Rudolf Kastner

Politician, Deceased Person

1906 – 1957

65

Who was Rudolf Kastner?

Rudolf Israel Kastner was an Austro-Hungarian-born Jewish Zionist activist journalist and lawyer. He became known for facilitating the 'Blood for goods' proposal which was supposed to help Jews escape Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust. He was assassinated in 1957 after an Israeli court accused him of having collaborated with the Nazis.

Kastner was one of the leaders of the Va'adat Ezrah Vehatzalah—the Aid and Rescue Committee, or Vaada—a small Jewish group in Budapest who helped Jewish refugees escape from Nazi Europe into Hungary during World War II, then helped them escape from Hungary after the Nazis invaded that country too on March 19, 1944. Between May and July 1944, Hungary's Jews were being deported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz at the rate of 12,000 people a day—for "resettlement," as the Nazis said. Kastner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS officer, to allow 1,685 Jews to leave instead for Switzerland on what became known as the Kastner train, in exchange for money, gold, and diamonds.

Kastner moved to Israel after the war, becoming a manager in the intelligence unit at the Prime Minister's department in 1952. He was also nominated as a candidate to the Israeli parliament for the MAPAI party In 1953, he was accused of having been a Nazi collaborator, in a pamphlet self-published by Malchiel Gruenwald, an amateur writer. The allegation stemmed in part from his relationship with Eichmann, and with Kurt Becher, another SS officer; and in part from his having given positive character references after the war for Becher and two more SS officers, thus allowing Becher to escape prosecution for war crimes. The Israeli government sued Gruenwald for libel on Kastner's behalf, resulting in a trial that lasted two years, and a ruling in 1955 that Kastner had indeed, in the words of Judge Benjamin Halevi, "sold his soul to the devil." By saving the Jews on the Kastner train, while failing to warn others that their resettlement was in fact deportation to the gas chambers, Kastner had sacrificed the mass of Jewry for a chosen few, the judge said. The verdict triggered the fall of the Israeli Cabinet.

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Born
1906
Cluj-Napoca
Also known as
  • Rudolf Israel Kastner
  • Rezső Kasztner
  • Yisrael Kasztner
  • Israel Kasztner
Parents
Siblings
Spouses
Children
Religion
  • Judaism
Ethnicity
  • Jewish people
  • Hungarian people
Nationality
  • Hungary
  • Israel
  • Austria-Hungary
Profession
Lived in
  • Cluj-Napoca
Died
Mar 15, 1957
Tel Aviv

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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"Rudolf Kastner." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/rudolf_kastner>.

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