Becher languished in jail for several months while the Americans determined whether to try him for war crimes. Luck, however, was about to waltz on his shoulders—this time in the form of Dr. Israel Rezsö(Rudolph) Kastner. Becher’s erstwhile Hungarian acquaintance and partner in the selling of Jewish lives for gold and jewels appeared suddenly that July. He arrived from England, where he had been venerated by the English as a hero since September of 1945. Kastner had executed a sworn statement in England on September 13, 1945, in which he claimed that “SS Standartenführer Kurt Becher took me under his wing … He was anxious to demonstrate after the Fall of 1944 that he disapproved the deportation and extermination and endeavored consistently to furnish me with the evidence he tried to save the Jews.” At Nuremberg Kastner portrayed himself to the Americans as an important Jewish voice speaking for the Jewish Agency and the Jewish World Congress. He had arrived, he boldly announced to the stunned Americans, to plead for the release of Kurt Becher. Robert Kempner, a representative of the primary American prosecutor in Nuremberg, introduced Kastner to several prominent judicial officials including Lieutenant Kurt Ponger and Captain Walter H Rapp, members of the American legal delegation who were also preparing cases against major Nazis like Hermann Göring and Ernst Kaltenbrunner.
To the best of Kempner’s knowledge Kastner had traveled to Nuremberg voluntarily to testify on Becher’s behalf. The fact that a prominent Jew would travel at his own expense across Europe to assist in the defense of a prominent former SS officer shocked many observers. Until the Hungarian arrived, Becher was just one of many under Kempner’s jurisdiction awaiting formal indictment. The persistent Kastner visited with the judicial officials regularly. His repeated pleas on Becher’s behalf slowly but inevitably tilted the balance in Becher’s favor. From that day on the Americans extended to him many kindnesses and courtesies withheld from other inmates.11
The results of Kastner’s efforts were soon noticeable to anyone paying attention. Several people on Captain Rapp’s staff begin treating Kastner like royalty and went out of their way to help him. Rapp even noticed that court officials engaged in friendly conversations with Kurt Becher, behavior the American captain considered both against the rules and shocking given his SS background. When he complained, Rapp’s superiors told him that Becher was a special case and the behavior was justified. After all, how many times does a prominent member of the Jewish race voluntarily offer proof that a former high-standing SS officer personally intervened to save thousands of Jews? Therefore, went the mushy reasoning, Becher simply could not be a war criminal.12
Soon after his arrival Kastner submitted the sworn statement (Document 2605-PS) on Becher’s behalf that he had executed in England: the SS officer had helped save tens of thousands of lives and had worked hard during the war’s final year to slow down and even stop the mass execution of Hungary’s Jews. Maybe the Americans were right after all—they had found the only white sheep in the black SS. A stalemate of sorts ensued as the fervor to investigate and prosecute Becher waned. Captain Rapp was smart enough to see the way the tide was running: SS Standartenführer Kurt Andreas Ernst Becher would never be prosecuted. Someone, somewhere, was protecting this man. Rapp and his staff had better things to do than waste their time on a dead end. According to Rapp, “all further investigations … were discontinued when Kastner informed them about Becher’s self-sacrificing, if not heroic deeds.” Richard Gutman, the man who had interrogated Becher, also confirmed that Dr. Kastner’s intercession led to a halt of his investigation. An obvious war criminal with intimate ties to Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann was about to go free. Within a few weeks the SS’s most opportunistic survivor was transferred from the jail at Nuremberg to the voluntary witness wing of the Nuremberg prison. He was one step away from becoming a free man.
