I had no confidence in Horthy or those around him.
They were all lacking in courage… We had only one chance to
gain time and that was to negotiate with the SS,
to have recourse to ruse and to make, if necessary, a few deliveries.
ANDRÉ BISS, A MILLION JEWS TO SAVE
IN ISTANBUL, Menachem Bader was invited for coffee with a man who called himself Stiller and said he was attached to the German Consulate. They met in a café a short walk from the Pera Hotel. Stiller claimed he was authorized by the appropriate parties on the German side to offer Bader safe conduct and a plane ride to Vienna so that he could continue the discussions begun by Joel Brand.
The invitation was reviewed for two days by the Jewish Agency Executive. They concluded that Bader should not be allowed to make the journey, because, as a British subject, he was forbidden to travel in areas controlled by the enemy.1
The question for David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Shertok was how to continue negotiations without the knowledge of the British, whose spy system was a great deal better than the Yishuv's and who seemed unwilling to make something of the Brand proposition. Ben-Gurion would have preferred British cooperation, but he was not going to give up on any deal that might save Jewish lives, even if the British tried to veto it. He sent two cables to Franklin Roosevelt pleading with him “not to allow this unique and possibly last chance of saving the remains of European Jewry to be lost.”
In Palestine, Shertok reported to the Jewish Agency Executive on the whole “heartrending, discouraging affair” and his determination to “try every possible avenue” to persuade the British government to allow him to proceed.
In Cairo, a dispirited Brand was allowed to meet Lord Moyne in a private club, where the British minister reportedly asked him: “But Mr. Brand, what can I do with this million Jews? Where can I put them?”2
EICHMANN IGNORED Regent Horthy's command that deportations cease and continued to instruct the eager Hungarian Nazis to round up Jews from the areas close to Budapest. Hitler, he reasoned, had never agreed to accede to anything but the “correct course” of action. To make his point, Eichmann had the remaining inmates of the Kistarcsa and Sárvár camps put on trains and consigned to Auschwitz. He told Kasztner that, no matter what arrangement Kasztner had come to with Becher, unless the required goods began to appear at the borders Eichmann would add the passengers on Kasztner's train—still waiting at Bergen-Belsen—to the next transport and “have the whole lot of them gassed without a selection.”
“An interesting idea, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Kasztner replied, “but it would end any chance we had of negotiating for goods the Reich might need in exchange for Jews it does not want.”
On July 10, following Admiral Horthy's orders, the Hungarian police intercepted one of Eichmann's trains and returned it to Kistarcsa. When Eichmann discovered that the Regent had countermanded his orders, he flew into a rage. He rampaged around his rooms at the Majestic, shouting at his staff and threatening to clean up the whole damned place. No tinpot sailor was going to disobey him, he yelled. Who in hell did the little shit think he was? He ordered Wisliceny to go to Kistarcsa and get those übriges mistvolk, those superfluous shit people, back into the wagons.
While Wisliceny's chauffeur drove him to Kistarcsa, Hunsche went to Sip Street with a small, armed SS contingent and demanded that the members of the Jewish Council accompany him to an urgent meeting with Eichmann at the Majestic. Stern tried to reach the Regent, at least to leave a message, but the SS would not allow him time even for a phone call. The matter was, Hunsche insisted, of the utmost urgency.
When the council members reached the Majestic, they were offered chairs and coffee while they waited for the commandant. When one of them tried to use the phone, he was told all the lines were down. Meanwhile, Wisliceny's men packed the Kistarcsa camp inmates—most of them bankers, industrialists, accountants, and lawyers who had been arrested soon after the German occupation—into trucks and transported them to the Eastern Railway Station.
By the time the council was allowed to return to Sip Street late that evening, the train had crossed the border into Austria. Wisliceny laughingly asked Kasztner: “Do you think Eichmann would let that old fool Horthy slap him in the face like that?”
