation to Auschwitz, Kastner had sacrificed the mass of Jewry for a chosen few. The Kastner train was simply a "gift" from the Nazis, the judge said, aimed at obtaining the cooperation of the privileged so as not to panic the masses.^[4] Accepting that gift was "collaboration in the fullest sense of the word," he said.^[3]

After the trial, Kastner resigned his government position and became a virtual recluse, telling reporters he was living with a loneliness "blacker than night, darker than hell."^[3] His wife fell into a depression that left her unable to get out of bed, while his daughter's schoolmates threw stones at her in the street.^[5] The Supreme Court of Israel overturned most of the judgment in January 1958, stating that the lower court had "erred seriously," but not before Kastner had been assassinated.^[6] He was shot on March 3, 1957, by Zeev Eckstein, a Holocaust survivor, and died of his injuries nine days later.^[7]

Contents 1 Early life 1.1 Childhood 1.2 Education 1.3 Early career 2 The rise of Nazism 3 Move to Budapest 4 Negotiations to save Jews 4.1 Alleged collaboration 4.2 In defense of SS officer Kurt Becher 5 Kastner trial 6 Assassination 7 Descendents 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Further reading

[edit] Early life

[edit] Childhood

Kastner was born in 1906 in Kolozsvár, Austria-Hungary, into a local community of 15,000 Jews. The governance of the city was unstable, moving back and forth between Hungary and Romania. It became Cluj, Romania in 1918, was returned to Hungary in 1940, then was restored to Romania by the Treaty of Paris in 1947, after the Soviet and Romanian armies defeated German and Hungarian forces in the winter of 1944-45.

Kastner was raised with his two brothers in a two-storey brick house in the southern part of the city by his father, Yitzhak, a merchant and a deeply religious man who spent most of his day in the synagogue, and his mother, Helen, who ran the family store.^[8]

[edit] Education

Helen decided that her sons should attend a regular high school, rather than a religious one, because the curriculum was broader and included languages. By the time Kastner graduated, he spoke five languages: Hungarian, Romanian, French, German, and Latin.^[8]

Anna Porter writes that he became known for his good looks, sharp mind, quick wit, and his intense concentration, as a result of which his mother decided he should study law, though his heart was in politics.^[8] Jewish entry to universities had been limited by the 1920 Numerus Clausus (closed number) Act, which was the first antisemitic legislation in 20th century Europe. The law limited Jewish university places to six percent, reflecting their representation within the population, and although the legislation was allowed to lapse eight years later, it affected Kastner's teenage political orientation, and he decided at the age of 15 to become a Zionist.^[9]

He joined a Zionist youth group, Barissa, which trained its members to become citizens of the Land of Israel, becoming its leader within a year. His older brother, Gyula, had already emigrated to Palestine in 1924 to work on a kibbutz, but Kastner was still at high school and so unable to go with him. He played his part in the Zionist movement by writing articles on British policies in Palestine for the local Jewish newspaper, Új Kelet.^[10]

[edit] Early career

When Kastner was 22, his father died reading the Torah in the synagogue on the seventh day of Passover. He had to put off any ideas about emigrating, because his mother now needed him at home. He went to law school, as she wished, then worked full-time for Új Kelet after graduating, at first working as a sports reporter, though he continued to write about politics. He also became an assistant to Dr. József Fischer, a lawyer, member of Parliament, president of the Jewish Community of Kolozsvár, and leading member of the National Jewish Party. Fischer admired Kastner's writing, and encouraged him to continue working for Új Kelet too.^[11]

Porter writes that Fischer may have been the only person whose intelligence Kastner respected. He was known for being unable to suffer fools gladly, dismissing people as stupid or intellectual cowards. "He had no sense of other people's sensitivities, or he didn't care whether he alienated his friends," Dezsö Hermann, one of Kastner's friends at law school, told Porter. "Back then, in Kolozsvár, Jews kept their heads down. Not Rezső."^[12] Ladislaus Löb quotes Kastner’s later associate Joel Brand as saying that he was the "prototype of the snobbish intellectual" but showed "marvellous courage at critical moments"; and the orthodox leader Fülöp Freudiger called him "dictatorial" but "selfless and always willing to take personal risks". Kasztner’s daughter Zsuzsi, admittedly a biased witness, described him as "very arrogant, and rightly so, beccause he was extremely smart and intelligent and handsome and charismatic". ^[13]

