by Alex Kershaw
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Vera Goodkin, e-mail to the author, December 2, 2009.
7 Vera Goodkin, interview with the author.
8 In the beginning, especially, her parents had felt guilty about imposing terrible danger on the people who helped them hide. “As we ran from place to place—as things became more dangerous for the rescuer, and as we were asked to move or we realized that common decency would demand that we move—the times became more turbulent, the fear was sharper, and the lack of food, more acute. There was a lot more hunger as time went on.” Ibid.
9 Vera Goodkin, In Sunshine and Shadow, Comteq Publishing, Margate, New Jersey, 2006, p. 75.
10 Ibid.
11 Vera Goodkin, interview with the author.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/wallenberg/testimonie/interviews/vera-goodkin.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 The family would soon be sent to Auschwitz. The mother and two daughters would survive.
23 Vera Goodkin, interview with the author.
24 Vera Goodkin, In Sunshine and Shadow, p. 78.
25 Randolph L. Braham and Scott Miller, editors, The Nazis’ Last Victims, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1998, p. 182.
26 Raphael Petai, The Jews of Hungary, Wayne State University Press, 1996, p. 546.
27 Vera Goodkin, interview with the author.
28 Ibid.
CHAPTER THREE. MAUTHAUSEN
1 James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, pp. 3-5.
2 As a boy, Eichmann was allegedly taunted by schoolmates for being a kleine Jude—a little Jew—because he looked so Jewish.
3 The deportation of the Hungarian Jews was destined to be seen as perhaps the most controversial act of the Holocaust, given that the Allied powers and Jewish leaders in Hungary knew about Auschwitz and yet did little to prevent it—for example, there was no bombing of the camp.
4 Neal Bascomb, Hunting Eichmann, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, 2009, p. 2.
5 Ibid.
6 Frederick E. Werbell and Thurston Clarke, Lost Hero, 1982, p. 9.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p.6.
10 Neal Bascomb, Hunting Eichmann, p. 1.
11 Source: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/eichmen. html. A die-hard Nazi to the bitter end, Dannecker would commit suicide while in American custody in 1945.
12 Comer Clarke, Eichmann, the Man and His Crimes, Ballantine Books, New York, 1960, p. 96. According to Clarke, Dannecker would organize “Karl Nights” when Eichmann visited Paris. “On one occasion, Eichmann organized the nude girls in a line to face the ‘firing squad.’ Then Eichmann and his party loosened corks from their champagne bottles and, roaring with laughter, aimed them at the ducking, giggling girls. Eichmann had few sexual inhibitions and the orgies often went on until six in the morning, a few hours before the next batch of victims were to be consigned to their deaths.” Source: Ibid.
13 Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Volume VIII. USGPO, Washington, 1946, pp. 606-619.
14 Rafi Benshalom, We Struggled for Life, Gefen, Jerusalem, 2001, p. 24.
15 Marianne Lowy, interview with the author. See also Benjamin Balshone, Determined, Bloch Publishing, New York, 1984, p. 45.
16 Marianne Lowy, interview with the author. “It was a Sunday, when young people went to walk along the Corso. I had a rendezvous with my fiance who lived on the Buda side. We were supposed to meet around 11 a.m. He called me at 10 a.m. . . . He saw it from Buda. That was the beginning of the end.”
CHAPTER FOUR. THE LAST REFUGE
1 Almost half were refugees from other countries like the Hermans.
2 Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died, The Overlook Press, New York, 1998, p. 350.
3 Jochen von Lang, Eichmann Interrogated, Da Capo Press, New York, 1999, p. 212.
4 Anna Porter, Kasztner’s Train, Walker & Company, New York, 2007, p. 88.
5 John Bierman, Righteous Gentile, p. 39.
6 Sassen tapes.
7 Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 2000, p. 57. Horthy would later claim that he did not know they were going to be killed. Source: Ibid.
8 Anna Porter, Kasztner’s Train, p. 97.
9 Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, Pheonic Press, London, 1985, p. 214.
10 Ibid., p. 215. According to Hoss, Eichmann was “a vivacious, active man in his thirties, and always full of energy. He was constantly hatching new plans and perpetually on the lookout for innovations and improvements. He could never rest. He was obsessed with the Jewish question and the order which had been given for its final solution.” Ibid., p. 213.