Horthy tried to convince German plenipotentiary Edmund Veesen-mayer that his orders regarding the Jews were not in contravention of the Regent's agreement with Hitler and that he was merely re-examining his undertakings in respect to workers that Hungary now needed at home. Meanwhile, Andor Jaross, the Hungarian minister of the interior, reassured Eichmann that he would devise a way to circumvent the Regent's orders.3
On July 12, Kasztner wrote another desperate letter to Joseph Schwartz of the American Joint Distribution Committee, explaining his sense of isolation, the whirlwind of events, the speed of deportations, the hopelessness, the horror of helplessly watching the tragedy unfold in the streets of Hungary. Had Joel Brand returned, had the Jewish Agency or the Allies listened to the call for help from Budapest, more people could have been saved. He was convinced that the Germans were negotiating in relatively good faith, that they had been ready to sell what they called “valueless human material” in exchange for goods of value to them.
His letter passed the German censors unchanged: “… hundreds of thousands went to Auschwitz in such a way that they were not conscious until the last moment what it was all about and what was happening. We who did know tried to act against it, but after three-and-a-half months of bitter fighting, I must state that it was more like watching the unfolding of a tragedy and its unstoppable progress, without being able to do anything to prevent it… The speed of the collapse was so wild that help and actions of rescue could not keep up with it; even thoughts were too slow. I cannot give you a picture of the annihilation or of its impact; I could only feel it. The thing that happened here between May 15 and July 9 is like the burial of the last scion of an aristocratic family as they lower him into the grave and turn the face of his ancestors’ shield to the wall.”
THREE DAYS LATER, four plainclothes Hungarian policemen confronted Kasztner as he left the Columbus Street building. When he refused to go with them voluntarily, they handcuffed him and shoved him into the backseat of their car. One man sat on either side of him, blindfolded him, pushed his head down between his knees, and drove him in silence over rough roads at tremendous speeds for what seemed to Kasztner about an hour. He was so stiff when they stopped at their destination that he had to be half carried into a building and down some stairs. They removed the blindfold in a cellar that smelled musty, unused, and damp, where he was interrogated while standing facing the wall. They wanted to know the exact details of the deal the Va’ada had with the SS. How had he persuaded the SS to let a trainload of Jews out of the country and not consign them to Auschwitz? What was the idea for the “exceptional” camps, and how had they paid for all these concessions? Where had the valuables come from? Despite the ceaseless interrogation, after five days and sleepless nights Kasztner had told them nothing of value. He admitted that some money had changed hands, but he swore that he was not sure of its source.4
On the sixth day, gendarmerie captain Leo Lulay appeared. He had been Lieutenant-Colonel Ferenczy's representative at the Vienna conference at which the train schedules were organized, and he was now Ferenczy's second-in-command for the deportations, a man with a reputation for uncompromising brutality toward and complete lack of sympathy for the unfortunate people in the boxcars traveling to Auschwitz. He was in full dress uniform, as though he intended to visit not a bedraggled prisoner in a guarded cellar but some dignitary. Lulay put his hand on Kasztner's shoulder and said, “Don’t be afraid, our country needs you.”5 And he smiled.
Kasztner was blindfolded once more and taken for another long ride in the back of a car. When his captors allowed him out, they removed the blindfold and led him into the guardroom he would share overnight with the duty sergeant. They slept on narrow bunks and with the door locked, with a washbowl and bucket to share. At dawn, Lulay took over the interrogation. He seemed convinced that Kasztner was a member of the American spy service. Because he was unsure which answer was more likely to get him released, Kasztner was reluctant to admit or to deny the allegation. Lulay went to great pains to explain his role in the deportations, insisting that he had not known until quite recently what Auschwitz was used for. He told Kasztner that the Germans had filmed the gendarmes pushing Jews into boxcars and that these films were being shown in foreign capitals to prove that the Hungarians, not the Germans, had been responsible for what had happened to the Jews. Lulay said he was a living witness to the facts: the deportations had been ordered and carried out by the Germans. The gendarmes, with one or two exceptions who would be punished when the war was over, were innocent.
Kasztner guessed that Lulay had detained him only to secure an alibi for himself. He would, he said, be more than willing to testify to all he had learned during this grueling week. He was astonished by Lulay's stupidity, his cheerful assumption that he could continue his career after the Allies invaded Hungary, and his acknowledgment that he believed Germany's war would be lost. Lulay declared that he was a patriot, as if that explained his anti-Semitism, and he seemed quite touched by his own words. Kasztner told him that he was leaving for one of the neutral countries in a few days and that he could then tell the Allies the truth about the deportations. Lulay seemed satisfied for the moment and said he would let Kasztner go if his chief agreed.
