Kasztner's Train The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust

by Porter, Anna

• ISBN13: 9780802715968
• ISBN10: 0802715966
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-18
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

The heroic story of the "Hungarian Oscar Schindler" who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis, only to be accused of collaboration and assassinated in Israel twelve years after WWII ended. Oscar Schindler's and Raoul Wallenberg's efforts to save people from Nazi extinction are legendary; Rezso Kasztner, by contrast, is practically unknown, even though he may have been the greatest rescuer of Jews during World War II. He was also the most controversial, and that, along with the relative lack of focus on events in Hungary toward the end of the war, has no doubt led to his anonymity. Now, with the publication of Anna Porter's remarkable chronicle, Kasztner's achievements are in full view. When the German army invaded its ally Hungary in March 1944, followed soon after by Adolf Eichmann and his SS, Rezso Kasztner and a small group of Zionist activists stood in the way of mass deportations. They had met the well-informed Schindler, providing him with funds for food and clothing, and had been involved in previous efforts to rescue Jews from Slovakia and Poland. Now, in meeting after meeting with Eichmann and other SS officers, Kasztner negotiated for freedom, exploiting the Nazi weaknesses of greed and need"blood for goods," as the Nazis called itorganizing a train out of Hungary for almost 2,000 while several thousand more were protected in work camps in Austria. Inevitably he saved some and not others. After testifying at the Nuremberg trials, Kasztner emigrated to Israel where, in 1956, he was stunningly convicted of collaborating with the Nazis more than a decade before. As he awaited the appeal that would ultimately exonerate him, he was assassinated by right-wing activists in Tel Aviv on March 4, 1957. Based on interviews with those who were on the train and with family members of those denied a place on it, as well as documents and correspondence not previously published, Anna Porter tells the dramatic full story of one of the heroes of the twentieth century.

Author Biography

Anna Porter was born in Hungary and personally experienced the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. A celebrated former publisher in Canada, she is the author of five previous books, including The Storyteller, a memoir of her family through seven centuries of Hungarian history. She lives in Toronto.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The Jewish Question
Desperately Seeking Palestine	p. 9
The Gathering Storm	p. 30
A Question of Honor, Law, and Justice	p. 46
The Politics of Genocide	p. 62
Budapest: The Beginning of the End	p. 74
The Kingdom of the Night
The Occupation	p. 83
Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann	p. 93
In the Anteroom of Hell	p. 106
Bargaining with the Devil	p. 119
The Auschwitz Protocols	p. 126
The Reichsfuhrer's Most Obedient Servant	p. 130
Mission to Istanbul	p. 142
A Million Jews for Sale	p. 152
A Game of Roulette for Human Lives	p. 166
Rolling the Dice	p. 174
Blessings from Heaven	p. 185
Strasshof: The Jews on Ice	p. 190
The Memories of Peter Munk and Erwin Schaeffer	p. 194
The Highway of Death
The Journey	p. 203
The End of the Great Plan	p. 210
Still Trading in Lives	p. 217
The Bridge at Saint Margarethen	p. 232
The End of Summer	p. 239
The Dying Days of Budapest	p. 248
In the Shadow of the Third Reich's Final Days	p. 261
Budapest in the Throes of Liberation	p. 279
Nazi Gold	p. 288
Death with Honor
In Search of a Life	p. 299
The Jews of the Exile	p. 312
The Prince of Darkness Is a Gentleman	p. 319
Letters to Friends in the Mizrachi	p. 324
The Price of a Man's Soul	p. 339
The Consequences	p. 351
The Aftermath	p. 356
The Banality of Evil	p. 363
Other Lives	p. 368
Acknowledgments	p. 379
Notes	p. 383
Bibliography	p. 407
Index	p. 417
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