Book Review Kasztner’s Crime by Paul Bogdanor

Few historical figures divide opinion as dramatically as Jewish wartime figure Rezső (Rudolf) Kasztner.     As the leader of ‘rescue negotiations’ between the Nazis and the Hungarian Jews during the dark days of the Second World War, he has been hailed by some as a hero who saved the lives of thousands, and by others as a traitor who was complicit in the deaths of half a million of his own people.   With painstaking attention to detail, author and researcher Paul Bogdanor convincingly and coherently sets out to prove the latter assertion: that the man who set out to rescue Jews from the Nazis indeed became an SS collaborator and an accessory to the genocide of the Jewish masses.   Whatever the reader’s initial stance on the Kasztner debate – if, indeed, they are familiar with the figure at all – Kasztner’s Crime is an incredible work of investigative writing that merits full attention.   According to Bogdanor, Kasztner was willing to sacrifice the many for the few because of an overwhelming drive for power and recognition; something that the Nazis were happy to play along with as long as it served their purpose.   Bogdanor calls upon forgotten evidence including the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and Kasztner’s own confessions to provide a definitive answer to the nature and extent of Kasztner’s staggering betrayal of the Hungarian Jews.   Introducing the reader to his subject, Bogdanor chronicles Kasztner’s rapid rise from journalist and lawyer to a key figure in the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee at the outbreak of war.   During this time he helped in the rescue of some 25,000 Jews from neighbouring countries, and also helped fund Oskar Schindler’s famous rescue operation in Poland.   But what followed was a tragedy – the story of a hero who became an instrument of the Nazi killing machine.   In March 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary and set into motion the plan to deport and exterminate the country’s entire Jewish population.   Kasztner ignored orders to take the rescue committee underground to form an effective resistance movement and instead chose to negotiate with the Nazis. It was to be his undoing.   His dealings with senior SS officer Adolf Eichmann, charged with carrying out the Holocaust in Hungary, trapped Kasztner into a deplorable pact: saving the lives of just over 1,600 Jewish VIPs, including members of his own family, in return for the deaths of hundreds of thousands at the Nazi death camps.   The story of the ‘Kasztner Train’ that carried these lucky few to a safe haven in Switzerland is an emotionally-charged one, and the basis for Kasztner’s ongoing reputation as a hero.   But based on the shocking evidence he has uncovered, Bogdanor convincingly argues that the widely-held belief that Kasztner could not have saved more lives than the 1,684 Jews aboard the ‘Kasztner Train’ is false.   The book details how Kasztner, at the Nazis’ bidding, actively sabotaged efforts to save more lives, preventing thousands of ordinary Jews from fleeing to Romania by falsely claiming that an escape route had been blocked.   He also misled Jewish communities and the outside world into thinking that the Hungarian Jews would be resettled for agricultural work inside Hungary until the end of the war when, instead, they were sent to their deaths at Auschwitz.   The book pulls no punches in retelling the brutal truth about the slaughter of millions of Jews at Nazi extermination camps. It’s a poignant and painful reminder of the horrific treatment of Jews during the Second World War that must never be forgotten.   In writing Kasztner’s Crime, Bogdanor aims to right a great injustice to the memories of the Holocaust victims by exposing Kasztner for what he was.   The intelligent and well-supported case he puts forward is certainly damning, and tallies with the verdict of the Israeli court in 1955, which concluded that Kasztner had “sold his soul to the Devil”.   Within the space of a few years, however, Kasztner had been assassinated and posthumously exonerated by Israel’s Supreme Court. Since that point he has been widely celebrated in popular culture.   Kasztner’s Crime argues that his heroic reputation could not be further from the truth and that his actions need an urgent re-evaluation, with Rezső Kasztner being recognised as nothing less than the last Holocaust traitor to be brought to justice.   Kasztner’s Crime by Paul Bogdanor (Transaction Publishers) is out now, priced £27.50 in paperback. Visit www.kasztnerscrime.com