He became known as a political fixer, knowing whom to bribe, how much to pay, whom to flatter. He interviewed leading politicians for Új Kelet, and even antisemitic members of the Iron Guard. He worked hard as a lawyer for his clients, reportedly knowing when to pay off the police so that charges would be dropped. ^[14] He joined the Ihud party, later known as Mapai, a left-wing Zionist party that planned to form a government in the new Jewish state. He married József Fischer's daughter, Elizabeth, in 1934, which further cemented his position locally.^[15]

[edit] The rise of Nazism

Further information: Racial policy of Nazi Germany, Munich Agreement, Kristallnacht, and Racial policy of Nazi Germany, and History of the Jews in Hungary

As the German army moved across Europe, Kastner set up an information center in Kolozsvár/Cluj to help refugees arriving from Austria, Poland, and Slovakia. He arranged temporary accommodation for them and collected clothes and food from local charities. His main concern was to provide Jewish refugees with safe passage, using his ability to bribe and charm to obtain exit visas from the Romanian government. He asked for help from the Jewish Agency's leadership in Tel Aviv, though there was a limit to what they could do because the British had imposed strict quotas on the number of Jewish refugees allowed into Palestine, causing Kastner to attack "Perfidious Albion" in Új Kelet.^[16]

On August 30, 1940, Hitler returned Kolozsvár to Hungary's control. The city's Jews were happy at first, reasoning that Hungary's Jews had not been subjected to the same random killings experienced by Jews in Romania. Hungarian Jews were patriots, seeing themselves as Hungarians first, Jews second, and Hungary as their homeland, not Eretz Israel. Their jubilation was short-lived. As Germany's influence over Hungarian policies increased, Jews found themselves subjected to antisemitic legislation and violence. In 1941, the Hungarian government closed all Jewish newspapers, including Új Kelet. Kastner, then 36 years old, decided to move to Budapest to look for a job, leaving his wife behind in Kolozsvár.^[17]

[edit] Move to Budapest

Kastner rented a small, two-room apartment in a pension in Vácy Street. He wanted to continue his work helping Jewish refugees in Kolozsvár, and with that in mind, had obtained a letter of introduction from József Fischer to Ottó Komoly, an engineer and president of the Budapest Zionist Association. Komoly directed Kastner to Miklós (Moshe) Krausz, the Jewish Agency's representative in Budapest, who controlled the Palestine entry visas.

Anna Porter writes that Kastner had to wait in line for two hours in the Agency's office on Erzsébet Boulevard, among scores of Jewish refugees desperate to find a way to escape to Palestine. He eventually barged past Krausz's secretaries and into his office. Krausz explained that he was determined not to alienate the British, which meant that every entry visa had to be legitimate and properly processed, which was consuming all his time.^[18] Kastner offered to help, but Krausz wasn't interested. Porter writes that Krausz took an instant dislike to the "forceful, loud, and insistent Kasztner."^[19]

Kastner's wife joined him in Budapest in July 1941. He tried to persuade József Fischer, who had lost his law practice, to join them but he refused, feeling responsible for the Jewish community in Kolozsvár.

Komoly continued to introduce Kastner to key figures in the Budapest Zionist movement. One of them was Sam Springmann, who was bribing officials — in part with money from the Jewish Agency — to carry messages and food parcels into Łódź and other ghettos in Poland. It was Springmann who introduced Kastner to Joel Brand, a meeting that was to change both their lives.

[edit] Negotiations to save Jews

"Blood for goods" Background Auschwitz · The Holocaust · Hungary:WWII · History of the Jews in Hungary People and events Aid and Rescue Committee · Kurt Becher · Joel Brand · Adolf Eichmann · Malchiel Gruenwald · Heinrich Himmler · Rudolf Kastner · Kastner train · Yonasan Steif · Joel Teitelbaum · Rudolf Vrba · Vrba-Wetzler report · Alfréd Wetzler Sources Yehuda Bauer · John S. Conway · Ben Hecht · Raul Hilberg · Miroslav Karny · Ruth Linn Categories Blood for goods · The Holocaust This box: view • talk • edit

Main article: Kastner train

During the summer of 1944, Kastner repeatedly met with Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of the deportation of Hungary's 800,000-strong Jewish community to the German death camp at Auschwitz in occupied Poland. Through these negotiations, an agreement was reached for some 1,685 Jews to be saved for a ransom of $1,000 per head. Most of the passengers could not raise the funds themselves, so Kastner auctioned off 150 seats to wealthy Jews in order to pay for the others. In addition, SS officer Kurt Becher, Heinrich Himmler's envoy insisted that 50 seats be reserved for the families of individuals who had personally paid him money for various favors, at an amount of approximately $25,000 per person. Becher was also able to get the price per head increased from $1,000 to $2,000. ^[20] The total value of the ransom was estimated by the Jewish community to be 8,600,000 Swiss francs, though Becher himself valued it at only 3,000,000 Swiss francs. ^[21]

