| Kastner train | |
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Rudolf Kastner |
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| Participants | Rudolf Kastner, the Jewish-Hungarian Aid and Rescue Committee, Adolf Eichmann |
| Location | Nazi-controlled Budapest, Hungary |
| Date | June 30, 1944 |
| Result | 1,684 Jews escaped from Budapest on the train to Switzerland |
The Kastner train was a trainload of almost 1,684 Jews who, on June 30, 1944, escaped from Nazi-controlled Hungary, eventually arrived in Switzerland, while some 450,000 members of the Hungarian Jewish community were deported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
The train was named after Rudolf Kastner (original spelling Kasztner), one of the leaders of the Hungarian Aid and Rescue Committee, who negotiated with senior SS officer Adolf Eichmann to allow a number of Jews to escape in exchange for money, gold, and diamonds.[1][2][3] The train included passengers from all social classes and from all over Hungary. There were 40 rabbis, including Joel Teitelbaum, the Satmar rebbe; well-known Zionists; scholars; two opera singers; journalists; officers in the Hungarian army; and Slovak and Polish (Jewish) refugees.[4][5][6] There were 972 female and 712 male passengers, including 252 children. The oldest passenger was 82; the youngest was born in one of the wagons on the fourth day of the journey.[7][8]
Rudolf Vrba, an Auschwitz escapee and co-author of one of the first reports on the Auschwitz camp, said, "Kastner paid for those 1,684 lives with his silence."[9]
Kastner became a spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Israel after the war.[10] He was assassinated there in March 1957, after an Israeli court ruled, during a libel case brought by the Israeli government on behalf of Kastner, that he had "sold his soul to the devil" by selecting some Jews to be saved, while failing to alert the rest of the community to its fate.[11] The verdict was overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel in January 1958 in a vote of 4 to 1.[12]
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On June 30, a train with an uncertain number of Jews left Budapest. On July 9, it reached Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where 1,684 arrivals were registered: in the early stages of the journey some passengers had left the train, while others joined it.[13] Three suitcases of cash, jewels, gold, and shares of stock, amounting to about $1000 per person, were paid to SS officer Kurt Becher in ransom.[14]
Despite Eichmann's promise that the train would go directly to a neutral country, the Jews were held in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in a special section for some months. 318 were taken to Switzerland in August and the remainder in December. There were a number of births and deaths, and about 17 were detained in Bergen-Belsen by the Germans on various pretexts. The total saved was about 1,670.[15] The group were all housed in the Swiss village of Caux, near Montreux, in requisitioned former luxury hotels. The Orthodox Jews were housed in the Regina (formerly the Grand Hotel), and the others in the Hotel Esplanade (formerly Caux-Palace). http://www.musee-cauxexpo.ch/en/krise.php In the park of the former Caux-Palace, there is now a memorial plaque and tree (http://www.caux.iofc.org/en/jewish-refugees).Among those who escaped by this route was Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the rebbe of Satmar, and his whole court, leaders of Orthodox and Neolog communities, members of Zionist youth movements, Polish and Slovak refugees, and many others. Controversially, Kastner included a contingent of 388 people, including several family members and friends, from his home town of Cluj.[16][17][18]
The transport played a major role in the Kastner trial in Israel in 1954, in which the government of Israel sued Malchiel Gruenwald, a hotelier, a political pamphleteer and stamp collector, for libel after he self-published a pamphlet charging Kastner, by then an Israeli government spokesman, with collaboration. A major detail of Gruenwald's allegations was that Kastner had agreed to the rescue in return for agreeing to keep silent on the fate of the mass of Hungarian Jews who were being transported to Auschwitz. This accusation was accepted by the court, leading Judge Halevi to declare that Kastner had "sold his soul to the devil."[19] In 1958, most of the ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel. However, all five Supreme Court Judges upheld Judge Halevi's verdict on the "criminal and perjurious way" in which Kastner after the war had saved Nazi war criminal Kurt Becher.[20] Judge Silberg summed up the Supreme Court finding on this point: "Greenwald has proven beyond any reasonable doubt this grave charge."[21]
The issue remains the subject of heated debate.[22]