As they traveled back to Budapest through the devastated countryside, they stopped, about an hour's drive from the city, to pick up Lulay's chief, László Ferenczy. The lieutenant-colonel, even in civilian clothes, had the bearing of a military man. He stood at least six feet three inches tall, with broad shoulders, and short, graying hair, a clean-shaven, ruddy face, and a cheerful disposition that belied his notorious brutality. This was the man who had insisted on savagely torturing men and women in the ghettos, the man who had recommended to his troops that torturing children would often lead parents to reveal where they had hidden their valuables.
Ferenczy folded himself into the backseat next to Kasztner and smiled. He would, he said, be willing now to prevent further harm to the Jews. His forces could resist German orders and, if necessary, use arms in their defense. He asked that Kasztner arrange for him to meet members of the Jewish Council—in particular, Hofrat Samuel Stern.
Kasztner should, Ferenczy said, deny that they had arrested him. If asked by the SS, he would have to fabricate something. It had to be understood that the gendarmerie would have no option but to have him killed if he betrayed their confidence. “The smallest indiscretion,” he said, “will cost you your life.” With that, Kasztner was deposited in front of André Biss's apartment building.
Kasztner concluded that Ferenczy had refrained from torturing him only because of his presumed close connections with the SS. He later learned that both Becher and Eichmann had known who had taken him and why, and that they were concerned the Hungarians would glean some information about the nature of their deals.
Hansi Brand, unlike the SS, had not known where Rezső was. Rumors suggested that he had been arrested for spying and might have been executed. She had gone to the Majestic to seek an appointment with Eichmann. He claimed no knowledge of Kasztner's whereabouts and threatened her with immediate reprisals if he discovered that Kasztner had left the country. “Those children are still here, Mrs. Brand, aren’t they?” he inquired, referring to Hansi's youngsters. She demanded that Eichmann make every effort to find Kasztner; otherwise, she threatened, the negotiations with the Jewish Agency could come to an end. She tried not to panic, but with every day of Rezső's absence she became more fearful that he had been killed by Peter Hain's people, or even by Eichmann himself in reprisal for Joel's continued absence.
Samuel Stern knew only that Kasztner would not have run. Had he wished to do so, there had been many earlier opportunities. Biss went to see Otto Klages, the Budapest SD chief, and told him that the Va’ada was still ready to negotiate on the basis set out by Kasztner, that the deal could still be made. He asked Klages to intervene directly with Reichsführer Himmler to have the Bergen-Belsen group released. Biss described Klages as a gentleman, even-tempered, considerate, faultlessly polite. Even on this occasion, it seemed, he had managed to let Biss down gently.6 If neither Eichmann nor Becher was willing to intervene with the Reichsführer, Klages said, he wouldn’t either.
“How much did you tell them?” Eichmann demanded when Kasztner presented himself, once more, on Swabian Hill. “Only so much that they would let me go, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Kasztner replied. “And nothing they did not already know.”
THE HUNGARIAN government sent a formal announcement to all its representatives at home and abroad: “The dispatch of Jews abroad for the purpose of labor is temporarily suspended.” It went on to announce that it had authorized the emigration of all Jews with valid certificates (close to eight thousand at the time)7 to Palestine through the mediation of the International Red Cross;8 that four hundred to five hundred more who had acquired Swedish citizenship would also be allowed to leave the country, and that an agreement had been offered to the War Refugee Board allowing children under the age of ten to leave for Palestine. Horthy's representative in Turkey met Chaim Barlas to inform him of the Regent's announcement and to urge him to make suitable travel arrangements for all those wishing to leave.
