The Kastner train consisted of 35 cattle wagons that left

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 ...

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 Orthodox Jew Yitzchak Sternbuch,

Recha Sternbuch Recha Sternbuch (née Rottenberg; 1905–1971) was a Swiss Orthodox Jewish woman who was a major Holocaust-era Jewish rescuer. Biography Born in Krakow, Poland in 1905, Sternbuch moved to St. Gallen in 1928, with her husband, Yitzchak Stern ...

's husband.For 30 June, see Bauer (1994), p. 199; for the date and time (30 June, towards 11 pm), see Löb (2009), pp. 50, 97; for 35 cattle trucks, see p. 97. Porter (2007), p. 234, writes that the train left Budapest at half an hour after midnight on Saturday, 1 July. The number of passengers most often cited is 1,684. This was the number registered when the train arrived at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The number on board when the train left Budapest is not known, because people jumped on and off while the train was in motion. The train was named after Rudolf Kastner (aka Kasztner), a Hungarian-Jewish lawyer and journalist, who was a founding member of the Budapest

Aid and Rescue Committee The Aid and Rescue Committee, or ''Va'adat Ha-Ezrah ve-ha-Hatzalah be-Budapesht'' (''Vaada'' for short; name in ) was a small committee of Zionists in Budapest, Hungary, in 1944–1945, who helped Hungarian Jews escape the Holocaust during the Ger ...

, a group that smuggled Jews out of occupied Europe 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; a ...

. Kastner negotiated with

Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann"
''

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

in German-occupied Poland, to allow over 1,600 Jews to escape in exchange for gold, diamonds, and cash. The train was organized during the deportations to Auschwitz in May–July 1944 of 437,000 Hungarian Jews, three-quarters of whom were sent to the gas chambers.For the comparison to Noah's ark, see Kastner (1945), pp. 61–62, cited i
Maoz (2000)
; Bauer (1994), p. 198; Porter (2007), p. 234; and Löb (2009), p. 89 * For 437,000 Jews, and that three-quarters were killed, see Bauer (1994), p. 156 Its passengers were chosen from a wide range of social classes, and included around 273 children, many of them orphaned.Löb (2009), pp. 117–18 The wealthiest 150 passengers paid $1,500 () each to cover their own and the others' escape.Bauer (1994), p. 198 After a journey of several weeks, including a diversion to the

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concent ...

in Germany, 1,670 surviving passengers reached Switzerland in August and December 1944. Kastner emigrated to Israel in 1947. He was a spokesman for the Minister of Trade and Industry when his negotiations with Eichmann became the subject of controversy. Kastner had been told in April or May 1944 of the mass murder that was taking place inside Auschwitz. Allegations spread after the war that he had done nothing to warn the wider community, but had focused instead on trying to save a smaller number. The inclusion on the train of his family, as well as 388 people from the ghetto in his home town of

Kolozsvár ; hu, kincses város) , official_name=Cluj-Napoca , native_name= , image_skyline= , subdivision_type1 = County , subdivision_name1 = Cluj County , subdivision_type2 = Status , subdivision_name2 = County seat , settlement_type = City , le ...

, reinforced the view of his critics that his actions had been self-serving. The allegations culminated in Kastner being accused in a newsletter of having been a Nazi collaborator. The government sued for libel on his behalf, and the defendant's lawyer turned the trial into an indictment of the

Mapai Mapai ( he, מַפָּא"י, an acronym for , ''Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael'', lit. "Workers' Party of the Land of Israel") was a democratic socialist political party in Israel, and was the dominant force in Israeli politics until its merger in ...

(Labour) leadership and its alleged failure to help Europe's Jews. The judge found against the government, ruling that Kastner had "sold his soul to the devil" by negotiating with Eichmann and selecting some Jews to be saved, while failing to alert others. Kastner was assassinated in Tel Aviv in March 1957. Nine months later, the

Supreme Court of Israel The Supreme Court (, ''Beit HaMishpat HaElyon''; ar, المحكمة العليا) is the Supreme court, highest court in Israel. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all other courts, and in some cases original jurisdiction. The Supreme C ...

overturned most of the lower court's ruling, stating in a 4–1 decision that the judge had "erred seriously".