From the witness wing, Becher followed with deep interest the ongoing trials of the major war criminals sitting in the court’s dock. The large number of death sentences could not have come as a surprise to him. In early 1947 he felt compelled to pen a nineteen-page “explanation” of his alleged humanitarian activities in Hungary during 1944-1945. It was impossible to report everything in detail, he wrote, but he had worked “at great personal risk” to save lives. According to his calculations, between 120,000 and 150,000 Hungarian Jews were not deported from Budapest because of his efforts. The 80,000 Jews crammed into the Budapest ghetto were not evacuated to the death camps because of his objections and exertions on their behalf. He alone, he continued, had helped mold and influence Heinrich Himmler’s orders seeking a halt to mass executions and deportations during the war’s final months. Credit for gaining humane treatment of Jews in several concentration camps, and for the destruction of the gas chamber and incinerators in Auschwitz near war’s end, he averred, should be deposited on his doorstep alone. The master of half-truths and outright lies was still busy weaving his safety net. In truth, he was not a savior of people, but rather a manager of lives. If he ever saved anyone it was only a means to an end, an avenue to increase the holdings and wealth of the SS at the expense of the innocent. He was a good SS officer, and in Hungary and elsewhere he had done his duty well.
At some point Becher was allowed to move into an apartment close to Nuremberg during the final months of his detention. How long this house arrest charade continued is not known. Nor do we know exactly when he was released from custody, but by Christmas 1947 or shortly after the turn of the year 1948, Kurt Becher was a free man.13
While Becher was busy writing his outrageous apologia, others were determining what would happen to the ill-gotten fruits of his Nazi past. Those treasures seized in Austria and deemed “of an unrestitutable character,” concluded the Americans, would be turned over to the International Government Committee on Refugees and the Jewish Agency for Palestine. A large portion of this confiscated fortune included what was labeled “the Kurt Becher Deposit,” a holding containing “gold coins, bullion, and assorted jewelry.” The files inventorying this “looted property” were numbered S 3.3001 SA, and S 3.33002 SA. The fortune had been sitting for almost two years in the Austrian National Bank in Salzburg. On March 10, 1947, tens of millions of dollars worth of gold and jewels—including Becher’s large cache—were loaded onto several trucks and driven to Buchs, Austria, on the Swiss border. At 5:00 p.m. the following day, Drs. Dagobert Arian and Meir Benzion Meiry, Palestine citizens and members of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, signed for the valuables, assumed full responsibility for the property, and vanished into Switzerland. Exactly what happened to this booty is unknown.14
Dr. Kastner’s efforts on Becher’s behalf would come back to haunt him. After his intervention in Nuremberg, Kastner and his family emigrated to Palestine. There, he joined Ben-Gurion’s government and occupied several prominent positions, including spokesman of the Trade and Industry Ministry, Director of Broadcasting in Hungarian and Rumanian, chief editor of the Hungarian newspaper Uj Kelet, and Chairman of the Organization of Hungarian Jewry. His past, which had been running just a few steps behind him, finally caught up with him in 1953. A staunchly pro-Zionist journalist named Malchiel Greenwald published a pamphlet in Jerusalem accusing Kastner of collaborating with the Nazis—and worse. The doctor, he claimed, had knowingly assisted the Nazis in their extermination of 500,000 Hungarian Jews. Greenwald called for a public inquiry. Kastner was a conspicuous member of the ruling party. The Attorney General of the State of Israel stepped up on his behalf and prosecuted Greenwald for criminal libel. The case blossomed into one of the largest and most sensational litigations in the history of the young country.
The trial quickly careened out of control for Kastner and the government. No longer was the issue whether what had run out of Greenwald’s pen was credible, but exactly what role Kastner had played during the war—and especially his controversial collaboration with Kurt Becher. News leaked out that Kastner had saved the SS officer from the gallows by intervening on his behalf at Nuremberg. Kastner’s response can only be
explained by a guilty conscience: he denied having ever assisted Becher. Documents and testimony were introduced that proved he was lying. Greenwald effectively left the litigation stage. Kastner, a mere witness in a criminal case brought by the state of Israel, had (at least metaphorically) changed places with the accused. The matter was a general embarrassment for the Israel government and dragged on for months on end. On June 21, 1955, Greenwald was acquitted on three of the four original counts brought against him. The court found that Greenwald had leveled “an unproven accusation” regarding the fourth charge (that Kastner had collected money from the Nazis for his help) and fined him a single Israeli pound. The judge also ordered that the government pay Greenwald two hundred Israeli pounds for court costs.15
Greenwald’s general acquittal, coupled with the unusually harsh language of the court, was a symbolic conviction of Kastner. Judge Benjamin Halevi, one of the judges who would try Adolf Eichmann three years later, wrote:
The support given by the extermination leaders to Kastner’s Rescue Committee proves that indeed there was a place for Kastner and his friends in their Final Solution for the Jews of Hungary—their total annihilation. The Nazi’s 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.….
