Killing Kasztner

Killing Kasztner is a feature-length theatrical documentary directed by Gaylen Ross. The film features the director and her search for the truth about Rezso Kasztner. The director first heard about Kasztner from a Hungarian woman while working on another documentary, Blood Money: Switzerland's Nazi Gold. Ross interviewed the woman who asserted that she had Kasztner to thank for her life . What Ross came to learn was that Kasztner was a Jew in Hungary whose negotiations with the Nazis during World War II resulted in the rescue of 1,700 Jews. And perhaps tens of thousands more Jews were saved from the gas chambers because of his negotiation. After Kasztner moved to Israel, in the 1950s, he was accused of being a collaborator and fought a vicious libel battle in a trial that condemned him as, "the man who sold his soul to the Devil." He was subsequently killed in 1957 in Tel Aviv.

Ross spent eight years researching and filming the documentary on Kasztner. She interviewed survivors who had been rescued by Kasztner, some of Kasztner's living relatives, the son of the opposing lawyer in Kasztner's case, historians, journalists, and eventually Kasztner's assassin, Ze'ev Eckstein.

The film premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival and has been critically acclaimed in Israel, Hungary, and the UK. It is scheduled for release in the United States on October 23, 2009.[1]

Contents

Pre-production

In June 2001, Ross was invited to film the only conference on Kasztner to occur in the United States. It took place at the new Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. What was supposed to be an academic forum exploded in bitter outrage. Accusations of Kasztner's collaboration with the Nazis were met with outrage by Kasztner survivors.

Kasztner's granddaughter, a young human rights lawyer, stood and faced the crowd. She wanted to know why her grandfather was still being blamed for the deaths of Jews he could not save? Ross wondered the same thing.

Synopsis

Kasztner's daughter and three granddaughters seek redemption for their family name. Some survivors of his transport want the shame erased from their rescue. Their lives, they have been told, were delivered at the expense of others. On the other side, a young and ineffective lawyer, whose father was responsible for Kasztner's legal defeat, wants to fulfill his father's wish: to keep the Kasztner name from joining the legion of Holocaust heroes.[2]

Ross details Kasztner's rescue efforts as well as the accusations against Kasztner and the trial. She tracks down the legacy of that murderous night and the man convicted for Kasztner's death: Ze'ev Eckstein.

In another mysterious twist to this already strange tale, Eckstein with the other conspirators spent only 7 years of their life-sentence in jail after their sentences were commuted on the recommendation of Israel's first Prime Minister, Ben Gurion.

Eckstein reveals step by step his transformation into an assassin. He tells Ross how he was 20 years-old when he was first employed by Israel's fledgling secret service. He then turned double agent by right wing extremists and saw his chance to make his name. In Eckstein's eyes he was avenging the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews whose deaths were blamed on Kasztner. As the film unfolds, Eckstein and Ross eventually revisit the scene of the crime, the first time he had ever been back.[3] What he tells Ross, he says, he has told no one else.

The film brings its audience, survivors, and the Kasztner family to the doorsteps of those who shape history.[4] To Yad Vashem in Israel, the world's memorial for the Holocaust, to the museums in New York, and to the concentration camp of Bergen Belsen where Kasztner's group was held hostage.

Most predominantly, the film sets up an extraordinary meeting between Kasztner's daughter and her father's assassin.

Background information

Negotiations

Rezso Kasztner was a lawyer and journalist originally from Cluj, on the Transylvania border. He later became a leader of the small Zionist rescue group, Va'adat Ezrah Vehatzalah (Vaada), or Aid and Rescue Committee, in Budapest during World War II. Part of his involvement with the organization was to negotiate with senior SS officer, Adolf Eichmann, to arrange the release of Hungarian Jews to Switzerland. His trainload of 1,700 people was delivered out of Budapest. The group was held hostage for months in a concentration camp, Bergen Belsen, before finally being freed. Historian as well believe that partially because of Kasztner's negotiations tens of thousands of other Jews were sent to a labor camp of Strasshof and saved from death in Auschwitz.

During the last days of the war on the orders of Himmmler Kasztner rode with SS Standartenführer (colonel) Kurt Becher who was Commissar of all German concentration camps, and Chief of the Economic Department of the SS Command in Hungary during the German occupation in 1944, halting the liquidations in the death camps of Theresienstadt and Mauthausen.

The Trial

When Kasztner moved to Israel he was accused by a survivor, Malchiel Gruenwald, of making a secret deal with Eichmann in order to save his, "prominent train of Jews." Those who opposed Kasztner claimed that he had betrayed the Jews of Hungary by not warning them of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and made it easier for Eichmann to murder them without resistance. Kasztner, then a member of the Israeli government, was forced to sue for libel to protect his name. Kasztner thought he would be proclaimed a hero. Instead, the trial and the public turned against him.

The Kasztner Trial, as it became known, was the first time that the Holocaust was publicly discussed in Israel. As a new nation, Israel was making heroes of those who fought and resisted, not those who sat down with one's enemies. This was a generation whose oath was, "Never Again." The trial became politicized and those who opposed Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's Mapai party used the trial to undermine the government. They drew parallels of collaboration—Kasztner negotiating with the Germans for a train, Ben-Gurion negotiating with the British for a nation. Kasztner was also caught lying about an affidavit given on behalf of former Nazi SS Officer, Kurt Becher. He attested that the testimony was given on behalf of the Jewish Agency, but the court did not believe him. His negotiations with Nazis branded him a collaborator. The verdict of the trial went against Kasztner. The judge decreed that Kasztner had, "Sold his soul to the devil." Most of the verdict was later overturned by the Supreme court, but not before Kasztner was killed in front of his Tel Aviv home in 1957.[5] Kasztner's death was considered the first political assassination of the newly formed state of Israel. Kasztner’s only daughter Zsuzsi was just 12 years old when her father was murdered.

The filmmakers

Reviews

Notes

  1. ^ Killing Kasztner: The Jew who dealt with Nazis, KilingKasztner.com, accessed October 12, 2009.
  2. ^ Gaylen, R.: Synopsis, page 2. GRFilms Inc, 2009.
  3. ^ Maltlin, S: "YNET NEWS", article. YNET NEWS, 2009
  4. ^ Southern, N: "ALLMOVIE.COM", article. AllMovie, 2009
  5. ^ Klein, U: "Haaretz Guide", article. Haaretz Guide, 2009

External links