Organizer

Rudolf Kastner at Kol Yisrael, early 1950s - cropped

Rudolf Kastner (1906–1957), also known as Israel Rezső Kasztner, was born in

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 ...

. Kastner attended law school, then worked as a journalist for ''

Új Kelet ''Új Kelet'' ( Hungarian translation: "New East") is a Hungarian-language Zionist Jewish newspaper published first in Kolozsvár (Cluj) in Transylvania, Romania, and reestablished after a 10-year break in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1948. Under the ini ...

'' as a sports reporter and political commentator.Porter (2007), pp. 9–10, 15–18. He also became an assistant to Dr. József Fischer, a member of the Romanian parliament and leading member of the National Jewish Party, and in 1934, he married Fischer's daughter, Erzsébet. Kastner gained a reputation as a political fixer, and joined the Ihud party, later known as

, a left-wing Zionist party. He also helped to set up the Aid and Rescue Committee, along with

Joel Joel or Yoel is a name meaning "Yahweh Is God" and may refer to: * Joel (given name), origin of the name including a list of people with the first name. * Joel (surname), a surname * Joel (footballer, born 1904), Joel de Oliveira Monteiro, Brazili ...

and

Hansi Brand Hajnalka "Hansi" Brand (née Hartmann; 26 August 1912 – 9 April 2000) was a Hungarian-born Zionist activist who was involved, as a member of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, in efforts to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Early life Bra ...

, Samuel Springmann,

Ottó Komoly Ottó Komoly (also known as Nathan Kohn) (26 March 1892 – 1 January 1945) was a Hungarian Jewish engineer, officer, Zionist, and humanitarian leader in Hungary. He is credited with saving thousands of children during the German occupation of ...

, a Budapest engineer, Ernő Szilágyi from the ''

Hashomer Hatzair Hashomer Hatzair ( he, הַשׁוֹמֵר הַצָעִיר, , ''The Young Guard'') is a Labor Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary, and it was also the name of the group ...

'', and several others. According to Joel Brand, the group helped 22,000–25,000 Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe reach the relative safety of Hungary between 1941 and March 1944, before the German invasion of that country on 19 March that year.

Passengers

The passengers were chosen by a committee that included Kastner, Ottó Komoly, and Hansi Brand from the Aid and Rescue Committee, as well as Zsigmond Leb, a former president of the Orthodox community in Cluj. Israeli legal scholar Asher Maoz writes that Kastner told the Zionist Congress after the war, in a report he wrote about the actions of the Aid and Rescue Committee, that he saw the train as a "Noah's ark", because it contained a cross-section of the Jewish community, and in particular people who had worked in public service. According to Jeno Kölb, a passenger who kept a diary, there were 972 female and 712 male passengers in all; the oldest was 82, the youngest was but a few days old.

Ladislaus Löb Ladislaus Löb (8 May 1933 – 2 October 2021) was a writer, translator, Holocaust survivor, scholar of the literature and drama of the German Enlightenment and Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Sussex in England. He was the auth ...

, another passenger (see right), writes that the exact number on board when the train left Budapest remains uncertain, because in the early stages of the journey, several passengers disembarked, fearing that the train would end up in Auschwitz, while others took their places. Several women threw their young children on board at the last minute. What is known is that 1,684 passengers were registered when the train (unexpectedly) reached the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Hannover on 9 July.Bauer (1994), pp. 197-199 According to Löb, the passengers included 199 Zionists from Transylvania and 230 from Budapest, and 126 Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews, among them 40 rabbis; one of the rabbis was

Joel Teitelbaum Joel Teitelbaum ( yi, יואל טייטלבוים, translit=Yoyl Teytlboym, ; 13 January 1887 – 19 August 1979) was the founder and first Grand Rebbe of the Satmar dynasty. A major figure in the post-war renaissance of Hasidism, he espoused a ...

