Hajnalka "Hansi" Brand
(née Hartmann; 26 August 1912 – 9 April 2000
) was a
Hungarian-born
Zionist
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
activist who was involved, as a member of the Budapest
Aid and Rescue Committee, in efforts to rescue Jews during the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
.
Early life
Brand was born in
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
(then
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
) in 1912.
She was educated there and joined a
Zionist youth movement
A Zionist youth movement ( he, תנועות הנוער היהודיות הציוניות ''tnuot hanoar hayehudiot hatsioniot'') is an organization formed for Jewish children and adolescents for educational, social, and ideological development, i ...
when she was in high school.
Later on, she joined a pioneering village which taught young Jews "agricultural training prior to their
immigration to Palestine."
In 1935 she married
Joel Brand ("a prominent member of the World Union of Mapai") in Budapest in a fictitious marriage to allow them to immigrate to
Palestine.
Later on the marriage became a "real" one.
They established a small glove factory and had two sons, one of whom died young.
Rescue operations
Between 1938 and 1945, Brand and her husband were deeply involved in efforts to help Jewish refugees who had escaped to Hungary (which did not deport Jews to concentration camps before the
Nazi invasion in 1944).
They saved her sister and family from being sent to
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as con ...
after they had been deported to
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
in 1941. They accomplished this by bribing Hungarian intelligence officer Jozef Krem.
Together with some other Hungarian Zionist activists, the couple founded the
Aid and Rescue Committee in 1942.
Hansi and Joel Brand were key associates in the Kasztner negotiations with the Nazis. The central part of the deal with Eichmann was the so-called "Goods for Blood" arrangement in which the Nazis tried to barter Jewish lives for money, arms and supplies in the dying months of the war.
Joel Brand was dispatched to Istanbul to persuade the Jewish Agency leadership to accept this plan, which came to nothing. The Zionist leaders told him that
Moshe Sharett
Moshe Sharett ( he, משה שרת, born Moshe Chertok (Hebrew: ) 15 October 1894 – 7 July 1965) was a Russian-born Israeli politician who served as Israel's second prime minister from 1954 to 1955. A member of Mapai, Sharett's term was b ...
—then head of the Agency's political department, and later, Israel's second prime minister—could not obtain a visa for Istanbul and that a meeting could only take place in Aleppo. Within moments of leaving the train to Aleppo, Joel Brand was arrested by the British. Back in Budapest, Kasztner had begun an affair with Hansi Brand.
Hansi Brand and the other committee members tried negotiating with
Adolf Eichmann to save (at least some) Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.
Brand and
Rudolf Kastner were able to get 1,685 Jews to leave Hungary and go to neutral
Switzerland on the
Kastner train
The Kastner train consisted of 35 cattle wagons that left Budapest on 30 June 1944, during the German occupation of Hungary, carrying over 1,600 Jews temporarily to Bergen-Belsen and safety in Switzerland after large ransom paid by Swiss Orthodo ...
.
In addition, working with the Aid and Rescue Committee, she saved the lives of additional Jews by getting 15,000 of them deported to
Strasshof concentration camp (where they had a much greater chance of surviving) than to
Auschwitz.
Finally, she also tried to save the lives of some Hungarian Jewish children whom the Nazis forced on a "Death March" in November 1944.
Later life
Brand moved from Budapest to Switzerland in 1946, and from there to Palestine in 1947.
In December 1946, in
Basel, Switzerland
, french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese
, neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS), ...
, she testified in front of a special committee dealing with Rudolf Kastner's activity during the Holocaust in Hungary.
She also testified in the
Kastner trial in 1954 and in the
Eichmann trial in 1961.
In her final years, Brand worked at the Michlelet Tel Aviv college and on behalf of orphans and
Ethiopian immigrants.
Her husband, Joel, died at the age of 58 in 1964. Hansi Brand died in
Tel Aviv, Israel
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
in 2000.
She was survived by her son, Daniel.
Published works
* In 1960, Brand wrote ''Satan and the Soul'' about the couple's activities during the Holocaust and the Kastner trial.
References
Further reading
* Sharon Geva, "Wife, Lover, Woman: The Image of Hansi Brand in Israeli Public Discourse"
''Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues'' No. 27, Fall 2014, pp. 97–119.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brand, Hansi
1912 births
2000 deaths
Austro-Hungarian Jews
Hungarian Jews
Austrian Jews
20th-century Israeli Jews
Israeli people of Hungarian-Jewish descent
Holocaust survivors
People of the Holocaust
Kastner train
Burials at Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery
Hungarian emigrants to Mandatory Palestine