Books A traitor in Budapest Rudolf Kasztner was not a hero but an unscrupulous Nazi collaborator, insists British historian Paul Bogdanor in his new book By Tibor Krausz REZSŐ KASZTNER was a much-maligned Was Kasztner, the de facto head of the Bogdanor’s book is a meticulously re- hero of the Holocaust. Or he was a villain- Zionist Aid and Rescue Committee in Bu- searched, cogently argued and at times ous Nazi collaborator. It depends who you dapest, eagerly liaising with Adolf Eich- riveting indictment of Kasztner, which ask and how you look at it. Over 70 years mann and his henchmen so as to save any is bound to reopen debate on the wartime after the end of World War II and almost 60 Hungarian Jews he could from deportation Zionist leader’s role in the destruction of years after his death, the Jewish-Hungarian and certain death in Auschwitz-Birkenau? Hungary’s Jewish community. Zionist leader remains a highly controver- Or was he doing so out of sheer self-inter- sial figure. est in order to make himself indispensable IN APRIL and May 1944, the author To his defenders, like Israeli histori- to the Nazis by helping send hundreds of demonstrates at length, Kasztner knew an Shoshana Ishoni-Barri and Hungar- thousands of other Jews blindly to their fate full well that the Nazis were busy deport- ian-born Canadian writer Anna Porter, through willful deception? ing Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, where the author of “Kasztner’s Train” (2007), In his book “Kasztner’s Crime,” Brit- the gas chambers awaited them. Yet he Kasztner (who later changed his name ish author and researcher Paul Bogdanor covered for Eichmann in the latter’s cyn- to Rudolf Kastner) was a plucky and re- seeks to settle the debate once and for all. ical ploy whereby the German architect sourceful mensch who single-handedly Kasztner, the author argues, was guilty as of Hungary’s genocide sought to buy saved a trainload of Jews, including his charged. And that fact, he asserts, needs to himself time for the mass murder of Hun- own relatives, during one of the Holo- be reiterated in the face of renewed attempts gary’s Jews by promising to spare them caust’s darkest days – the mass deportation to rehabilitate the Jewish-Hungarian lawyer in exchange for $2 million in cash and of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in the from Transylvania, in today’s Romania, 10,000 trucks from the Allies. By so doing, spring and summer of 1944. To his detrac- who became a leader of Hungarian Jewry in Kasztner knowingly aided the Nazis with tors, like the late Jewish-American writer Budapest in 1944-45. their subterfuge and helped lull local Jews Ben Hecht, who condemned the Hungarian “Over the past decade, several books and into a false sense of security. Jew in “Perfidy,” his 1961 book of report- a major film ‘Killing Kasztner’ have paint- This proved vital because Eichmann’s age, Kasztner was a moser, a traitor, who ed Kasztner as a hero,” Bogdanor tells The small team of SS stalwarts who were tasked betrayed his 800,000 fellow Hungarian Jerusalem Report. “This year [Israeli play- with the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews just so he could save his own skin. wright] Motti Lerner’s play championing Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau feared that, The facts of Kasztner’s actions in the him will be revived. Most of the Holocaust even with the help of 20,000 Hungarian months following the Nazis’ occupation survivors who spoke out against Kasztner gendarmes, they would be outnumbered if of Hungary in March 1944 are scarcely in are no longer here to challenge his apol- Hungarian Jews, knowing their impending much doubt: they have long been docu- ogists. We all have a moral obligation to fate, fled or resisted, just as the residents of mented and dissected, explored and eval- preserve the testimony of these Holocaust the Warsaw Ghetto had done the year be- uated. It’s his reasons for what he did that survivors.” fore. Hungary’s Jews didn’t flee or rise up, still divide opinion. Challenge those apologists he duly does. Bogdanor posits, thanks in no small part to 42 THE JERUSALEM REPORT FEBRUARY 6, 2017 WIKIPEDIA WIKIPEDIA Rudolf Kasztner in a broadcasting booth at Kol Yisrael radio station, where he hosted a program in Hungarian Kasztner’s lies and deception. then promptly deported en masse. “Eich- zis on behalf of Hungary’s Jews were pro- Shortly after the Nazis occupied Hunga- mann performed his grisly task with ex- ceeding well. “Kasztner’s negotiations suc- ry in March 1944 – in response to secret traordinary speed and efficiency: for eight ceeded only in enhancing his own status,” plans by the country’s