, the

Satmar Satmar (Yiddish: סאַטמאַר, Hebrew: סאטמר) is a Hasidic group founded in 1905 by Grand Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum, in the city of Szatmárnémeti, Hungary (now Satu Mare in Romania). The group is an offshoot of the Sighet Hasidic dynast ...

rebbe. There were scholars, artists, housewives, peasants, farmers, industrialists, bankers, journalists, teachers, and nurses. The writer

Béla Zsolt Béla Zsolt (born as Béla Steiner, 8 January 1895 – 6 February 1949) was a Hungarian radical socialist journalist and politician. He wrote one of the earliest Holocaust memoirs, ''Nine Suitcases'' (''Kilenc koffer'' in Hungarian). Tibor Fis ...

was on board, as was the psychiatrist

Léopold Szondi Léopold Szondi ( hu, Szondi Lipót ; March 11, 1893 – January 24, 1986) was a Hungarian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, psychopathologist and Professor of psychology. Founder of the concept of fate analysis. He is known for the psychological ...

, the opera singer

Dezső Ernster Dezső Ernster (23 November 1898 – 15 February 1981) was a Hungarian opera singer who sang leading bass roles with the New York Metropolitan Opera from 1946 to 1963. In 1929, he created the role of Baron d'Houdoux in Hindemith's ''Neues vom Tag ...

, the artist

István Irsai István Irsai (later Pesach Ir-Shay, he, פסח ער-שי , b. 1896 – d. 1968) was a Hungarian-born Israeli architect and graphic designer. Early life István Irsai was born in 1896 in Budapest, Hungary. He learned how to play the violin as a c ...

, and

Peter Munk Peter Munk (November 8, 1927 – March 28, 2018) was a Hungarian-Canadian businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder and chief executive officer of a number of high-profile business ventures, including the hi-fi electronics co ...

, who became a businessman in Canada. There were also 388 people from Kastner's home town of Cluj, including family members. His mother, Helen Kastner, was given a place, as was his brother Ernő, his pregnant wife Bogyó (she gave birth to a daughter, Zsuzsi, in Switzerland in December 1944), along with her father József Fischer, and Bogyó's other relatives. Erno Szilagyi of the Aid and Rescue Committee was on board, as were Joel Brand's mother, sister, and niece Margit, and the daughters of Ottó Komoly and Samuel Stern. Porter writes that each passenger was allowed to bring two changes of clothing, six sets of underwear, and food for 10 days.Porter (2007), p. 233ff Three suitcases of cash, jewels, gold, and shares of stock, amounting to about $1,000 per person (), were paid to SS officer

Kurt Becher Kurt Andreas Ernst Becher (12 September 1909 – 8 August 1995) was a mid-ranking SS commander who was Commissar of all German concentration camps, and Chief of the Economic Department of the SS Command in Hungary during the German occupation i ...

in ransom.

Journey

Linz, Austria

According to Bauer, the train was stopped at the Hungarian-Austrian border, where it could head west, or east to Auschwitz. The passengers started panicking; he alleges that Joel Teitelbaum and his party sent off messages asking people to save them, and only them. Hershel Friedman, in his book "Mei'Afeiloo Loir Goodel" (מאפילה לאור גדול) about Teitelbaum, shows documentation that Teitelbaum tried, together with Chiem Roth, to save the whole train. Eichmann decided, for reasons that remain unclear, to divert the train to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northwest Germany, near Hannover. The train passed through Linz, in Austria, where passengers disembarked and were sent to a military delousing station for medical inspections and showers. They were forced to strip and stand naked for hours waiting to see medical personnel or go into the showers; the women were subjected to intimate examinations by the doctors, supposedly in a search for lice. They also had their heads and pubic regions shaved. Several passengers believed the showers would turn out to be gas chambers, something that Löb writes one of the SS guards confirmed with a grin.Löb (2009), pp. 102–105 Bauer cites this fear as evidence that the Hungarian-Jewish community was well aware of the information about the gas chambers inside Auschwitz.Bauer (1994), p. 199; also see Porter (2007), p. 236 Between August 1943 and May 1944,