All of Kastner’s answers in his final testimony were a constant effort to evade this truth. Kastner has tried to escape through every crack he could find in the wall of evidence. When one crack was sealed in his face, he darted quickly to another.
Judge Halevi was not quite finished. Blunt words sealed Kastner’s historical fate:
Kastner perjured himself knowingly in his testimony before this court when he denied he had interceded in Becher’s behalf. Moreover, he concealed the important fact that he interceded for Becher in the name of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish World Congress.… As to the contents of Kastner’s affidavit, it was enough for the defense to prove Becher was a war criminal. It was up to the prosecution to remove Becher from this status, if they wished to negate the affidavit. The Attorney General admitted in his summation that Becher was a war criminal. The lies in the contents of Kastner’s affidavit, the lies in his testimony concerning the document, and Kastner’s knowing participation in the activities of Nazi war criminals, and his participation in the last minute fake rescue activities—all these combine to show one overwhelming truth—that this affidavit was not given in good faith. Kastner knew well, as he himself testified, that Becher had never stood up against the stream of Jewish extermination, as Kastner has declared in the affidavit. The aims of Becher and his superior, Himmler, were not to save Jews but to serve the Nazi regime with full compliance.
Why had Kastner intervened on Becher’s behalf knowing the SS officer was a mass murderer? The answer, concluded Judge Halevi, was clear: “Just as the Nazi war criminals knew they needed an alibi and hoped to achieve it by the rescue of a few Jews at the eleventh hour, so Kastner also needed an alibi for himself.” By extension Kastner’s fall from grace was an indirect conviction of Becher. Dr. Shmuel M. Tamir, Greenwald’s defense attorney, was the first person who looked into Becher’s soul and saw it for what it was: a black and cold morass. For the first time in a public forum Becher was portrayed for what he was: a ruthless war criminal who deserved a hemp dance. But he was a second or even third-tier malefactor, many years had passed, and few had any desire to reopen the case against him.
Two months later the verdict was appealed. The five judges sitting on the high court bench published their findings on January 17-19, 1958. Two upheld Judge Halevi’s verdict; three found Greenwald guilty on three counts of libel. But all five agreed that in the face of overwhelming evidence and knowledge to the contrary, Kastner’s efforts had saved Becher at Nuremberg from his well deserved punishment. Rampant rumors that Kastner himself was about to be brought up on charges of collaboration with the Nazis swept through Israel.
An interesting aspect of the Kurt Becher case lingers even today: almost all of the official documents collected by American investigators relating to his case have gone missing. Where are they? Who removed them from the files? Who ordered them removed? Were they removed for security reasons? More likely than not, these documents contained significant evidence that Becher had indeed committed serious war crimes. The publication of these interviews, interrogations, and other written memoranda would embarrass the American delegation and government that had ultimately freed him.
Benno Selcke, Jr., who had applied for Becher’s transfer to the voluntary witness wing in the Nuremberg prison, came face-to-face with the former SS officer on a street in Frankfurt many years later. An embarrassing bit of small talk ensued. A short time later Selcke received a letter from Becher offering him “something” for the nice treatment he had given him in Nuremberg. Selcke cannot recall whether the offer was for money or employment. Selcke doubts Becher’s freedom was won solely because of Kastner’s intervention. Rather, members of the American team simply failed to vigorously prosecute him for his crimes. Why? The Americans, he explained, were just not that interested in Becher before Kastner appeared. It was almost as if they were looking for an excuse to free him. The Hungarian’s efforts provided the whitewash needed to justify releasing Kurt Becher.16
Except for Selcke, most people who had anything to do with the Bremen-based millionaire treat the matter with some circumspection. Robert Kempner, one member of the prosecuting team at Nuremberg, sent a letter from his office in the United States in 1963 to the investigative magazine Sie und Er. “If, in any shape or form, Dr. Kempner should be mentioned as a protector of Becher’s,” the letter threatened, “the author and publisher [Sie und Er ] will have to bear “the consequences.”17
Chapter 12
“If any action is contemplated to remove Hirschfeld from his present precarious position … it [should] be done in such a manner as to preclude any further embarrassment to the CIC.”