The Jewish Agency immediately appealed to all countries to accept a substantial influx of refugees, mostly children, and petitioned the British government to ease the restrictions of the White Paper that capped Jewish immigration to Palestine at twelve thousand people a year. Several countries agreed to take a limited number of the refugees, but both Britain and the United States hesitated. They worried about a flood of refugees at such a critical time in the war. Britain did not want to cause further Arab disturbances in the Middle East and resented Horthy's interference in its governing of Palestine. Edmund Veesenmayer conveyed his agreement to Horthy's plan, provided that deportations of the rest of the Jews could resume immediately.
In the early evening of July 20, Lieutenant-Colonel Ferenczy, wearing a gray, formal suit, went to Samuel Stern's home for an audience. Rezső Kasztner and four members of the Jewish Council also attended this strangest of meetings. Hansi, though she had been invited by Rezső, refused to attend. She did not wish to breathe the same air as “that brute.” For the first fifteen minutes, while introductions were made, they all stood close to the door—to make a hasty getaway if needed, Kasztner thought. Ferenczy towered over the other men. “He had a strongly chiseled, attractive face, a thick, muscular neck,” one of the participants recalled. “I hoped the hangman's rope would look good on it.”9
If Ferenczy noticed that Stern had not invited him to sit, he paid no attention to the insult. He sat anyway. He wanted to confirm his willingness to change sides. His orders had been, as they knew, to clear the city of its Jewish population. Coming directly from Eichmann, his orders were no different now except that the date had been moved. Ferenczy informed his audience that the Germans were ready to complete the “cleansing” of Hungary and would take over the government if that was what they had to do to achieve their goal. What he had come to offer was a new idea for saving Jews: he would pretend to follow the SS's orders and start concentrating the Jews into a couple of camps outside Budapest, but they would, in fact, be safe there from the SS. The gendarmes would guard the camps, which would be model modern facilities—not the kind the Jews had experienced in the ghettos.
Ferenczy feigned surprise when the others told him about the gas chambers. He remonstrated that he had helped to ship Jews to labor camps in Poland.
“Including the children,” Komoly said into the silence that followed Ferenczy's statement.
“I asked if I would be permitted to visit Auschwitz,” Ferenczy asserted. “I wanted to see for myself that all your people were reasonably well treated and fully employed.”
“In Auschwitz…,” Komoly said, choking on the word.
“They wouldn’t give me the travel pass,” Ferenczy continued. “I would be allowed to visit only after the last of the trains left, they said, and that would be the last transport from Budapest.”
All Ferenczy asked for, in return for his change of heart, was that the group arrange a meeting for him with Regent Horthy. He could not, he explained, ask for it himself without arousing suspicions. In fact, given his station in the defense of the nation, he could not request such a meeting on his own. He had to go through “proper channels”—and that, as everyone knew, would lead to his immediate arrest.
Stern agreed.
“In these times,” Stern explained later to Kasztner, “we can’t be choosy about where we find help.” Ferenczy was certainly no worse than the Sonderkommando members whom Kasztner had been visiting daily.
At the next meeting, Ferenczy was joined by Leo Lulay, who seemed as eager to help their newfound Jewish friends as he had been, only a few days earlier, to have them murdered. To prove his own reliability, Ferenczy provided Stern with a list the Germans had approved for emigration to Sweden. The original list had been expanded by the newly arrived Swedish attaché in Budapest. Ferenczy claimed he had managed to get approval for all the 2,600 Jews named. He tried, again, to persuade the council to move Budapest's Jews into the protected camps he had proposed. He claimed he had found suitable accommodation outside the city.
Fortunately, Stern did not even consider this plan. Jews concentrated in a camp would be too easy to put into boxcars. Rather than argue with Ferenczy, however, he insisted that the proposed sites be pre-approved by the International Red Cross.
As good as his word, Stern did arrange for Ferenczy to meet Horthy at his private quarters in Buda Castle. There, the conniving gendarmerie chief told the old man whatever he thought would be useful for him to say. Having sensed that the German presence in Hungary might be coming to an end, Ferenczy was now desperate to present himself as an ardent nationalist whose chief interest coincided with the Regent’s—whatever that might have been. He informed Horthy of Gestapo activities and Wehrmacht manpower in Hungary, presented his plans for the first-class camps for Budapest's Jews, and pledged his support to Horthy should the Regent demand the withdrawal of German troops.10
Horthy made the mistake of trusting Ferenczy with his own plans. First, he would frustrate Eichmann's efforts to deport the Jews of the capital, and then he would remove Baky and Endre from all positions of power. He suspected that they would try to gain German assistance for their coup.