Rudolf Vrba Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg; 11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), German-occup ...

and three other Auschwitz escapees had passed information about the gas chambers to Jewish and other officials; it was this information that Vrba believed Kastner had access to, but did not distribute widely enough.

Bergen-Belsen, Germany

When the train reached Bergen-Belsen on Sunday, 9 July, the passengers were taken to a special section, what would be known as the ''Ungarnlager'' (Hungarian camp), where they were held for weeks, and in some cases months. Löb writes that their daily diet consisted of 330 grams of a grey, dense bread, 15 grams of margarine, 25 grams of jam, 1 litre of vegetable (mostly turnip) soup, 1.5 litres of coffee substitute, and sometimes cheese or sausage, with milk and extra rations for children under 14. The group was allowed to organize itself and its activities. As they settled in, the men elected Józef Fischer to be president, and ran daily activities. With so many intellectuals among the passengers, there were regular poetry readings, and lectures in history, philosophy, and religious education. The living arrangements were primitive, with 130–160 people crammed into each room. Ladislaus Löb describes a typical night, based on a diary kept by Szidonia Devecseri, another passenger:

The rabbi's wife tries in vain to stop her children, aged four and eight, fighting in her bunk. Her neighbours, kept awake by the din, swear at them. A woman screams because a mouse has run over her face. Bedbugs drop from the higher bunks onto the lower. Another woman screams because the little boy in the bunk above her has spilled the jam jar he uses as a chamber pot all over her. Somebody has whooping cough. Another little boy begs his mother not to beat him because in his sleep he wet the bunk he shares with her. She does, and he squeals. A former night-club dancer tells dirty stories about her ex-colleagues to the refined Orthodox language teacher, who does not know whether to block her ears or to laugh. A spoilt rich wife has hung her clothes on all available nails, leaving no room for anybody else. The passage ends with: "In 24 out of 24 hours, there is never a minute's silence ..."

Switzerland

The first batch of 318 passengers arrived in Switzerland on 18 August 1944, and the rest in December. It is reported that approximately 1,350 passengers arrived in Switzerland in December 1944. There were several births and deaths, and about 17 continued to be detained in Bergen-Belsen on various pretexts. For example, some of the original passengers who had declared themselves Romanian upon arriving at Bergen-Belsen were forced to stay after King Michael overthrew the pro-Axis government of Ion Antonescu in Romania, aligning the nation with the Allies. The total saved was about 1,670. The group was housed in the Swiss village of Caux, near Montreux, in requisitioned former luxury hotels. The Orthodox Jews were housed in the Regina (formerly the Grand Hotel), and the others in the Hotel Esplanade (formerly Caux Palace).Philippe Mottu, ''Caux, de la Belle Époque au Réarmement moral'', la Baconnière, Geneva, 1969, p. 48

Kastner trial

The transport played a major role in the Kastner trial in Israel in 1954, in which the government of Israel sued

Malchiel Gruenwald Malchiel Gruenwald ( he, מלכיאל גרינוולד; also written Grünwald, Gruenvald, and Greenwald) (1882–1958) was an Israeli hotelier, amateur journalist, and stamp collector, who came to public attention in 1953, when he accused an Isr ...