11 Simon Wiesenthal, The Murderers Among Us, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967, p. 98.
12 Alan Levy, Nazi Hunter, Carroll & Graff, New York, 2002, p. 119.
13 But Samuel Stern recalled that Eichmann was also charming and persuasive.
14 Frederick E. Werbell and Thurston Clarke, Lost Hero, 1982, p. 10.
15 Anna Porter, Kasztner’s Train, pp. 102-103.
16 Yaacov Lozowick, Hitler’s Bureaucrats, Continuum, London, 2000, p. 256.
17 Marianne Lowy, interview with the author.
18 Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died, p. 352.
19 Elie Wiesel, Night, Hill and Wang, New York, 2006, p. 31.
20 Marianne Lowy, interview with the author.
21 Benjamin Balshone, Determined, p. 52.
22 Ibid., p. 53.
23 Marianne Lowy, interview with the author.
24 Source: http://www.annefrank.dk/Heyman.htm.
25 Elie Wiesel, Night, p. 31.
26 Ibid., p. 33.
27 Yaacov Lozowick, Hitler’s Bureaucrats, p. 56.
28 Erwin Koranyi, interview with the author.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Erwin K. Koranyi, Dreams and Tears, General Store Publishing House, Ontario, 2006, p. 53.
32 Erwin Koranyi, interview with the author.
33 Ibid.
34 Alice Breuer, interview with the author.
35 Erwin Koranyi, interview with the author. “When she returned to Budapest,” Erwin remembered, “she said that she had promised that she would go back to Kormend. She was afraid that her parents would be harmed. I told her that the only way to live in Budapest was if we got married. I was twenty years old and in love with her. I persuaded her to get married.”
36 Erwin K. Koranyi, Dreams and Tears, p. 56.
37 Alice Breuer, interview with the author.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
CHAPTER FIVE. ESCAPE FROM AUSCHWITZ
1 Rudolf Vrba, I Escaped from Auschwitz, Barricade Books, Fort Lee, New Jersey, 2002, p. 248.
2 Ibid.
3 Paul Lungen, Canadian Jewish News, January 27, 2005.
4 Rudolf Vrba, I Escaped from Auschwitz.
5 Guido Knopp, Hitler’s Hitmen, Sutton, 2002, England, p. 34.
6 Rudolf Vrba, I Escaped from Auschwitz, p. 263.
7 Anna Porter, Kasztner’s Train, p. 158.
CHAPTER SIX. THE CRUELEST SUMMER
1 Erwin K. Koranyi, Dreams and Tears, p. 58.
2 March 19, 1944, affected the Jews of Kormend “like a stroke of lightning from the clear sky. The blows came in torrential manner: wearing of the Yellow Star of David, segregation, closing of businesses, and confiscation of assets. In Kormend, the ghetto was concentrated within the streets surrounding the Jewish temple; it was fenced by wooden planks, all at the expense of the Jews. Humiliating scenes during concentration and later, during entrainment, were the norm. The train station chief’s son was defiantly arrogant wit
h Mr. Frimm, an engineer and his former boss, suggesting that he ‘preferably use a rope.’ Dr. Havas, a physician from Nagycskny, was the benefactor of the township. Still, while being taken into the ghetto, they stoned him. Jews, ridden by fear and at the mercy of their enemies, were crowded first in the ghetto of Szombathely, then taken to the Motor Factory, and finally, thrown into jam-packed cattle cars and deported in the direction of Auschwitz! The last rabbi of the community, Dr. Jakab Krausz, whose noble activities we already mentioned, became a martyr of the Holocaust together with his congregants. The great majority of the community—children, mothers, young people, and the elderly—were together in the hour of doom. In all, of the 389 people deported, about 20 survived. Today, only three or four Jewish families live in Kormend.” Source: http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/vas_megye/vas047.html.
3 Ibid.
4 Erwin K. Koranyi, Dreams and Tears, p. 57.
5 Erwin Koranyi, interview with the author.
6 He would soon be described as “a very solid type: squarely built, broad nosed, peasant-like, a bit slow and heavy, but with a very clear head and firm grasp of facts. He breathes honestly.” Source: Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died, p. 356.
