Kastner train
The Kastner train left Budapest, Hungary, at or soon after 11 p.m. on 30 June 1944, carrying over 1,684 Jews to Switzerland after, it is alleged, a large ransom was paid by Swiss Orthodox Jew Yitzchak Sternbuch. The train was named after Rudolf Kastner (aka Kasztner), a Jewish lawyer and journalist, who was a founding member of the so-called Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, a group that is said to have smuggled Jews out of occupied Europe during the alleged Holocaust. Kastner is said to have negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, the German SS officer in charge of Reichsbahn activities relating to trains carrying Jews.
Its passengers were chosen from a wide range of social classes, and included around 273 children. The wealthiest 150 passengers paid US$1,500 each to cover their own and the others' journey. After a journey of several weeks, the passengers reached Switzerland in August.
Note
This begs the question that if the National Socialists were intent on exterminating Europe's Jews why would they have permitted and even organised this "escape"? Moreover, this is not the only example of Jews being aided by the SS to leave Europe. On 17 May 1944 the SS provided special transport for 32 members of the very rich Jewish Chorin and Weiss families out of Hungary. They firstly went by car to Vienna, then by air, arriving on board a large, special aeroplane of the German Lufthansa in Lisbon, Portugal, on June 25th. They had 1210 kilograms of luggage with them and according to Reuters news correspondent: "the customs officials in Lisbon had never seen such as mass of jewels" as carried in these families' luggage.[1]
Rudolf Kastner
Kastner emigrated to Israel in 1947. He was a spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry when his negotiations with Eichmann became the subject of controversy. Kastner said he had been told in April or May 1944 of the suspicions of mass murder inside Auschwitz. Allegations spread after the war that he had done nothing to warn the wider community, but had focused instead on trying to save a smaller number. Questions were also asked about the so-called "ransom" monies paid. The inclusion on the train of his family, as well as 388 people from the ghetto in his home town of Kolozsvár, reinforced the view of his critics that his actions had been self-serving.
The allegations culminated in Kastner being accused in a newsletter of having been a Nazi collaborator. The government sued for libel on his behalf, and the defendant's lawyer turned the trial into an indictment of the Mapai (Socialist Party) leadership and its alleged failure to help Europe's Jews. The judge found against the government, ruling that Kastner had "sold his soul to the devil" by negotiating with Eichmann and selecting some Jews to be saved, while failing to alert others. Kastner was subsequently assassinated in Tel Aviv in March 1957.[2] Nine months later, the Supreme Court of Israel overturned most of the lower court's ruling, stating in a 4–1 decision that the judge had "erred seriously".[3]
Sources
- ↑ Ferenc Chorin (of the Jewish Chorin-Weiss heavy industrial plants in Hungary) wrote to the Hungarian Regent Miklos Horthy en route regarding the industries. See: The Confidential Papers of Admiral Horthy edited by Miklós Szinai & László Szúcs, Corvina Press, Budapest, 1965, pps:290-294.
- ↑ New York Times (16 March 1957 and 8 January 1958).
- ↑ New York Times (16 January 1958, 17 January 1958), and 18 January 1958; Time magazine (27 January 1958)