TO SPEED THE production of emigration papers, Carl Lutz rented a building on Vadász Street close to the former American embassy. It was, he said, perfect for the Emigration Department run by Moshe Krausz: a glass house, a showpiece of Bauhaus architecture. It belonged to a Jewish wholesale glass merchant named Arthur Weisz and made a splendid display case for his products. Weisz was, of course, already out of business, and he was living in the loft with his family. He was thrilled to hear of the rental offer and even happier to accept the Swiss consul's protection certificates.
Krausz moved most reluctantly with his ancient Remington from the basement of the Swiss legation to the second floor of the Glass House, where he established a new domain behind locked doors. Despite his hesitation, however, he sent a triumphant cable to the Jewish Agency headquarters in Palestine, declaring that his own work through Lutz and the “Hungarian line” had succeeded in a large-scale rescue. The eight thousand individual permits would be translated into eight thousand family permits, stretching the numbers to at least three times what had originally been offered.
The glass building now bore the insignia of the Swiss Consulate, with a large Swiss flag and, for all to see, the words “Department of Emigration” engraved in black against a white metal board. As such, it was neutral ground and its employees, young halutzim appointed by Lutz, would all be under the protection of the Swiss government. As employees, they would not be obliged to wear the yellow star.
Thousands of would-be immigrants lined up in front of the house seeking entry forms and refuge while they waited for their departure date. People whom the halutzim managed to extract from the provincial ghettos also ended up here. They made makeshift sleeping quarters in corners of the building, and a group of Orthodox Jews from the east started a kosher kitchen in the basement.
Meanwhile the British, after pondering the matter both in Parliament and in secret meetings, decided to turn down the blood-for-goods proposition. The New York Herald Tribune carried the story on July 19, claiming that the real purpose of Joel Brand's mission had been to split the Allies over the matter of trucks to be used against the Soviets. The July 20 issue of the Times in London reported Brand's mission to Istanbul under the heading “A Monstrous Offer—German Blackmail—Bartering Jews for Munitions.” The Germans were blackmailing the Allies with threats of murdering all the Jews of Hungary, it said. “It has long been clear that, faced with the certainty of defeat, the German authorities would intensify all their efforts to blackmail, deceive, and split the allies. In their latest effort, made known in London yesterday, they have reached a new level of self-deception. They have put forward, or sponsored, an offer to exchange the remaining Hungarian Jews for munitions of war—which, they said, would not be used on the Western front.” The newspaper called the deal “loathsome.” The BBC talked of “humanitarian blackmail.”
The blood-for-goods deal was over—or so it seemed. Fortunately for most participants, Hitler's immediate circle paid no attention to the news from London. That very day, a group of senior army officers attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler. They had hoped for an immediate peace with the Allies. At 12:42 in the afternoon, at Hitler's eastern headquarters near Rastenburg, a bomb was left under the heavy oak table of a conference room that had recently been vacated by several high-ranking German officers. It exploded while Hitler was still in the room, but, apart from a small wound on his arm and some damage to his hearing, he left unscathed. For five days no one knew about this incident: Hitler and Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels decided the news must not slip out uncontrolled. Even Kurt Becher, who was fond of mentioning his close relationship with his boss, Heinrich Himmler, did not find out until a week later, when the first trial of the conspirators was scheduled for hearing before the misleadingly named People's Court.
Nathan Schwalb, the European emissary of the Hechalutz, certainly would not have known about the assassination attempt when, on behalf of the Joint, he sent a long and somewhat rambling cable to Rezső Kasztner offering continued negotiations at a meeting in Switzerland. The Joint had appointed Saly Mayer to conduct further negotiations and was ready to begin immediately. Nor did Kasztner know, when he rushed to see Becher at Andrássy Avenue. The guards posted at either side of the doorway simply waved him in.