, a political pamphleteer, for libel, after he self-published a pamphlet charging Kastner, by then an Israeli government spokesman, with collaboration. A major detail of Gruenwald's allegations was that Kastner had agreed to the rescue in return for remaining silent about the fate of the mass of Hungarian Jews. This accusation was accepted by the court, leading Judge Benjamin Halevi to declare that Kastner had "sold his soul to the devil".Cohen (2010), pp
578–579
Porter (2007), pp. 403–405
Weitz (1996)
p. 5

/ref> Most of the ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel posthumously, in 1958. The Court upheld Judge Halevi's verdict on the manner in which Kastner offered testimony after the war on behalf of SS officer

. Kastner was assassinated outside his home in Tel Aviv in March 1957 as a result of the decision and the subsequent publicity.

References

Sources

* Bauer, Yehuda (1994). ''Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945''. Yale University Press. * Braham, Randolph (2004)
"Rescue Operations in Hungary: Myths and Realities"
''East European Quarterly'', 38(2): pp. 173–203. * Cohen, Boaz (2010)
"The Holocaust in Israel's Public Square"
in Peter Hayes and John K. Roth (eds.). ''The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies''. Oxford University Press. * Hilberg, Raul (2003)

961 Year 961 ( CMLXI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * March 6 – Siege of Chandax: Byzantine forces under Nikephoros II Phokas cap ...

The Destruction of the European Jews ''The Destruction of the European Jews'' is a 1961 book by historian Raul Hilberg. Hilberg revised his work in 1985, and it appeared in a new three-volume edition. It is largely held to be the first comprehensive historical study of the Holocau ...

''. Yale University Press. * Kárný, Miroslav (1998)

994 Year 994 ( CMXCIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * September 15 – Battle of the Orontes: Fatimid forces, under Turkish gener ...

br>"The Vrba and Wetzler report"
in

Michael Berenbaum Michael Berenbaum (born July 31, 1945, in Newark, New Jersey) is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and filmmaker, who specializes in the study of the Holocaust. He served as deputy director of the President's Commission on the Holo ...

and

Yisrael Gutman Israel Gutman ( he, ישראל גוטמן; 20 May 1923 – 1 October 2013) was a Polish-born Israeli historian and a survivor of the Holocaust. Biography Israel (Yisrael) Gutman was born in Warsaw, Second Polish Republic. After participat ...

(eds.). ''Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp''. Indiana University Press. * Kastner, Rudolf (1945). ''Der Bericht des jüdischen Rettungskomitees aus Budapest 1942-1945''. Vaadat Ezra Vö-Hazalah Bö-Budapest (translated by Egon Mayer as ''The Report of the Jewish Rescue Committee 1942-1945'', Center for Jewish Studies). * Löb, Ladislaus (2009). ''Rezso Kasztner. The Daring Rescue of Hungarian Jews: A Survivor's Account''. Random House/Pimlico; first published as ''Dealing with Satan: Rezso Kasztner's Daring Rescue Mission'' (2008). Jonathan Cape. * Maoz, Asher (2000)
"Historical Adjudication: Courts of Law, Commissions of Inquiry, and 'Historical Truth'"
''Law and History Review'', Volume 18, Number 3, Fall. * Porter, Anna (2007). ''Kastner's Train''. Douglas & MacIntyre. * Reisz, Matthew (28 February 2008)
"A tainted saviour?"
''Times Higher Education''. * ''Time'' magazine (11 July 1955)

* ''Time'' magazine (27 January 1958)

* Vrba, Rudolf (2002). ''I Escaped from Auschwitz''. Barricade Books. * Weitz, Yechiam (1996)
"The Holocaust on Trial: The Impact of the Kasztner and Eichmann Trials on Israeli Society"
''Israel Studies'' 1(2), pp. 1–26. {{refend

External links

List of passengers
at the

National Library of Israel The National Library of Israel (NLI; he, הספרייה הלאומית, translit=HaSifria HaLeumit; ar, المكتبة الوطنية في إسرائيل), formerly Jewish National and University Library (JNUL; he, בית הספרים הלא� ...

. Blood for goods Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany Jewish Swiss history Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust 1944 in Hungary 1944 in Switzerland