7 Quentin Reynolds, Minister of Death, Dell, New York, 1961, p. 172.
8 Ibid., pp. 173-174.
9 http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/wallenberg/testimonie/interviews/vera-goodkin and Vera Goodkin, interview with the author: Vera was woken one morning by the “sounds of heavy boots along a walkway to the apartment. There was a loud knocking on the door. Men were asking for us by name. We went along. Once we were in the street, we realized that we were not alone, that other people were being rounded up. There were armed men hitting people to make sure we were subdued. There was no talking. I felt terrible fear, terrible fear.”
10 Vera Goodkin, In Sunshine and Shadow, p. 80.
11 Ibid.
12 Vera Goodkin, interview with the author.
13 Vera Goodkin, In Sunshine and Shadow, p. 80.
14 Ibid.
15 Alex Weissberg, Desperate Mission, Criterion Books, New York, 1958, p. 159.
16 Ibid., p. 164. “Don’t you understand what you’re doing?” Brand shouted. “This is plain murder! Mass murder! If I don’t go back, our best people will be slaughtered! My wife! My mother! My children! They will be the first to go. You’ve got to let me return. I have come here under a flag of truce, on a special mission. You can agree or not as you will, but you have no right to seize an emissary. The Germans are my enemies just as much as they are the enemies of the Allies, and far more bitter enemies, too. I am here as a delegate of a million people condemned to death. Their lives depend on my return. Who gives you the right to lay hands on me?” Source: Ibid.
17 Aide-memoire delivered by Lord Halifax to State Department, June 5, 1944. Weizmann Archives, Rehovoth, Israel.
18 Ben Hecht, Perfidy, Milah Press, 1999, p. 228.
19 Ibid.
20 Alex Weissberg, Desperate Mission, p. 223.
21 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, 2003, p. 1224.
22 Ira Hirschmann letter to John Pehle, July 3, 1944: War Refugee Board Projects and Documents, Box 70.
23 “All I remember is hearing that a million Jews were to be released somewhere in return for ten thousand all-weather trucks and the promise that these would not under any circumstances be used on the Western front,” Eichmann told an interrogator in 1960. “That was the basis of the agreement ...” Source: Jochen von Lang, Eichmann Interrogated, p. 207.
24 Rudolf Vrba, I Escaped from Auschwitz, p. 265.
CHAPTER SEVEN. THE SWEDISH PIMPERNEL
1 In 1944, David Ben-Gurion wrote angrily: “What have you done to us, you freedom-loving peoples, guardians of justice, defenders of the high principles of democracy and the brotherhood of man? What have you allowed to be prepared against a defenseless people while you stood aside and let it bleed to death, without offering help or succor, without calling on the fiends to stop, in the language of retribution which alone they would understand? Why do you profane our pain and wrath with empty expressions of sympathy which ring like a mockery in the ears of millions of the damned in the torture houses of Nazi Europe? Why have you not even supplied arms to our ghetto rebels, as you have done for the partisans and underground fighters of other nations? . . . If, instead of Jews, thousands of English, American, or Russian women, children, and aged had been tortured every day, burnt to death, asphyxiated in gas chambers—would you have acted in the same way?” Source: Theodore S. Hamerow, Why We Watched, Norton, New York, 2008, p. 353.
2 Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died, p. 383.
3 Frederick E. Werbell and Thurston Clarke, Lost Hero, Signet, New York, 1982, p. 15.
4 Alan Levy, Nazi Hunter, p. 172.
5 Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died, pp. 348-349.
6 Kati Marton, Wallenberg: Missing Hero, Random House, 1995, p. 39.
7 Jeno Levai, Raoul Wallenberg, University of Melbourne, 1989, p. 36.
8 Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, Henry Holt, New York, 1985, p. 71.