Breaking his agreement, Eichmann had the passengers on the train sent to Belsen concentration camp. But in the end the passengers were saved by being transported to neutral Switzerland in two contingents, in August and December 1944 respectively. They included the Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the writer Béla Zsolt, the psychiatrist Leopold Szondi, the opera singer Dezső Ernster, the artist István Irsai, and other outstanding intellectuals, scientists, religious leaders and political activists, but also people who were neither rich nor prominent, not least a group of Polish orphans. ^[22]Kastner's defenders claim that as a result of his negotiations, an additional 15,000 Hungarian Jews were transferred to labor camps at Strasshof rather than being killed at Auschwitz. But Eichmann testified at his trial that this was an act of deceit on his part: "It is possible that I painted a bright picture for Kastner." ^[23]

[edit] Alleged collaboration

The consequences of these meetings between Kastner and Eichmann had long-lasting repercussions in the Israeli and Hungarian Jewish communities that are still felt today. Part of these repercussions revolve around the fact that Kastner helped to draw up the list of who was going to be among the Jews who were chosen to be saved and allowed to leave on a train. According to some sources, many of the Jews who were saved were Kastner's relatives, rich Hungarian Jews who subsidized those on the train who couldn't pay, real personal friends of Kastner as well as "community and Zionist leaders." Actually the passengers included hundreds of children, many of them orphans, as well as hundreds of ordinary people such as students, workmen, teachers and nurses.^[24]

Many of those Hungarian Jews who were saved by Kastner considered him to be a hero who risked his life in negotiating with Eichmann. However, other Hungarian Jews questioned why Eichmann and Kastner were even negotiating at all and if Kastner was more of a collaborator than a hero. Even as these very negotiations were taking place, thousands of Hungarian Jews were being deported every day to Birkenau. In 1960, sixteen years after the meeting with Kastner, Eichmann told Life Magazine that Kastner "agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation — and even keep order in the collection camps — if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate to Palestine. It was a good bargain." ^[25]

By May 1944, Kastner and many other Jewish leaders knew that Jews were being sent to their deaths, having received the Vrba-Wetzler report at the end of April 1944. The report was released to the leaders of Jewish organizations in the hope that Hungarian Jews would be warned that they were being deported to a death camp and were not being resettled, as they had been led to believe. However, the report was not made public by the Jewish Council in Hungary or by Kastner. ^[26] It was his rival on the Zionist Aid and Rescue Committee, Krausz, who eventually sent the report to Switzerland for publication.^[27] The resulting international outcry persuaded the Hungarian government to stop the deportations. But by then around 450,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported to Auschwitz, where the overwhelming majority were murdered on arrival. Critics of Kastner allege that he agreed with Eichmann not to warn Hungarian Jews in order not to jeopardize negotiations to save the Jews who escaped on the Kastner train. Kastner's supporters argue that the agreement over the train was part of a much larger rescue effort involving negotiations to save all Hungarian Jews (see Joel Brand). They also argue he was so unknown and had so little power that no one would have paid attention to any warning from him anyway. As Ladislaus Löb put it, "with no access to the media and limited opportunities to travel, under constant observation by German and Hungarian secret police, he could hardly have raised the alarm in an effective way" and even if he had, the Jews, "surrounded by enemies, stripped of their rights and possessions, having neither the arms nor the experience", were unable to organise either resistance or mass escapes. ^[28]

[edit] In defense of SS officer Kurt Becher

In early 1945, Kastner traveled to Germany with Becher, who had received the money and valuables paid to save the Jewish lives on the train. Himmler had ordered Becher to attempt to stop the destruction of the concentration camps as the Allies gained further ground in the closing days of World War II. Even though Kastner was a Hungarian Jew and Becher was an SS officer, Kastner and Becher worked well together.