— Counter Intelligence Corps Report
Fall from Grace: Walter Hirschfeld and the Counter Intelligence Corps
On November 15, 1945, CIC Special Agent Robert A. Gutierrez sat down at his desk to prepare a lengthy report of the recent remarkable events he had overseen. A substantial portion of the memorandum concerned the stellar role former SS officer Walter Hirschfeld had played entrapping Josef Spacil, locating Franz Konrad, and interviewing Gretl Fegelein and her in-laws, Frau and Herr Fegelein. Gutierrez’s report included a recommendation that Hirschfeld be officially “denazified.”
Hirschfeld, wrote Gutierrez,
has a natural talent for undercover work; he is very confident of his abilities, and knows the whole set up of the Nazi regime. In addition, he is German himself and knows the mentality of the German people. Hirschfeld knows the whole structure of the SS in detail, including personal acquaintances with several of Himmler’s personnel. He also has his blood type tattooed under his left arm, and this mark gives him entree into SS circles in an undercover capacity. All of these qualifications make him very valuable for work with U. S. Intelligence.… In addition, this agent feels safe in stating that Hirschfeld is definitely against the National Socialist Party and feels it is part of his duty to help break up the party completely and to establish a democratic form of government in Germany…. He can be relied upon to carry out intelligence assignments with good judgment and complete honesty.1
Gutierrez’s intent was to do justice, but his glowing assessment of Hirschfeld was wide of the mark.
At the end of December 1945, a broad-shouldered man i
n a gray SS leather coat rang the doorbell at a home in Heidelberg. Owner Frau Martin opened the door. After the visitor introduced himself he requested to see Dr. Marianne Six, an attractive young pediatrician who rented a room in Martin’s house. The pair conversed quietly for about twenty minutes before the stranger left. The visitor, Six excitedly told Frau Martin, is “an old SS comrade of my brother. He will help Franz, maybe he will be able [to] obtain papers for him too.” She was referring to SS Brigadeführer (Brigadier General) Franz Six, a war criminal who had gone underground immediately after the war ended. Marianne had agreed to meet with the enigmatic visitor again the next day at the Odeonkellar, a local tavern. Her friends, who had seen him enter the home, warned her to beware of the stranger and stay away from him. He looked to them like “a habitual drinker” with a bulbous red nose complete with a blood wart. “No,” she replied defensively, “he is a good man.” She had questioned him closely and he knew the characteristics and number of the RSHA department for which her brother had worked. As scheduled, the pair met again the following day at the tavern. When Marianne returned home she told a close friend that she had found a decent man whom she would like to marry. His name was Walter Hirschfeld.
To the mortification of her friends Marianne left with the former SS asylum patient a few days later for Stuttgart. The purpose of the trip was ostensibly to “help” former members of the SS remove their blood-type tattoos by injecting bleach under the skin directly into the dye. The mark, which consisted of letters denoting the universal blood type codes (A, B, AB or O), was about one-quarter of an inch long. It was needled into the underside of the upper left forearm about eight inches from the elbow and was required for everyone who served in the Waffen-SS (although not everyone received it). The tattoos were used after the war to identify whether a man had served in the organization. Removing the mark would help prevent arrest and shield the past from prying eyes. Marianne’s efforts to remove the tattoos was only partially effective, but she returned “very low spirited” for a completely different reason. Someone had discovered what was taking place and all 180 of the SS men who had appeared for treatment were apprehended and imprisoned. What she did not know was that the entire affair had been a set up to lure SS men into a trap. Hirschfeld, Dr. Six’s new friend and probable lover, was an undercover agent for the CIC.2
Nazi Millionaires Page 24