Kastner Papers to Yad Vashem (Perfidy)

Arutz 7 ^ | 7/25/2007 | Hillel Fendel

[Nachum]

(IsraelNN.com) Three boxes of documents belonging to Israel Kastner, whose negotiations with Eichmann for Jews remain controversial to this day, were presented to Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem this week.

The private archives, comprising three boxes of letters of correspondence with Nazi officials, Jewish organizations and families, were presented in an official ceremony on Sunday. In attendance were Kastner's daughter, his granddaughter Merav Michaeli (a popular television personality who MC'ed the event), survivors of the “Kasztner Train,” and others.

The papers, which also document Holocaust rescue efforts of the Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest, were given to the Holocaust museum by the historian Dov Dinur. Dinur received them in 1981 to help him research the Kastner Affair .

The Controversy
Kastner has long been a controversial figure in Israeli history. A leader of the Zionist movement in Hungary during World War II and the co-chairman of the Relief and Rescue Committee, Kastner aided Jewish refugees who reached Hungary during the first years of World War II.

In April 1944, a month after the invasion of Hungary by the Germans, the Committee began talks with the Nazis regarding the saving of Hungarian Jews in exchange for money, goods, and military equipment. These negotiations took place under the shadow of the deportations of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews. In June 1944, a trainload of 1,684 Jews traveled to Bergen-Belsen and eventually on to safety in Switzerland. A Yad Vashem statement says the negotiations also resulted in the diversion of 20,000 Hungarian Jews to an Austrian labor camp, preventing their expulsion to extermination camps.

In 1954, Kastner was accused by Malkiel Grunwald of having collaborated with the Nazis, and Grunwald was sued for libel. Concluding a two-year trial that gripped the nation, Judge Binyamin HaLevi acquitted Grunwald and found that Kastner had "sold his soul to the German Satan."

In 1958, Israel's Supreme Court overturned most of the judgment - a year after Kastner's assassination by a Holocaust survivor.

Some consider Kastner a hero who should be credited with the saving of the nearly 1,700 Jews on the "Kastner train." Yad Vashem Chairman Yosef Tommy Lapid, a former government minister and founder of the anti-religious and now-defunct Shinui party, said at the ceremony that Kastner was one of the Holocaust's great heroes. “There was no man in the history of the Holocaust who saved more Jews, and was subjected to more injustice than Israel Kastner,” Lapid said. “This is an opportunity to do justice to a man who was misrepresented and was a victim of a vicious attack that led to his death.”

Others, however, agree with Grunwald, who accused Kastner of a series of unforgivable crimes: "costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews;" testifying in Nuremburg in defense of SS Col. Kurt Becher, a high-ranking Gestapo official and murderer; saving "no fewer than 52 of his relatives, and… people with connections," and "making a fortune in the process;" saving many of his own townspeople; and of agreeing to keep quiet about the fate of the other tens or hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews who were murdered.

Kastner was serving as spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Trade when Grunwald published his pamphlet. Representing one side of the long-running controversy, his lone daughter Suzanne said at the ceremony, "I think the State of Israel has finally retrieved some of its lost honor over this entire affair."

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]

----------------------------

How ironic the Soros picture pops up in post 1. At least the documentation is preserved.

[DvdMom]

bump

[Ancesthntr]

“Perfidy” by Ben Hecht discusses the entire Kastner affair. It is available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Perfidy-Ben-Hecht/dp/0964688638?tag=dogpile-20

Read the customer reviews of the book - they generally give you much more of a flavor of the intense scandal that this was, of the accusations of complicity with the Nazis against average or poor Jews. This scandal rocked Israel, as well it should. The old Zionists were not quite what the history books say they were - they were a conniving bunch of self-interested elitists, who barely lifted a finger to help their brethren. It appears that the only ones who gave a damn were the Irgun, founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky and later lead by Menachem Begin. Irgun brought in Jews and weapons, both of which were “illegal” under British law of the time. By the way a short bio of Jabotinsky - a most fascinating man - is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze%27ev_Jabotinsky.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Another Zionist who worked to save Jewish lives in Europe was my late friend, Dr. William Perl (”The Four-Front War”, renamed “Operation Annihilate”). He used to tell me about trying to negotiate with Eichmann in a “trucks for Jews” effort aimed at saving about 10,000 Jewish hostages.
Eventhough it failed, Bill saved upwards of 40,000 Jewish children/youth by helping to create an underground/over the mountains program which got these people to Palestine or out of German-controlled areas.

For an interesting sidelight on Bill, see Richard Gallagher’s “Malmedy” book re Sen. Joseph MCCarthy’s attack on Perl based on pro-Nazi/pro-German constituents misinformation after WW2.