Bargaining with the Devil

by Robert Mnookin

  In early May, Kasztner finally got permission to travel to Cluj, where Wisliceny had been reassigned.49 He soon discovered what Wisliceny was doing there. Local police had just begun rounding up Jews and moving them into a brickyard—a makeshift ghetto. Wisliceny himself was supervising the effort. When Kasztner confronted him about his earlier promise, Wisliceny admitted that he really had no authority to prevent deportations. “[Eichmann] gave me the dirtiest job, and I am now the one who has to transfer the Jews into Ghettos. … I wear a uniform, I must follow orders.”50

  “At least tell me the truth,” Kasztner insisted. Was it true, as he had heard, that the Nazis planned to deport all the Jews in Hungary? Wis-liceny waffled but promised to find out.51 In the meantime, he said, Kasztner could prepare the list of six hundred families who would emigrate in exchange for the ransom already paid.52

  Let’s step back again and ask: What was going on? Was it time to reassess? There is no evidence that Kasztner asked himself this question, but Spock would have strongly recommended it. The original decision to negotiate with the Nazis had been made in March. It was now May and Kasztner had new information. The Nazis had lied to his face about the deportations. His original, glorious deal was dead. He had paid a substantial bribe and so far had nothing to show for it. Eichmann was pushing a bizarre proposal that would probably go nowhere (although it might allow the Jews to buy valuable time). Wisliceny and his cohorts were dangling a carrot—the prospect of emigration for a small group—but they weren’t trustworthy.

  Spock would say: Slow down. Think. What should be your strategy? And what should you tell your family and the Jewish leaders in Cluj?

  Kasztner would probably respond that he was thinking, but that he couldn’t exactly slow down. As he would write later, events were happening so fast that “even thoughts were too slow.”53 In that respect he was right: the ghettoization process in Cluj went so quickly that it was completed in a week.

  What did Kasztner do while he was in Cluj? He met with local Jewish leaders, including his father-in-law, but it is not clear what he told them. Years later, the exact content of these discussions would be-come highly controversial. How much did Kasztner know about the Nazis’ plans for Hungary, and how clearly did he warn his fellow Jews about the disaster that was coming? Although many Hungarian Jews had heard reports about Nazi atrocities elsewhere, and therefore had reason to understand that they, too, were in danger, others didn’t know—or refused to believe—just how bad things were. Kasztner was much better informed than most. He knew from reliable sources that the Nazis planned to deport all Hungarian Jews. He also knew that Auschwitz was an extermination camp, not simply a forced labor camp as the Nazis claimed, and that deportation to Auschwitz was a probable prelude to extermination.54

  Kasztner later claimed that he had warned the Jewish leadership of Cluj, and his family and friends, of precisely this danger. Others said he had not.55 What is undisputed is that no dire warning ever reached the rest of the community and that no Jews were advised, by Kasztner or the Cluj leadership, to flee Hungary or go into hiding.

  Kasztner did, however, tell the Jewish leaders about his negotiations with the Nazis. He said he was working on a deal that might allow some Jews, including a number from Cluj, to emigrate. One can easily imagine Kasztner, the fixer, wanting to hold out hope to those closest to him. One can also imagine his tendency to believe that if anyone could pull off a miracle, he could.

  Kasztner decided not to abandon the negotiation track, despite Wisliceny’s broken promise. Indeed, I think he was burning to go up the chain of command. To hell with Wisliceny … How could he get to Eichmann?

  With the Nazis’ help, Brand left for Istanbul on May 17 to carry Eichmann’s proposal to a representative of the Jewish Agency.56 On Eichmann’s orders, Brand was forced to leave his wife, Hansi, behind as a hostage. No member of the Relief and Rescue Committee had much confidence that the deal would succeed, but they hoped that by keeping the prospect of negotiations alive, they could stall for time and perhaps stop the deportations.

  That hope would prove to be misplaced. Nothing ever came of the Brand mission, and Brand himself was never able to return to Hungary. In the meantime, mass deportations of Jews to Auschwitz began on May 15 and continued at horrifying speed. But for about a month, the Jewish Agency pretended to take the “Jews for trucks” deal seriously, and these sham negotiations gave Kasztner the opportunity he needed to take Brand’s place in Budapest. First he began an affair with Brand’s wife, Hansi. It was Hansi who served as the bridge to Eichmann. Through her own contacts, she set up Kasztner’s first meeting with Eichmann and attended it with him.

  Thus Kasztner was finally able to establish himself with Eichmann as the chief agent of World Jewry in Hungary. The relationship between the two men would last for the remainder of the war and test all of Kasztner’s skills.

  At their first meeting, Eichmann—who Kasztner knew “ruled over life and death”57—greeted Kasztner and Hansi with characteristic bullying, boasting that he had served as commissar of Jewish affairs in Austria and Czechoslovakia. Abruptly, however, Eichmann grew amiable and spoke of his support of Zionism, including the Jews’ right to have their own state.58 Eventually, they got down to business.

  Kasztner tried to persuade Eichmann to stop the deportations while Brand carried on the negotiations in Istanbul. He was unsuccessful.

  Kasztner then reminded Eichmann of the promises his subordinates had made: that six hundred Jewish families would be allowed to leave Hungary. Kasztner cannily linked this prior agreement with the Brand mission, and this connection, at least, he succeeded in making stick. World Jewry needed a showing of good faith, Kasztner argued. If Eichmann couldn’t follow through on a simple promise to release six hundred families, there would be no hope of progress on the “Jews for trucks” deal.

  Eichmann agreed to nothing at that first meeting, but he asked Kasztner to prepare a list of six hundred Jewish families who might be sent by train out of Hungary. On May 22, Eichmann explicitly agreed that six hundred families might be spared.59

  In the following weeks, Kasztner and Eichmann played a game of “double-bluff,”60 both sides playing for time, each aware that the other was unlikely to meet his commitments. Kasztner falsely claimed that Brand was making progress with the Allies in Istanbul and argued that if the deportations continued, Eichmann would have no Jews left to trade. Eichmann pretended to negotiate the “blood for goods” deal while herding ten to fifteen thousand Jews a day into boxcars for transport to Poland. Eichmann proved to be a thoroughly unreliable negotiating partner, constantly making promises and breaking them. In Hansi Brand’s words, “What we had established on one day … the next day was found to be nothing at all.”61

  A showdown came in early June when Eichmann reneged on yet another promise—to bring several hundred provincial Jews to Budapest for inclusion on the emigration train. Kasztner decided to push back.

  Instead of confronting Eichmann directly, Kasztner taunted him by making provocative statements to two of his officers. To one, Kasztner complained that Eichmann had broken his word and that Kasztner was going to inform Istanbul that all further discussions should be ended. To another, he declared that Eichmann’s behavior was unworthy of an SS officer.

  As expected, these comments got back to Eichmann, who summoned Kasztner to his office and threw a “fit of rage.” Kasztner reports that he simply didn’t respond. Eventually Eichmann calmed down and asked Kasztner, “What do you really want?”

  “I must insist on our agreements being kept. Will you bring the people suggested by us from the provinces to Budapest?”

  Eichmann retorted, “Once I have said no, it’s no!”

  “Then there’s no point in continuing to negotiate,” Kasztner said. He stood up and started to leave the room.

  Eichmann responded with a threat: “You are a bundle of nerves, Kasztner. I will send you to Theresienstadt62 to recover. Or do you prefer Auschwitz?”

/>   Kasztner shot back: “It would be pointless. Nobody else would take my place.”63

  Hours of haggling followed, during which a significant shift occurred. Eichmann stopped talking about Jews from the “provinces” generally, and started talking about Jews from Cluj, Kasztner’s hometown. Was this a new aspect of the devil’s bargain? The record is not clear on whether Eichmann or Kasztner initiated this change in emphasis, but eventually Eichmann relented and said: “All right. The [Cluj] people are coming to Budapest.”64

  By the end of the meeting, Kasztner had negotiated the number of Cluj Jews up to about 200, but eventually the number rose to 388. (Later, Jews from other provinces would be added.)65

  In retrospect, commentators say that Kasztner was uniquely suited to the task of dealing with Eichmann. Although Kasztner often felt nothing but despair, his smooth façade never cracked in Eichmann’s presence. He got invaluable help from Hansi. Early on, Kasztner had told Hansi that he was terrified of Eichmann, who chain-smoked in Kasztner’s presence and never offered Kasztner a cigarette. Hansi suggested that Kasztner bring his own cigarettes, and advised him to chain-smoke as well.66 Kasztner took her advice and his bravado won Eichmann’s grudging admiration and respect. As Eichmann recalled in his memoir:

  This Dr. Kasztner was a young man about my age, an ice-cold lawyer and a fanatical Zionist. … Except perhaps for the first few sessions, Kasztner never came to me fearful of the Gestapo strongman. We negotiated entirely as equals. … When he was with me, Kasztner smoked cigarets, as though he were in a coffeehouse. While we talked he would smoke one aromatic cigaret after another, taking them from a silver case and lighting them with a little silver lighter. With his great polish and reserve he would have made an ideal Gestapo officer himself.67

  For Kasztner, dealing with Eichmann’s tirades and treachery was easy compared to the task of drawing up “the list.” Here was another aspect of the devil’s bargain, which Kasztner may not have anticipated. Which Jews should be chosen for emigration, and how should they be selected?

  It was an agonizing and chaotic process. Kasztner later called it a “merciless chore.”68 Not wanting to take on the burden alone, he asked a small group of members from the Relief and Rescue Committee to direct the effort, with input from other Jewish leaders. In an effort to be fair, the committee established categories for selection, such as “deserving figures in Jewish public life” and “widows and orphans of slave labourers.”69 Not surprisingly, this process sparked intense conflict; committee members were barraged with desperate appeals and charges of favoritism. Meanwhile, Kasztner successfully haggled with Eichmann to expand the list to 1,300 people in exchange for a ransom of a thousand dollars per head. To raise the money, the committee created a new category: Jews who could pay far more than their pro rata share. In this way, 150 wealthy Jews bought their way onto the list and subsidized the others, who had no money.

  The list was in constant flux, and the Relief and Rescue Committee did not have full control over it. Some people declined a spot on the train, fearing that the deal was a Nazi trap. Others on the list were deported before they could take advantage of the opportunity. Still other names were added by Nazi officials in exchange for individual bribes.

  And then there was SS colonel Kurt Becher, an opportunist who was soon to play a crucial role in Kasztner’s life. Becher’s rank was equal to Eichmann’s—both reported to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and had similar clout. But they had opposite temperaments. Whereas Eichmann was an ideologue who wanted to deport every last Jew, Becher was a pragmatist who cared only about his own career, self-enrichment, and survival after the war. Recognizing the train as a gold mine for himself, Becher maneuvered his way into the negotiation and reserved fifty places on the train, which he sold separately to Jews who bribed him directly. There is no evidence that Kasztner objected to this development. To the contrary, Kasztner recognized in Becher someone he could do business with. In the coming months, Kasztner would find Becher a more cooperative partner than Eichmann and would work increasingly closely with him.

  On June 30, some 1,684 Jews finally left Budapest on the “Kasztner Train.” But the passengers’ ordeal continued for months more. Again Eichmann broke his word. The train’s destination was not Spain or Switzerland, as promised, but a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, Germany, where the émigrés were held hostage as “privileged” inmates.

  Kasztner was in despair. He had intended the train to be the first step in a much larger rescue. But while he had been matching wits with the wily Eichmann, the latter had succeeded in shipping off to Ausch-witz nearly all of the Jews outside of Budapest.70 Only about 250,000 Jews remained in Hungary, nearly all in Budapest. And now Kasztner’s train was trapped in Bergen-Belsen.

  But Kasztner did not give up. Eventually, by December 1944, nearly everyone on the train made it to safety in Switzerland.71 Shortly thereafter, Kasztner joined his wife, Elizabeth, in Switzerland. But their reunion was temporary.

  Rather than remain in safety, Kasztner returned to Nazi-occupied Europe to try to save more Jews, a mission he pursued until the war’s last days. In April 1945, as the Nazis were in their final retreat, Kasztner conducted a final rescue effort with Becher. Himmler had offered to make Becher responsible for final oversight of various concentration camps. And here Kasztner made what would later prove to be another devil’s bargain. He persuaded Becher to accept this duty so that together they could save Jewish lives before the now-inevitable German defeat. In exchange, Kasztner promised to help save Becher’s skin by telling the Allies about his good deeds. Becher agreed. So the SS officer Becher and the Jew Kasztner (traveling with German papers) went from camp to camp, trying to prevent further wholesale deaths of inmates by asking that the camps be handed peacefully over to the Allies.72

  In the end, what did Kasztner achieve? This question has never been definitively answered. Certainly, his negotiation efforts were indispensable in saving the nearly seventeen hundred Jews who reached Switzerland via the Kasztner train. But Kasztner also had some luck. The release of the Jews from Bergen-Belsen was very much tied to Himmler’s desire, at the end of the war, to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies. Kasztner also claimed credit for saving tens of thousands more Jews, but these claims are harder to assess. He was very proud of a deal he negotiated with Eichmann in which, for a money bribe, Eichmann agreed to send some seventeen thousand Jews to a work camp instead of to Auschwitz. But as it turned out, Eichmann was independently under orders to send Jewish laborers to that work camp, so some commentators believe that Eichmann outsmarted Kasztner by making him pay for something that would have happened anyway.73 As to Kasztner’s negotiations with the Nazis on behalf of other Jews—including those in Budapest74 and concentration camps—it is hard to determine with any precision what difference his intervention made. Historians differ in how much credit they give Kasztner for saving these additional lives, but most acknowledge that Kasztner played a role, and possibly a significant one.

  Three Tribunals Judge Kasztner

  When the war ended, Kasztner had no doubts about his own conduct. In his own mind, he was a hero. He continued to work for the Jewish cause, remaining in Europe for more than two years, participating in the Nuremberg trials of German war criminals, working to recover Jewish property stolen by the Germans, and trying to track down Eichmann so he could be brought to justice. Kasztner also made good on his promise to SS officer Becher, who was arrested by the Allies shortly after the war’s end. Kasztner submitted an affidavit that credited Becher with saving many Jews, and as a result Becher was soon released.

  Kasztner also sought broader recognition for his accomplishments in negotiating with the Nazis. But instead, he found himself the object of ugly innuendos and even open attacks. Critics accused him of collaborating with the Nazis and enriching himself in the process. His accusers were a “mixed bunch … personal or ideological enemies, survivors who had lost relatives or had themselves suffered in the ca
mps, and even some members of [the Kasztner train].”75

  These attacks would last his entire life, and questions about his actions would prove so persistent that even today there is no consensus. During his lifetime, three different tribunals would consider charges against him and each would come to a different conclusion.

  The first inquiry arose soon after the war at Kasztner’s insistence. Furious about the nasty rumors swirling around him,76 he demanded in 1946 that the World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, conduct hearings in a “court of honour.”77 A fact-finding committee was appointed and Kasztner prepared a 200-page report of his wartime activities.78 But after two meetings, the committee was unable to reach a decision.79 It was hardly an exoneration.

  In 1947, just before Israel attained statehood, Kasztner moved to Israel with his wife and infant daughter, where the second inquiry was destined to occur. At first, things went reasonably well for him in the new state. Although anonymous rumors about his past Nazi “collaboration” continued occasionally to haunt him, he successfully established a new public life. He was welcomed by the governing Mapai (later Labor) Party and appointed to a succession of government posts.80 But Israeli politics were deeply affected by the Holocaust and Kasztner was an open target. Within a few years he became the center of a sensational trial.

  It started with Mikhail Grunwald, a bitter, right-wing crank who wrote an obscure mimeographed newsletter. In 1952, Grunwald published a tirade about Kasztner:

  Dr. Rudolph Kasztner must be liquidated! For three years I have been waiting for the moment to unmask this careerist who grew fat on Hitler’s lootings and murders. Because of his criminal machinations and collaborations with the Nazis I consider him implicated in the murder of our beloved brothers.81

  The whole thing would probably have blown over if the Mapai party had not been feeling vulnerable. Grunwald’s salvo was partly an attack on the governing party, and the attorney general decided to file charges of criminal libel against Grunwald. That meant he needed Kasztner as the government’s star witness. He gave Kasztner a choice: either act to clear his name or resign his government post.