9 Nina Lagergren, interview with the author.
10 Stockholm Military History Museum open display.
11 Jeno Levai, Raoul Wallenberg, p. 29.
12 Ibid.
13 Raoul Wallenberg to Gustaf Wallenberg, Haifa, June 19, 1936.
14 Jeno Levai, Raoul Wallenberg, p. 38.
15 Kati Marton, Wallenberg: Missing Hero, p. 41.
16 War Refugee Board, Hyde Park records.
17 See Levai, pp. 30-39 for more on Wallenberg’s background.
18 Jeno Levai, Raoul Wallenberg, p. 42.
19 Ibid., pp. 42-43.
20 Ibid., p. 45.
21 Ibid., p. 46.
22 Ibid., p. 44.
23 John Bierman, Righteous Gentile, p. 38.
24 Braham, The Politics of Genocide, p. 163.
25 John Bierman, Righteous Gentile, p. 38. Also see Braham for more details.
26 Guido Knopp, Hitler’s Hitmen, p. 35.
27 Nina Lagergren, interview with the author.
28 Ibid.
29 John Bierman, Righteous Gentile, p. 37.
30 Nina Lagergren, interview with the author.
31 Elenore Lester, Wallenberg: The Man in the Iron Web, Prentice Hall, London, 1982, p. 66.
32 Danny Smith, Lost Hero, p. 47.
33 Nina Lagergren, interview with the author.
34 John Bierman, Righteous Gentile, p. 37.
35 Jeno Levai, Raoul Wallenberg, p. 45.
36 Frederick E. Werbell and Thurston Clarke, Lost Hero, pp. 24-25.
37 John Bierman, Righteous Gentile, p. 38
38 Ibid.
CHAPTER EIGHT. THE MAJESTIC HOTEL
1 Monday, July 9, 1944, Wallenberg’s appointment’s diary, RA, Raoul Wallenberg Arkiv, Signum, 1, Vol. 9, University of Upsala, Sweden. The small diary was returned to Nina Lagergren in 1989 by the Russians.
2 Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died, p. 363. See also “Rescue from Hungary,” War Refugee Board Projects and Documents, Box 33 and Box 35 and the “White Papers of Royal Ministry for Foreign Affairs,” Stockholm, Raoul Wallenberg case, 1957 and 1965. The Holocaust in Hungary: Forty Years Later, Randolph L. Braham, and Bela Vago, eds., Columbia University Press, New York, 1985.
3 Per Anger, With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest, pp. 37-39.
4 See Randolph L. Braham and Bela Vago, The Holocaust in Hungary, and Lars Berg interview in 1979 in New York.
5 Jeno Levai, Raoul Wallenberg, p. 50.
6 Lutz would survive the war and live into old age, recognized finally around the world as one of the most effective of “righteous gentiles” who had saved thousands of lives.
7 Anna Porter, Kasztner’s Train, p. 99.
8 Guido Knopp, Hitler’s Hitmen, p. 29.
9 Theo Tschuy, Dangerous Diplomacy, Eerdmans Publishing, Cambridge, UK, 2000, pp. 167-170.
10 Elenore Lester, Wall
enberg: The Man in the Iron Web, pp. 91-92.
11 It took place on August 3, 1944, according to Wallenberg’s daybook.
12 Elenore Lester, Wallenberg: The Man in the Iron Web, pp. 91-92.
13 According to Wallenberg’s diary, he met with Ferenczy on Thursday, July 20, 1944. This may have been the date that Kasser later recalled. Thursday, July 20, 1944, Wallenberg’s appointment’s diary, RA, Raoul Wallenberg Arkiv, Signum, 1, Vol. 9, University of Upsala, Sweden.
14 Jeno Levai, Raoul Wallenberg, p. 68.
15 Elenore Lester, Wallenberg: The Man in the Iron Web, pp. 91-92.
16 Marianne Lowy, interview with the author.
17 Ibid.
18 Benjamin Balshone, Determined, pp. 72-73.
19 Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died, p. 364.
20 For an excellent account of Wallenberg’s relationship with Lauer, see Paul A. Levine’s Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Myth, History and Holocaust, Valentine Mitchell, Middlesex, UK, 2010, pp.165-189.
21 Raoul Wallenberg, Letters and Dispatches, Arcade Publishing. New York, 1995, p. 273.
22 These sources may have included Allied and Axis agents. Although his employer at the War Refugee Board, Iver Olsen, later swore that Wallenberg did not know that he, Olsen, was working for the American intelligence organization, the OSS, it is hard to believe that Wallenberg was not in some way involved in Allied intelligence operations. Wallenberg had proven links to the British foreign intelligence service, MI6, according to documents in Sweden’s national archives. That summer of 1944, these documents reveal, he sent coded messages and spoke on the telephone with Cyril Cheshire, MI6’s wartime head of station in Stockholm. Wallenberg’s business partner, Kalman Lauer, may also have been involved with Allied intelligence operations. Two weeks after arriving in Budapest, not long after he learned the fate of Lauer’s relatives, Wallenberg sent Lauer a telegram, also using coded language, that asked him to get Olsen to intervene with Cheshire to ensure that an end to the deportation of Hungarian Jews would be a key condition of any peace deal.