Rescue in Hungary and Israel Kasztner
by Dr. Robert Rozett

The story of rescue attempts in Hungary during the last year of the World War II in Europe has been cloaked in controversy. Some of the controversy centers on the arrest by the Soviets of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who played an important role in rescue activities and was taken by them soon after they liberated the Pest side of Budapest. The plea to bomb Auschwitz-Birkenau and the railroad lines leading to it, and the Allies refusal to do so is another element in the storm regarding rescue in Hungary. From a very different angle, a major source of emotion laden, discussion was highlighted in a trial held in Israel in the mid 1950s. The trial began when the Hungarian Zionist leader and co-chairman of the Budapest Relief and Rescue Committee, Israel Rezso Kasztner accused the journalist Malchiel Grunwald of libel. In that famous trial Judge Benjamin Halevi ruled that while negotiating with the SS, Kasztner had “sold his soul to the devil.” Not long afterward, Kasztner was assassinated on a beach in Tel Aviv, and not long after that, a higher court overturned Halevi’s verdict.
Much has been written about Kasztner and the atmosphere of rescue in Budapest from spring 1944 through the early winter of 1945. Many of the earliest writings that resulted from the trial were not works of historical inquiry, but more polemical in nature than anything else. Perhaps the most polemical and least historical work of all is Perfidy, by Ben Hecht. Since the late 1970s historical research has addressed the issue of rescue in Budapest, always touching on, if not focusing on Kasztner’s role. Among these important works of research are The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (1979), American Jewry and the Holocaust (1981) and Jews for Sale? (1994), all by Yehuda Bauer. Asher Cohen’s important study of the Zionist youth underground, The Halutz Resistance in Hungary, 1942-1944 (1986), discusses the rescue primarily from the angle of the young men and women who helped safe-guard Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation. In his writings and in the volumes he has edited, the dean of Holocaust studies regarding Hungary, Randolph Braham has also presented much material about Kasztner and his activities. Dov Dinur used Kasztner’s personal archives and other material he found to write the Hebrew language monograph Kasztner, New Findings About the Man and his Activities (1987). In my own PhD. thesis, The Relationship Between Rescue and Revolt, Jewish Rescue and Revolt in Slovakia and Hungary, During the Holocaust (1988), I wrote about Kaztner’s activities, based in the documentary record. Yehiam Weitz presented the Grunwald-Kasztner trial in its historical perspective in his Hebrew language The Man Who Was Murdered Twice (1995). Lastly, and most recently, in his book Hitler, the Allies and the Jews (2004), Shlomo Aronson has dealt with Kasztner, rescue in Hungary and the role of the Allies in it.
Although in the public mind, the impact of Halevi’s verdict has been strongly imprinted, among the historians, Kasztner’s role has been seen much more judiciously for many years now. The arrival of Kasztner’s personal archive at Yad Vashem, along with several other archival sources that have been acquired by Yad Vashem since the 1990s - Hansi Brand’s Archive, the original diary of Otto Komoly (Kasztner’s co-chairman of the Relief and Rescue Committee), and material from the International Red Cross about rescue in Hungary - are important sources for continued scholarly inquiry into attempts to rescue Hungarian Jews toward the end of the war.

Kasztner Archives Presented to Yad Vashem

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