Becher was lounging on one of Ferenc Chorin's blue-and-pink, silk-covered couches. He offered Kasztner a glass of wine and then introduced him to his German mistress in Budapest, Countess Hermine von Platen. The countess, tall and lithe, perhaps a dancer, invited Kasztner to dine with them—“I shall call you Rudolf,” she purred. It was a quiet evening of Viennese platters and piano music at the Gellért Hotel. Afterward, they went to the casino, where Becher won modestly and spent his winnings on champagne. At the end of the evening, Kasztner handed Becher the $20,000 he had recently received from the Joint and explained that the authorities of the organization in Switzerland were prepared to convene a meeting with Becher to discuss the details of how further payments would be made.11
That week, Horthy's government requested forty thousand Jewish exit visas from the Germans. The Allies continued their wrangling over lives. The British still worried about the possibility of large numbers of eastern European Jews arriving in Haifa, while they were stuck with their White Paper limiting immigration to Palestine. Spain offered to take three thousand children. Switzerland declared it would “receive” seven thousand to eight thousand holders of Palestine entry certificates, provided it was assured that the emigrants would use Switzerland only as a transit point.12 Sweden would take anyone who was guaranteed by a Swedish citizen.
The newly arrived third secretary at the Swedish Embassy, Raoul Wallenberg, began to hand out hundreds of Swedish protection papers.13 A converted Lutheran, he was the great-great-grandson of one of the first Jews who had settled in Sweden. His family controlled the Eskilda Bank, a financial institution that continued to deal with both the Allies and the Axis.14 His own convictions had been bolstered by information from the Joint, the War Refugee Board, the World Jewish Congress, and the United States intelligence service, the oss. He had arrived prepared to do whatever was necessary to save lives. At first the Swedish Embassy's list included only those with proven connections to Sweden, but the process was slow and, after a few days, Wallenberg no longer cared about such fine points. He just wanted to help. Holders of Swedish papers could move into a number of protected houses—all marked with the Swedish colors—on the Pest side of the Danube.
As an afterthought, Horthy asked Veesenmayer for written assurance that the already deported Hungarian Jews were not being put to death. Both men were still pretending that the Hungarian Jews were going to work in aircraft factories in the Reich. In dress uniform, his chest bristling with medals unearned by a man who had never seen battle, Veesen-mayer visited Horthy with a personal message from Hitler: “The Führer expects to see the measures against the Budapest Jews carried out by the Hungarian government without further delays… At the end of the war, Germany and its allies, not America, will stand victorious in Europe.” He then informed Horthy that the exit visas were conditional on rounding up the Jews of the capital.
Caught in the middle, between fear of the Allies and terror of the Germans, Horthy vacillated. “If this ever ends,” Rezső told Hansi, “Horthy should be given the Légion d’Honneur for extraordinary bravery in the face of the enemy and, immediately afterward, taken out and shot for cowardice.”
The bomb-damaged streets of Budapest boiled with rumors. The Germans were going to take over the city and round up the Jews; Horthy had been taken prisoner; he had made a separate peace deal with the Allies, and the British were coming up through Yugoslavia to occupy Hungary. It was all too much for the leader of the Orthodox community of Budapest. Fülöp von Freudiger went to see Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny. Their relationship had remained cordial since those first few days of the occupation when Freudiger had been able to obtain the release of his brother in exchange for two large, prettily cut rubies in a chocolate box. Freudiger continued to supply Wisliceny with desirable baubles—a string of pearls, a diamond brooch, a gold watch—and the occasional wad of foreign cash for such small favors as extensions of immunity certificates and travel passes for friends and family, as well as the rescue of individuals from ghettos. It was Freudiger who had arranged to extract the venerated rabbi of Szatmár from certain death.15
Now Freudiger was asking for more favors and found the rotund SS captain jovially receptive. Of late, he had been left out of negotiations, and he was missing the excitement of the chase and the joys of receiving gifts. Freudiger presented him with a cash bonus and several more pieces of antique jewelry. As they were saying goodbye, Wisliceny said, “You should go away now.” Freudiger took it as a warning, and, on August 9, he escaped from Budapest with his family and forty friends and managed to reach Romania. Moshe Krausz had known of the plans in advance and had succeeded in changing the composition of the group to include some people who were more at risk than others. They were all traveling on Romanian passports that Freudiger had arranged while in temporary hiding with the Romanian Embassy staff. He left a note for Kasztner explaining his actions and why he had chosen this particular time to escape.