head of state Admi- weeks, beginning in mid-May 1944, he was Bogdanor argues. “So rapid was Kaszt- ral Miklós Horthy, Hitler’s now dithering able to load Jews onto the death trains at the ner’s ascent that his committee managed to ally who had sought to sue for peace with rate of up to twelve thousand souls per day,” usurp the political contacts with the Nazis the Allies in the face of looming German Bogdanor notes. Within a mere two months, from the official Judenrat [Jewish council], defeat – hundreds of thousands of Jews some 400,000 Jews would be dead. which increasingly deferred to his wishes. were rounded up and cloistered in crowded Meanwhile, Kasztner acquiesced in the Eichmann’s officers had not, of course, be- makeshift ghettos, from where they were charade that his negotiations with the Na- stowed this extraordinary promotion on the THE JERUSALEM REPORT FEBRUARY 6, 2017 43 Books head of the rescue committee for free. The and flee, which could have exposed him to tion is: Why? price for the rise of Kasztner would be paid Eichmann’s wrath. Kasztner didn’t act not out of spite or vi- by the Jewish population of Hungary.” Worse: Kasztner continued lying to his carious bloodlust; he did so out of calculat- foreign Zionist contacts, including David ed self-interest. By collaborating with the KASZTNER REVELED in his newfound Ben-Gurion, about his negotiations with Nazis wholeheartedly, he wanted to avoid status and the perks that came with it: he the Nazis on behalf of Hungarian Jews by jeopardizing, at any cost, the special privi- could travel around unimpeded and did not portraying what he knew was a charade as leges he received from them. In the process, have to wear the yellow star that marked all a promising avenue for rescue operations. however, he ended up playing a pivotal other Jews. To keep those perks, Kasztner He did so on orders from Eichmann and role in the death of half a million Hungar- was willing to sell out his coreligionists. unwittingly admitted as much in an aside ian Jews by helping to buy enough time for This he did by concealing from them the in one of his postwar testimonies. “As the the Germans and their Hungarian allies to contents of a secret eyewitness report, the ghettos in Hungary were being emptied at murder thousands of people daily… all the so-called Auschwitz Protocols, which he maximum speed and with utmost cruelty, while pretending that the Nazis were will- received in April 1944 from two Jewish es- the Zionist leaders in Palestine became the ing to let those very same Jews go free for capees from Auschwitz about the extent of naive victims of a calculated deception by a ransom. Kasztner chose to “sacrifice his mass murder going on there and the plans the killers,” Bogdanor writes. “In this de- conscience to his ambition” is how Bogdan- being put in place for the extermination ception, the head of the Jewish rescue com- or sees it. of Hungarian Jews. Rather than alert the mittee in Budapest played a key part.” It’s of course doubtful whether Kasz- Jewish deportees, he let them persist in the tner would have been able to make any belief that they were being taken to a labor The price for the rise difference, even had he raised the alarm camp in Hungary, not to an extermination in time. But his active collusion with the camp in Poland. of Kasztner would Nazis helped prevent any genuine rescue After the war, Kasztner claimed that he efforts from being even considered by lo- had tried to warn local Jewish communities be paid by the cal Jewish leaders or their foreign contacts. but in vain. There might have been some Jewish population of “Eichmann wanted to gain time to murder truth to that assertion insofar as several oth- the Jewish population of Hungary: as he er Jewish leaders, too, assisted the Nazis in Hungary saw it, the offer of rescue negotiations their deceit, either out of fear or ignorance. would undermine any genuine possibility Bogdanor will have none of that excuse, of rescue,” Bogdanor insists. To that end, however. The author, who scoured archives Worse still: Kasztner also misled his own Kasztner “converted the rescue committee for unpublished materials and drew on the colleagues on the Zionist rescue committee from an underground network into a client transcripts of both Kasztner’s and Eich- in Budapest. He told them that Eichmann institution under the official protection of mann’s trials in Jerusalem for his conclu- was keeping his word about staying mass the murderers.” sions, insists that contemporary eyewitness executions in Auschwitz, even though he Ironically, it was his biggest reward for accounts belie those claims. “Kasztner knew the opposite was true.