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Kastner train |
The Kastner train is the name usually given to a rescue operation which saved the lives of over 1,600 Jews from Hungary during World War 2. It consisted of 35 cattle wagons that left Budapest on 30 June 1944, during the German occupation of Hungary, ultimately arriving safely in Switzerland after a large ransom was paid to the Nazis. The train was named after Rudolf Kastner, a Hungarian-Jewish lawyer and journalist, who was a founding member of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, a group that smuggled Jews out of occupied Europe during the Holocaust. Kastner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, the German SS officer in charge of deporting Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland, to allow over 1,600 Jews to escape in exchange for gold, diamonds, and cash. |
The deal was controversial and has been the subject of much debate and criticism, with some accusing Kastner of collaborating with the Nazis, while others argue that he made difficult choices to save lives. |
The train was organized during deportations to Auschwitz in May–July 1944 of 437,000 Hungarian Jews, three-quarters of whom were murdered in the gas chambers. Its passengers were chosen from a wide range of social classes, and included around 273 children, many of them orphaned. The wealthiest 150 passengers paid $1,500 (equivalent to $25,000 in 2022) each to cover their own and the others' escape. After a journey of several weeks, including a diversion to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp 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, 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 (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 overturned most of the lower court's ruling, stating in a 4–1 decision that the judge had "erred seriously". |
Organizer |
Rudolf Kastner (1906–1957), also known as Israel Rezső Kasztner, was born in Kolozsvár, Austria-Hungary. Kastner attended law school, then worked as a journalist for Új Kelet as a sports reporter and political commentator. 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 Mapai, a left-wing Zionist party. He also helped to set up the Aid and Rescue Committee, along with Joel and Hansi Brand, Samuel Springmann, Ottó Komoly, a Budapest engineer, Ernő Szilágyi from the Hashomer Hatzair, 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, 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.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, the Satmar rebbe. There were scholars, artists, housewives, peasants, farmers, industrialists, bankers, journalists, teachers, and nurses. The writer Béla Zsolt was on board, as was the psychiatrist Léopold Szondi, the opera singer Dezső Ernster, the artist István Irsai, and Peter Munk, 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. Three suitcases of cash, jewels, gold, and shares of stock, amounting to about $1,000 per person (equivalent to $17,000 in 2022), were paid to SS officer Kurt Becher 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, though it has been claimed that this was the result of Eichmann increasing his demands which could not immediately be met, thus keeping his hostages "on ice".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.Bauer cites this fear as evidence that the Hungarian-Jewish community was well aware of the information about the gas chambers inside Auschwitz. Between August 1943 and May 1944, Rudolf Vrba 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. |
The passengers were ultimately released due to the efforts of Recha Sternbuch and also the JDC, a Jewish relief organization. |
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). |
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, 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". 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 Kurt Becher.Kastner was assassinated outside his home in Tel Aviv in March 1957 as a result of the decision and the subsequent publicity. |
See also |
Killing Kasztner (2008) |
Transport of concentration camp inmates to Tyrol, a Nazi attempt to move high-profile prisoners from Dachau concentration camp away from the advancing Western Allies, in April 1945 |
References |
Sources |
Further reading |
Bilsky, Leora (2001). "Judging Evil in the Trial of Kastner", Law and History Review, Vol 19, No. 1, Spring. |
Bilsky, Leora (2004). Transformative Justice: Israeli Identity on Trial. University of Michigan Press. |
Blumenthal, Ralph (21 October 2009). "Once Reviled as Nazi Collaborator, Now a Savior", The New York Times. |
Hecht, Ben (1997) [1961]. Perfidy. Milah Press. |
Mayer, Egon. "Kastner memorial site" |
Segev, Tom (2000). The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. Owl Books. |
External links |
List of passengers at the National Library of Israel. |
Controversies about the 2004 Madrid train bombings |
The controversy regarding the handling and representation of the Madrid train bombings by the government arose with Spain's two main political parties, Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and Partido Popular (PP), accusing each other of concealing or distorting evidence for electoral reasons. |
Events |
The bombings occurred three days before general elections, in which incumbent José María Aznar's PP was defeated. Immediately after the bombing, leaders of the PP claimed evidence indicated that the Basque separatist organization ETA was responsible for the bombings. Such accusation led to a result which favours to the PP's chances of being re-elected. The PP government involved Spain in the Iraq War, a policy very unpopular with many Spaniards. Therefore, if a link between the bombings and the Iraq War involvement were established, it could have reduced the popularity of the PP. |
Nationwide demonstrations and protests followed the attacks. A view amongst several political commentators is that the PP lost the election as a result of the handling and presentation of the terrorist attacks, rather than specifically due to the Madrid train bombings. A 2011 study by Jose Montalvo published in the Review of Economics and Statistics reached the conclusion that terrorist attack had important electoral consequences (turning the electoral outcome against the incumbent People's Party and handing government over to the Socialist Party (PSOE)). |
After 21 months of investigation, judge Juan del Olmo ruled Moroccan national Jamal Zougam guilty of physically carrying out the attack. The September 2007 sentence established no known mastermind nor direct al-Qaeda link. |
Accuracy of government statements |
The conservative PP government was accused of falsely blaming ETA for the attacks. The day of the attacks, police officials informed the Government that explosives usually used by ETA were found at the blast sites. This, along with other suspicious circumstances, led the PP to suspect ETA involvement. Although there was no direct or indirect evidence from the investigation of the bombing pointing to ETA involvement, the group had been caught with a large amount of explosives some months previously, which looked like preparations for a big strike. According to a report of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC), the same morning of the bombings the Spanish Intelligence Services and Policy had concluded that the author of the massacre was an Islamist terrorist group, but they had been ordered by the government to deny this Islamist attribution and insist that the ETA were the only suspects, although this same source also states that there is no precedent of collaboration of international Islamists with non-Muslims, and there were two non-Muslims (and police informers) involved in the Madrid attacks. |