At the conclusion of the war, Becher was put on trial at Nuremberg as a war criminal. Kastner testified in his defense, stating that "[Becher is] cut from a different wood than the professional mass murderers of the political SS". It is possible that he did so with the knowledge of the Jewish leadership in the hope of obtaining help in recovering stolen Jewish assets and capturing Eichmann in return.^[29]This defense of an SS officer further angered the Hungarian Jewish community, even more so than the original negotiations had with Eichmann. In all, Kastner testified on behalf of Becher and other SS officials involved in his ransom efforts five separate times between 1946 and 1948. ^[30]

[edit] Kastner trial

Kastner moved to Israel after the war, and became active in the Mapai party. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the first and second elections, and became the spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1952.^[2]

His role in negotiating with the SS in order to save Jewish lives made headlines in 1953, when he was accused in a self-published pamphlet produced by Malchiel Gruenwald, an amateur writer, stamp collector, and right-wing activist, of

1. collaborating with the Nazis
2. paving the way for the murder of Hungarian Jewry
3. partnership with Nazi officer Kurt Becher in theft of Jewish assets
4. saving Becher from punishment after the war.^[2]

Gruenwald was sued for libel by the Israeli government on Kastner's behalf, resulting in a trial that lasted two years. His attorney, Shmuel Tamir, was a former Irgun member and supporter of the right-wing opposition Herut Party led by Menachem Begin. Tamir turned the libel case against his client into a political trial of Kastner and, by implication, the Labor Party. The mother of wartime heroine Hannah Senesh had also accused Kastner of betraying her daughter to her death and spoke out against him during the trial.

In his ruling, Judge Benjamin Halevi acquitted Gruenwald of libel on the first, second and fourth counts. He wrote:

The Nazis' patronage of Kastner, and their agreement to let him save six hundred prominent Jews, were part of the plan to exterminate the Jews. Kastner was given a chance to add a few more to that number. The bait attracted him. The opportunity of rescuing prominent people appealed to him greatly. He considered the rescue of the most important Jews as a great personal success and a success for Zionism. It was a success that would also justify his conduct - his political negotiation with Nazis and the Nazi patronage of his committee. When Kastner received this present from the Nazis, Kastner sold his soul to the German Satan.^[31]

The Israeli government's decision to appeal on Kastner's behalf led to its collapse, as Prime Minister Moshe Sharret resigned when the General Zionists, a member of his coalition, refused to abstain from voting on a no-confidence motion filed by Herut and Maki. Kastner became a hate figure.

The Supreme Court of Israel overturned most of the judgment against Kastner in 1958. The majority decision said:

1. During that period Kastner was motivated by the sole motive of saving Hungary's Jews as a whole, that is, the largest possible number under the circumstances of time and place as he estimated could be saved.
2. This motive fitted the moral duty of rescue to which he was subordinated as a leader of the Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest.
3. Influenced by this motive he adopted the method of financial or economic negotiation with the Nazis.
4. Kastner's behavior stands the test of plausibility and reasonableness.
5. His behavior during his visit to Cluj (on May 3rd) and afterwards, both its active aspect (the plan of the "prominents") and its passive aspect (withholding the "Auschwitz news" and lack of encouragement for acts of resistance and escape on a large scale) – is in line with his loyalty to the method which he considered, at all important times, to be the only chance of rescue.
6. Therefore one cannot find a moral fault in his behavior, one cannot discover a casual connection between it and the easing of the concentration and deportation, one cannot see it as becoming a collaboration with the Nazis. ^[32]

[edit] Assassination

Kastner was shot on March 3, 1957, by Ze'ev Eckstein, Yosef Menkes and Dan Shemer. ^[33] He died of his injuries nine days later. Eckstein, 24, described as a Holocaust survivor, stated he killed Kastner to avenge his activities in conjunction with Nazi figures such as Adolf Eichmann. ^[34] Based on Israeli court records, Ben Hecht has written that Eckstein had been a paid undercover agent of the Israeli government's intelligence service a few months before the shooting. ^[35] But the idea that the killing was a government cover-up has been described as "absolute nonsense" because the head of the intelligence service was a close personal friend of Kastner. ^[36]

[edit] Descendents

His daughter Zsuzsi lives in Tel Aviv where she works as a hospital nurse. She has three daughters, including Merav Michaeli, a well-known radio and television presenter in Israel. Zsuzsi and Merav attended the formal presentation of the Kastner archive to Yad Vashem in 2007. Zsuzsi lectured about her father in Britain in 2008.^[37][38]

[edit] See also

• Assassinations of politicians in Israel's history
• History of Israel
• History of the Jews in Hungary
• Neolog Judaism
• Satmar (Hasidic dynasty)

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading