52. Porter, Kasztner’s Train, p. 117.
53. This is an excerpt from Kasztner’s July 12 letter to Joseph Schwartz of the American Joint Distribution Committee cited at Porter, Kasztner’s Train, p. 219.
54. On April 7, 1944, two prisoners escaped from Auschwitz and arrived in Brati-slava, Slovakia. They dictated to a Polish Jewish activist there (Oskar Krasniansky) a detailed firsthand account of the extermination camp process at Auschwitz. The report was labeled “The Auschwitz Protocols.” It provided an eyewitness-authenticated “account of what was happening in Auschwitz.” Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 229. The document was promptly translated into German and English. Porter, Kasztner’s Train, pp. 126–29. The record is unclear as to the exact date when the Protocols were forwarded and became known to Kasztner and other Hungarian Jewish leaders. By some accounts Kasztner read the German text during a visit to Slovakia in April as the translations were being prepared and requested that a Hungarian version be prepared as well. Braham, “What Did They Know and When?” pp. 118–21. The text of the Auschwitz Protocols is found in Rudolf Vrba, I Escaped from Auschwitz (London: Robson, 2002).
55. The issue of what Kasztner told the leaders in Cluj was at the core of the court trial more than a decade later in Israel. As Braham suggests, this visit “has emerged as a major focus of the controversies surrounding the behavior of Jewish leaders.” Braham, “What Did They Know and When?” p. 17. Some of Kasztner’s friends later denied being warned in their trial testimony. Hansi Brand said Kasztner did warn others. She also claimed that the leaders were well aware of the threat.
56. When the matter was discussed with the full Relief and Rescue Committee’s leadership, Kasztner argued that he or his father-in-law should be the one to go to Istanbul. But Brand insisted on going, and the other committee members supported Brand. Weissberg, Desperate Mission, p. 95.
57. See Kasztner’s description of the meeting, Kasztner, “The Report of the Jewish Rescue Committee,” pp. 116–18.
58. Porter, Kasztner’s Train, p. 146.
59. Kasztner, “The Report of the Jewish Rescue Committee,” p. 118.
60. Lob, Dealing with Satan, pp. 80–90.
61. Kasztner later learned, through Wisliceny, that Eichmann had never wanted the deal to succeed. It had been Heinrich Himmler’s idea, so Eichmann had been forced to give it lip service, but he sabotaged it as much as he could. Himmler was the Reichsführer SS and was in charge of all police and security forces, including the Gestapo. The quote in the text is from Lob, Dealing with Satan, pp. 80–81.
62. Theresienstadt was a Nazi camp in what is now the Czech Republic. According to Nazi propaganda, it was a model ghetto for laborers and a retirement “resort” for elderly Jews. In reality, it was both a forced labor camp where many Jews died of disease and malnutrition, and a collection point for Jews destined for Ausch-witz and other extermination camps.
63. Kasztner, “The Report of the Jewish Rescue Committee,” pp. 126–29; Lob, Dealing with Satan, p. 82.
64. Lob, Dealing with Satan, pp. 82–83.
65. Eichmann also insisted that the exodus would have to look like a deportation so that Hungarian officials would not realize what was happening. Lob, Dealing with Satan, p. 86. Therefore, the train would have to go to a detention camp in Germany before reaching a neutral country.
66. Porter, Kasztner’s Train, p. 148, citing interview with Hansi Brand.
67. Adolf Eichmann, “To Sum It All Up I Regret Nothing,” Part 2, Life, December 5, 1960. Eichmann had a clear incentive to depict himself and Kasztner as equals, but his comparison of Kasztner with Gestapo officers is absurd. Interestingly, Hannah Arendt, who covered the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker, went out of her way to accuse Kasztner and other Jewish leaders of complicity in the destruction of their own communities. See Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 1994), pp. 117–18. I disagree with Arendt’s merciless accusation.
68. Kasztner, “The Report of the Jewish Rescue Committee,” p. 165; Lob, Dealing with Satan, p. 89, translates the phrase as “merciless task.”
69. Lob, Dealing with Satan, pp. 83–84. See also Kasztner, “The Report of the Jewish Rescue Committee,” p. 132.
70. Bauer, Jews for Sale? p. 156.
71. In late August, some three hundred people from the Kasztner train reached the Swiss border, as a Nazi goodwill gesture. On that day Becher, two other Nazi representatives, and Kasztner met on the Swiss border with Saly Mayer, the representative of “World Jewry” who was in contact with the American government. On December 6, after Kasztner had persuaded Saly Mayer to wire Becher in Germany 5 million Swiss Francs that was available, the remaining Jews on Kasztner’s train (about 1,400) arrived in Switzerland. Becher wired back that if the balance of the 15 million Swiss Francs that had been discussed was promptly paid, Budapest’s Jews would be protected. Bauer, Jews for Sale? pp. 220–29.
72. Hitler had issued an unambiguous order that the concentration camps should be emptied of all living inmates before the Allied armies were able to liberate them. Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (New York: Penguin, 2008), pp. 406–7.
73. For a general assessment see Szita, Trading in Lives, pp. 219–23, describing the “human trade” practice as “complex and contradictory,” “involving ruthless, fanatical executioners as well as desperate men and women fighting to save the lives of others.” Szita concludes that, notwithstanding any criticism that may be directed toward Kasztner and other Committee members, their “self-sacrificing efforts had a great part in helping a large number of Hungarian Jewish children and occasionally entire families.”
74. A much higher proportion of the Jews in Budapest survived the war for a number of reasons. First, and most important, the Nazis directed their attention to Budapest last. Second, it was much easier to hide in Budapest. Third, the Jews were not put into a single ghetto but instead ordered into “Jewish Houses,” which were scattered among many neighborhoods. Finally, by the end of the summer, the Hungarian government, under international pressure, required the Nazis to suspend deportations.
75. Lob, Dealing with Satan, p. 223.
76. In the summer of 1945, one of Kasztner’s old rivals from Budapest claimed that Kasztner had stolen money earmarked for rescue efforts and had missed opportunities to save Jews by focusing solely on the train. The next year, at the World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, rumors suggested that Kasztner had collaborated with the Nazis and enriched himself in the process. Lob, Dealing with Satan, pp. 225–26.
77. Ibid.
78. Kasztner, “The Report of the Jewish Rescue Committee.”
79. Lob, Dealing with Satan, pp. 225–26.
80. Ibid., pp. 242–43. He was the director of public relations to several cabinet-level ministries.
81. Ibid., p. 244.
82. Ibid., p. 245.
83. Hansi Brand and some in Kasztner’s family opposed his participation in the lawsuit. See Porter, Kasztner’s Train, p. 327; Weitz, The Man Who Was Murdered Twice, p. 104. The attorney general, Haim Cohen, later reported that the decision to sue was not up to Kasztner. Cohen, influenced by David Ben-Gurion, thought that no one should be allowed to accuse a senior government official of collaboration with the Nazis “without there being a response.” Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, trans. Haim Waltzman (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), pp. 263–64. Elizabeth Kasztner later claimed that Kasztner would not have taken action had not the Israeli attorney general given him this ultimatum.
84. Segev, The Seventh Million, p. 282.
85. The judge upheld the libel claim only with respect to Grunwald’s suggestion that Kasztner had financially profited from his dealings with the Nazis.
86. There is no English text of the entire opinion, which is, of course, in Hebrew. Any quotes are the translations from Lob, Dealing with Satan.
; 87. For an analysis of the contractual framing and its possible implications see Leora Bilsky, “Judging Evil in the Trial of Kasztner,” Law & History Review 19 (2001): 117.
88. The judge, some years later, expressed regret about using this expression, but the harm had been done. I will explore later the notion that as the quid pro quo for accepting Eichmann’s “gift” of rescuing some sixteen hundred of Hungarian elite, Kasztner had implicitly promised Eichmann that he would not alert the masses of Hungarian Jews about their fate.
89. Notably, most of the participants in the trial—the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, and the defendant—had spent the war in Palestine. Professor David Luban alluded to the idea of Kasztner as the “old European” as opposed to the “New Israeli,” stating: “Kasztner and the Judenräte had exhibited the typical sniveling mentality of the exile, the very opposite of the tough and combative mentality of Israelis.” David Luban, “A Man Lost in the Gray Zone,” Law & History Review 19 (2001): 172.
90. Lob, Dealing with Satan, p. 243.
91. Porter, Kasztner’s Train, pp. 330–31.
92. One Israeli scholar argues that at the time the Jewish Agency was aware of Kasztner’s efforts on Becher’s behalf and may have even supported his actions. She claims that Kasztner might have been acting on behalf of the state to promote secret interests. Consequently, she suggests the possibility that Kasztner might have lied in court to protect the government of Israel. See Shoshana Barri (Ishoni), “The Question of Kasztner’s Testimonies on Behalf of Nazi War Criminals,” Journal of Israeli History 18(2) (1997): 139. I find credible the possibility that Israeli officials knew, long before the trial, that Kasztner had helped Becher, but I don’t find persuasive that Kasztner’s motive for lying on the stand was to protect others. I believe his primary motive was to preserve his own reputation. Barri offers no direct evidence that anyone asked Kasztner to lie.
93. Kasztner’s standing was also damaged by testimony at the trial suggesting that he had failed to save, and perhaps even betrayed, three young Jewish parachutists who arrived in Hungary in the late spring of 1944 to organize Jewish resistance against the Nazis. Hanna Szenes, poet, was one of the trio. She was captured, tortured, and killed by the Nazis but never gave the Nazis any information. Her mother testified at the trial that after her daughter’s capture, she went to ask for Kasztner’s help in securing her release but that he refused to see her. There was also testimony at the trial that Kasztner persuaded the other two parachutists to give themselves up when they were being hidden in the same location as those who were to later be allowed to go on the Kasztner train. At the time of the trial, and to this day, all three parachutists are celebrated in Israel and are part of the heroic narrative of the “fighting Jews.” For an account of this affair, see Porter, Kasztner’s Train, pp. 185–89, 338. For the impact at the trial, see Lob, Dealing with Satan, pp. 247–51.
94. Lob, Dealing with Satan, p. 264.
95. Ibid., p. 264; Weitz, The Man Who Was Murdered Twice, pp. 273–74.
96. Criminal Appeal 232/55 Attorney General v. Grunwald, PD 12, 2017. Technically of course, Kasztner was not a party to the proceeding and the reversal of the district court’s ruling meant that Grunwald was convicted of libel. All five justices, however, agreed that historical claims of this sort should never have been tried by a court of law but should instead have been evaluated by a commission of inquiry. For an outstanding discussion of this case and of Chief Justice Agranat’s role and reasoning, see Pnina Lahav, Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Shimon Agranat and the Zionist Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
97. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Summit, 1988).
98. Kasztner’s postwar report does not include specific information on what he did on May 3. Professor Weitz cites Kasztner’s court testimony, in which Kasztner claimed he had issued a warning, telling Jewish leaders that because of the danger of deportation to extermination camps, anyone who was able to should flee and hide. Weitz, The Man Who Was Murdered Twice, p. 210, cites the court transcript from August 19, 1954. I believe the date given by Weitz for the testimony is incorrect, as Kasztner did not testify on that date. However, in his testimony on September 16, 1954, he did indeed claim that he had issued a warning in Cluj.
99. One of these witnesses was a Cluj local leader who met with Kasztner on May 3. The District Court refers to Yechiel Shmueli, David Rosner, Eliezer Rosental, and others who testified that had they been warned, they would have sought alternatives, including fleeing to Romania or going into hiding.
100. This is perhaps explained because appellate courts are supposed to defer to trial court findings based on the credibility of witnesses unless there is plain error. In his concurring opinion, Deputy Chief Justice Cheshin of the Supreme Court did not accept the District Court’s holding that Kasztner gave no warning because he found the facts ambiguous. He went on to argue that even if Kasztner knew about the risks and failed to warn, this did not prove that his motive was to help the Nazis. Criminal Appeal 232/55 Attorney General v. Grunwald, PD 12, 2017 at 2292.