Samuel Stern knew that Freudiger had made his own deal with Wisliceny and that Eichmann's people would now be looking for him, Stern, but he had nowhere to hide. He was, nominally, responsible for the Jewish Council, and Freudiger had been a member of his governing group. Stern told Kasztner that if he did not survive the next few weeks, Rezső himself should write the story of how this old man had, despite the odds, done his best.
Eichmann did indeed have Stern and two other members of the council arrested. Someone was going to suffer for Freudiger's escape. The three men were kept standing in ankle-deep water in the Gestapo's Buda jail. They were all given an hour-long lecture, but only Ernő Pető, the youngest of the group, was beaten.
Eichmann then ordered Kasztner up to his office in the Majestic Hotel. Becher was there, lounging in one of the chairs, his feet on a filigree-covered table. The room was thick with cigarette smoke.
“You knew about this pig swill, of course,” Eichmann accused Kasztner in greeting.
“Only afterward, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”
“If I catch him, I’m going to have him beaten to death. I’m going to watch when he dies. Why hasn’t Stern killed himself yet? You’ve got to tell him it's time. Once I get angry, he won’t escape! Does he know that?” Eichmann shrieked. “A dog. Smart little terrier. Dog. Does he have any money left?”
Becher shrugged. “There are some rich Jews still,” he said. “Why don’t you go after them, Adolf?”
“It's Horthy!” Eichmann shouted. “Ich habe die Schnauze voll [I’ve had it up to here]!”16 That “dimwitted little seaman” would have to learn the hard way, Eichmann raged at Kasztner. “No one can threaten me into letting go of the prime objective.” In direct defiance of the Führer's orders, he shouted, the Soviet army had been allowed to seize the Majdanek concentration camp without a shot being fired and with the gas chambers and furnaces intact. No one was following orders any longer. And, Kasztner noted, Eichmann no longer pretended that the gas chambers did not exist.
THE GOVERNMENT demanded that the Jewish Council immediately provide two thousand laborers for rubble clearing. They would be paid a nominal amount but fed two meals a day. Thousands of the unemployed lined up at Sip Street to apply for the jobs. Former lawyers, engineers, bankers, architects, and doctors were eager to show that they were, despite their age, physically fit. They needed the wages to buy food for their families.
The international community continued to debate how to accommodate the Regent's attempt to win exit visas for Hungarian Jews. As the weeks passed, it showed no sense of urgency and still offered no refuge for forty thousand people. The United States had already filled its Hungarian quota. The camp it had established in upstate New York for around one thousand stateless persons was full.17 Smaller nations were afraid to offer temporary homes if the United States, Australia, and Canada were not going to take the refugees off their hands once the war was over. Australia refused on the grounds of “unpromising shipping,” Ireland agreed to take five hundred children, and Canada did not respond at all. Various South American countries were examining their options.
But the Germans did not provide exit visas even for those who had obtained legal entry papers to other countries. The children's transport to Spain and the Swedish transport of 640 people were stalled. Despite all the paperwork on the collective Swiss passport that Lutz had authorized, no one had been allowed to leave Hungary.18 Kasztner cabled Saly Mayer in Switzerland that he was convinced no exit visas would be granted without ransom payments.19 A whole month had passed since Horthy had offered the last chance of “a large rescue,” as Krausz had described it.
On August 17, Horthy demanded the resignations of the most overtly pro-Nazi members of the government, including Andor Jaross, the minister of the interior, and sent Prime Minister Döme Sztójay on extended sick leave. Then he waited to see what the German reaction would be, and, when there was none, he appointed Géza Lakatos, a former general in the Hungarian army, as prime minister.20 During his first week in office, Lakatos dismissed both of the state secretaries, László Baky and László Endre. He tried to pacify the Germans by announcing an immediate increase in production for the war effort.
The official announcement regarding Jewish refugees was finally made by the British and the Americans on August 18, when the New York Times reported that the Allies assumed responsibility for providing shelter for the refugees, even though they did not, “in any way, condone the action of the Hungarian government in forcing emigration as an alternative to persecution and death.”21
The same day, Eichmann ordered a show of strength in Budapest with an hour-long SS parade of goose-stepping, fully armed troops, armored cars, jeeps, and tanks.
KASZTNER's REPEATED requests that Joel Brand return home to report directly to Eichmann went unanswered. He sent daily pleas to the Jewish Agency in Istanbul and to Saly Mayer at the Joint in Switzerland, asking that a date be set for the meeting with Becher. Mayer finally agreed to this encounter, despite his own misgivings and his instructions from Schwalb that he could not offer the Germans anything concrete. He knew that the Joint was expressly forbidden to offer money or goods to enemies of the United States.
On his next visit to Becher, Kasztner demanded that the Bergen-Belsen group be released now, as a token of German goodwill in preparation for the first meeting with Mayer. They had already been paid for, and, if this small concession could be made, he was sure the meeting would bring additional financial rewards. It was, he said, what the Jewish Agency and the Joint would expect. Becher told Kasztner he was “an uppity dog”22 and suggested he could relax about the mutual undertakings now that he was dealing with Himmler's representative.
“We must clear the air before we meet with any foreign representatives, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Kasztner said. “You need to understand that promises have been broken, that Wisliceny did not deliver his end of the bargain when we paid to avoid the deportations. He said the SS was not interested in deportations, yet that was exactly what followed. Now, at least 300,000 of our people are dead.”
“How do you know that?” Becher demanded. “Does Istanbul know?”
“I expect everyone knows, in Istanbul and London, even in New York,” Kasztner replied. “This is not the kind of information you can hope to keep hidden.”
Becher said it was not information, only rumors, but he agreed to talk to Eichmann.
Becher immediately asked Eichmann to release half of the original 1,684 passengers on Kasztner's train. Eichmann agreed to only 500,23 but then, in his instructions to Hermann Krumey, reduced the number still further to 300. Krumey traveled to the “privileged” Ungarnlager, planning to pick the 300 quickly and alphabetically. But it would not be so easy, and he had no stomach for the scenes that greeted him on August 16. The previous day there had been a suicide and a funeral in the camp, and, that same evening, everyone had been restricted to the barracks as a large group of newly arrived women were marched past the barred windows to some distant section of the camp. The women were barefoot, their striped cotton dresses hung off their thin shoulders, and they walked with their eyes fixed on the ground and their faces expressionless. They were hurried along by gun-wielding guards.
The Ungarnlager's inmates became hysterical and grief-stricken when they discovered that Krumey's orders did not include all of them. Krumey had a long discussion with some of the camp's leaders, including József Fischer and Ernő Szilágyi. When Fischer stood on a wooden crate to read out the names of those selected, some screamed and shouted accusations of influence peddling and bribery. Too many had been chosen from Samuel Stern's list, they claimed, and not enough of the halutzim or the Orthodox. Olga Munk was listed, but not her son, John. When she tried to take his hand, at first the guards tried to prevent her. Then Krumey relented and added another eighteen to the list for a total 318, risking Eichmann's displeasure but, he hoped, gaining some praise from Kasztner and the others when the war was over.
Krumey had brought letters to the camp from Kasztner, telling the transport's leaders that this smaller group (though he was expecting it to be five hundred) was an advance on the whole deal and that they would all be leaving for Switzerland in a few more days. The letters helped to calm those who stayed behind, especially given the fact that Rezső's and Bogyó's families were still with them.
In a long, private note, Kasztner reassured Fischer that discussions in Budapest had gone well. He mentioned his own imprisonment and its strange outcome, but it took some days for the imprisoned leaders to interpret what he had said in code.
The entire Munk family was on that first train. Peter remembers stopping at a bombed-out railway station near Frankfurt and watching the burning fires destroy the city. He lay on the roof of the boxcar and delighted in feeling the earth shake as repeated bombing flights attacked Germany. The train reached the Swiss border on August 21, the same time that an SS car arrived on the Austrian side of the Saint Margarethen Bridge, carrying Becher and Kasztner to their first meeting with Saly Mayer.