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

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Kasztner's Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust (eBook) Pub. Date: 5/26/2009 Publisher: Walker Books
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Kasztner's Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust Pub. Date: 3/18/2008 Publisher: Walker & Company

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Overview

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 it—organizing 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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Porter (The Storyteller) seeks to rehabilitate the reputation of Rezso Kasztner. This Hungarian Jew was branded a Nazi collaborator by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ben Hecht in his 1961 book, Perfidy.But more recently Kasztner has been exonerated by Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem. After 400,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in 1944, Kasztner, a point man in a "goods-for-blood" deal with Nazi henchman Adolf Eichmann, arranged for a train to carry 1,684 Jews from Hungary to Switzerland, wealthy Jews paying $1,500 per person while the poor paid nothing. For $100 a head, Eichmann kept an additional 20,000 Jews alive in Austrian labor camps. After the war Kasztner relocated to Israel, where in 1952 he was accused of being a Nazi collaborator who saved a privileged few at the expense of thousands of others. Kasztner sued for malicious libel and lost on most counts; the trial made international headlines; and Kasztner was assassinated in 1957 by right-wing extremists. Although a well-researched counterbalance to Hecht's account, Porter's defense may swing too much in favor of Kasztner, given that most of the participants are deceased and much of the evidence is anecdotal. Readers, however, will welcome the opportunity to debate the ever-relevant moral issues of doing business with the enemy. Illus. 16 pages of b&w illus., 3 maps. (Mar.)

Kirkus Reviews

Glowing chronicle of an unheralded, Schindler-esque figure who saved Hungarian-Jewish lives during World War II. As the German army marched on Budapest in 1944, the fate of the city's Jewish population lay in the hands of bold, immeasurably brave Rezso Kasztner. Hungarian-born Canadian citizen Porter (The Storyteller: Memory, Secrets, Magic and Lies, 2000, etc.) gives an unashamedly laudatory account of Kasztner's actions, though she also extensively covers the controversy that dogged him until his final days. The book's central subject is the monumental task Kasztner assumed during the war as he battled with the German authorities to free as many Hungarian-born Jewish citizens as possible. His dealings with SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann are retold in meticulous detail. Porter effectively conjures dark, smoky offices hosting intense negotiations and the palpable, yet always carefully hidden terror felt by Kasztner as he battled with one of Hitler's most overbearing, deeply unpleasant henchmen. The author frequently departs from Kasztner's tale to recite events happening elsewhere in Europe, offering disquieting details of the conditions in Auschwitz that would be the probable fate of the Jewish citizens he failed to save. Kasztner's achievements were twofold. He got 1,684 Jews onto a train out of Hungary, at a considerable price to the wealthy passengers on board, although Porter points out that the exact amount of money given to the Germans is unknown. Kasztner also kept 20,000 exiled Hungarian Jews alive in Austria, again by forking over a considerable sum. With a hint of exasperation, Porter concludes by examining Kasztner's tribulations in Israel after the war, when he was charged withcolluding with the Nazis and failing to warn the majority of Budapest's Jewish population of what awaited them in the camps. Kasztner's assassination shortly after the trial was, for the author, a deeply inglorious end for a man she regards as a hero. A compelling narrative that does great justice to Kasztner's memory. Agent: John Pearce/Westwood Creative Artists

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780802717412
Publisher: Walker & Company
Publication date: 3/3/2009
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 464
Sales rank: 534,645
Product dimensions: 5.46 (w) x 8.22 (h) x 1.25 (d)

Meet the Author

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.

Introduction 1

Part 1 The Jewish Question

1 Desperately Seeking Palestine 9

2 The Gathering Storm 30

3 A Question of Honor, Law, and Justice 46

4 The Politics of Genocide 62

5 Budapest: The Beginning of the End 74

Part 2 The Kingdom of the Night

6 The Occupation 83

7 Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann 93

8 In the Anteroom of Hell 106

9 Bargaining with the Devil 119

10 The Auschwitz Protocols 126

11 The Reichsfuhrer's Most Obedient Servant 130

12 Mission to Istanbul 142

13 A Million Jews for Sale 152

14 A Game of Roulette for Human Lives 166

15 Rolling the Dice 174

16 Blessings from Heaven 185

17 Strasshof: The Jews on Ice 190

18 The Memories of Peter Munk and Erwin Schaeffer 194

Part 3 The Highway of Death

19 The Journey 203

20 The End of the Great Plan 210

21 Still Trading in Lives 217

22 The Bridge at Saint Margarethen 232

23 The End of Summer 239

24 The Dying Days of Budapest 248

25 In the Shadow of the Third Reich's Final Days 261

26 Budapest in the Throes of Liberation 279

27 Nazi Gold 288

Part 4 Death with Honor

28 In Search of a Life 299

29 The Jews of the Exile 312

30 The Prince of Darkness Is a Gentleman 319

31 Letters to Friends in the Mizrachi 324

32 The Price of a Man's Soul 339

33 The Consequences 351

34 The Aftermath 356

35 The Banality of Evil 363

36 Other Lives 368

Acknowledgments 379

Notes 383

Bibliography 407

Index 417

Photographs 184

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