101. David Luban, “A Man Lost in the Gray Zone,” Law & History Review 19 (2001): 171, suggests that “everyone” knew the ultimate plan was extermination, but there was no place to hide or to which to escape. See also Bauer, Jews for Sale? pp. 150–61.
102. Eichmann proceeded with such speed that by early summer of 1944, there were no Jews left in the provinces to warn.
103. See Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Conflict Resolution: A Cognitive Perspective,” in Barriers to Conflict Resolution, ed. Kenneth Arrow et al. (New York: Norton, 1995), p. 45, suggesting that in framing things under conditions of uncertainty, people will try to avoid losses.
104. R. F. Moore, “Caring for identified versus statistical lives: An evolutionary view of medical distributive justice,” Ethology and Sociobiology 17(6) (1996): 379–401.
105. On “optimistic overconfidence,” see Kahneman and Tversky, “Conflict Resolution: A Cognitive Perspective,” pp. 46–50.
106. Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 406.
107. The evidence is somewhat ambiguous. Some commentators suggest Kasztner never thought it was really possible. Others conclude that Kasztner came to believe his own arguments to Eichmann and others that World Jewry could really pull it off.
108. Porter, Kasztner’s Train, p. 170.
109. Bauer, Jews for Sale? p. 196. (Emphasis added.)
110. Szita, Trading in Lives, pp. 87–88. “An examination of the history of the four months following the German occupation of Hungary suggests that the tactics of the occupational apparatus, of Eichmann and his staff, actually worked out.” (Emphasis in original.)
111. After Kasztner’s death, when Kasztner couldn’t contradict him, Eichmann claimed that Kasztner had made such a deal.
112. When the train left Hungary, some called it a “Noah’s Ark” because it included a remarkable mixture of Jews. There were Zionists and anti-Zionists; Orthodox and secular Jews; Hungarians as well as Poles and Slovaks; children and elderly people; rich and poor; city sophisticates and rural farmers. In addition, “[s]ome people who did not belong to any of these categories jumped on the train or sneaked onto it and became part of the ark.” Bauer, Jews for Sale? p. 199. See also Lob, Dealing with Satan, pp. 269–71.
113. Kasztner might have had another motive to include members of his own family—to persuade others, many of whom thought this was a Nazi trick, that he, Kasztner, sincerely believed the train offered a better chance of survival than remaining in Cluj.
114. William Styron, Sophie’s Choice (New York: Vintage, 1979). Sophie committed suicide because she could not live with the psychological burden of having made this choice. Kasztner afterward wrote about the awful burden of having to make such decisions.
115. The philosopher Claudia Card writes that “knowingly to enlist others … in the betrayal, oppression or murder of those they love is as
diabolical an evil as I can imagine.” Claudia Card, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 216.
116. Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage, 1999). Bok acknowledges that it would be appropriate for someone hiding a Jew in the basement to lie to the Nazi who knocks on the door and asks whether there are any Jews inside.
117. See Porter, Kasztner’s Train, Lob, Dealing with Satan, and Luban, “A Man Lost in the Gray Zone.” Gaylen Ross’s fascinating documentary film, Killing Kasztner (2008), which received widespread publicity in Israel, is very sympathetic. Yad Vashem, the Israeli museum devoted to memorializing the Holocaust, only recently began exhibiting a display on Kasztner. In July 2007, the museum invited—for the first time—train survivors to participate in a ceremony marking their rescue.
118. Professor Ladislaus Lob, one of those rescued on Kasztner’s train, has written: “Kasztner was ambitious, overbearing and devious, but also … had a sharp mind, remarkable diplomatic skills, enormous courage, the ability to make difficult decisions and the determination to perform his task without regard to his own comfort and safety. Many of his traits may seem less than admirable in our relatively normal circumstances, but in those chaotic times they were precisely what was needed to carry on a relationship with the Germans.” Lob, Dealing with Satan, p. 75.
5: WINSTON CHURCHILL
1. Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years: Memoirs, 1939–1945 (London: Muller, 1957), p. 335, quoted in John Lukacs’s outstanding history, Five Days in London: May 1940 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 4.
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