The government sent messages to all Spanish embassies abroad ordering that they uphold the version that ETA was responsible. Prime Minister José María Aznar even called a number of newspaper editors and publishers personally to ask for their support for this version. |
The tense political atmosphere in Spain in the period running up to the elections brought the PP to the edge of a political catastrophe. On one hand, José María Aznar was aggressively opposed to any dialogue with ETA, and based most of his campaign on the threat of terrorism (the September 11 attacks in New York reinforced his view of the war against the terrorists). On the other hand, Aznar's friendship with U.S. president George W. Bush led him to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq against the views of the overwhelming majority of the population (resulting in the biggest demonstrations ever seen in Spain since the restoration of democracy in the late 1970s). This left Aznar in a complicated situation: if Basque terrorists were proven to be responsible for the massacre, it would favour the PP's campaign, but if an Islamic group appeared to cause the blast, people might blame him for earning himself (and Spain) enemies. |
The Summary of the Judicial Enquiry concluded that the decision to attack Madrid was taken after, and as a result of, the invasion of Iraq. Nevertheless, The New Yorker claimed the decision was taken before 9/11 according to an Italian police report. |
Explosives used in the attacks |
In the immediate aftermath of the train bombings it was suspected that the explosive used in the bombs may have been Titadine, as initial suspicions on responsibility for the bombings focused on ETA and this explosive had been used by them on occasions in the past. As evidence emerged from the investigation attention on the explosive used switched to a brand of dynamite known as Goma-2. |
Analysis of samples from the explosion sites carried out by a member of the bomb disposal squad (TEDAX) following the bombings did not produce a definitive result. The analyst concerned later testified in the trial of those accused of committing the bombings. She stated that the only thing she could identify in these tests were generic components of dynamite. |
Later in 2004, in his appearance before the parliamentary committee of inquiry, Juan Jesus Sánchez Manzano (the head of the TEDAX) stated that traces of nitroglycerine had been detected in the samples recovered after the bombings. He would later retract this statement before the investigating magistrate in charge of the case and emphasised that he was not an expert in explosives. The statement by Sánchez Manzano led supporters of the idea that ETA was involved in the bombings to question whether the explosive used in the bombs had been Goma 2 ECO. Nitroglycerine is not a component of Goma 2 ECO. |
In the run up to the trial of those accused, the court ordered that fresh tests be carried out on the samples recovered from the trains and on remains of explosive recovered from different sites connected to the bombings. These tests were carried out by specialists appointed from the security services, the defence and other parties to the accusation. The judges ordered that video and audio recordings be made of these tests. The results of these tests |
were also inconclusive concerning the samples taken from the explosion sites. Nitroglycerine was detected in one of these samples, and the presence of dinitrotoluene (DNT) was also detected. This has led to claims that the explosive used could have been Titadine. However, also detected in the same sample was dibutyl phthalate (DBP), which is a component of Goma 2 ECO but not of titadine. Several other samples from the explosion sites also revealed the joint presence of DNT and DBP. Tests were carried out on a sample of Titadine. In addition the presence of nitroglycerine and DNT was also detected in samples of Goma 2 ECO that had been recovered from sites associated with the bombings. |
The discovery of these different components led to suggestions that there could have been some accidental contamination of the samples and explosive remains, although a definitive cause of such contamination has not been established. Entire cartridges, or partial remains of cartridges, of Goma 2 ECO were recovered from the apartment in Leganés where 7 suspects of the bombings died following an explosion, the only unexploded bomb, a Renault Kangoo van found near Alcalá de Henares station on the day of the bombings, and the device that was left by the high speed railway line connecting Madrid and Seville. |
The only explosive positively identified in any site connected to the bombings has been Goma 2 ECO and the sentence in the trial concluded that it was likely that the bombs contained this explosive or a mixture of it with its predecessor product Goma 2 EC. |
Potential prevention of the bombings |
Some of the alleged Islamist perpetrators had reportedly been under surveillance by the Spanish police since January 2003. According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, 24 of the 29 alleged perpetrators were informers and/or controlled by the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía, Civil Guard and Centro Nacional de Inteligencia ("National Centre for Intelligence") from the time before the attacks. Two alleged perpetrators were Guardia Civil and Spanish police informants. Cell phones used in the bombings were unlocked in a shop owned by a former Spanish policeman who is not one of those accused in connection with the bombings. |
Two of those accused of supplying explosives for the bombings have a conviction for a previous 2001 offence of trafficking with Goma-2 ECO, an offence that did not prevent Trashorras, described as "necessarily involved co-operator" from later getting a job in a mine, thus gaining access to explosives and blast equipment. |
Controversy regarding responsibility |
Thirteen improvised explosive devices were reported to have been used by the Islamic militant group that was responsible for the bombing, all but three of which detonated. This group seems to have had very tenuous connection with al-Qaeda but with the aim of acting on its behalf. Shortly after the bombings, the group was completely dismantled by the Spanish police and the core members died in an apparent suicide explosion when they were surrounded in the nearby town of Leganés. |
The Madrid bombings have led to the sharp political and social differences between the parties in Spain being accentuated. This stands in sharp contrast to other large-scale terrorist attacks such as those in New York and London, which galvanized society and political forces towards unity. |
Subsets and Splits