Roosevelt's representative and Himmler's agent sat opposite
each other, the two representatives of the
two nations who played a decisive battle of life and death.
REZSŐ KASZTNER, DER KASZTNER-BERICHT
THE MEETING between Kurt Becher and Roswell McClelland took place on November 5, a Sunday afternoon, in a small conference room in the Savoy, an upscale Zurich hotel. McClelland was composed and at ease; Becher, in rumpled civilian clothes, tired after his long trip from Berlin and irritable after the previous day's preliminary discussion with Saly Mayer in Saint Gallen, Switzerland,1 was visibly nervous. Both men were in their midthirties. On the sidelines sat Mayer and Rezső Kasztner, witnesses rather than participants. McClelland was a Quaker, head of the War Refugee Board, a highly educated man whose erudition impressed even the usually dismissive Kasztner.
Becher opened with a statement that Himmler was ready to allow the emigration of the group still held in Bergen-Belsen once certain conditions were met. McClelland, well aware of the European tragedy as it had unfolded in every country the Germans had occupied, replied that the average man had no sympathy for a regime that raised murder to a form of government policy.
Becher countered that the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent German women and children, victims of Allied bombardments intended specifically to kill civilians, was tantamount to murder. He mentioned the systematic destruction of entire cities.
McClelland stated that the end of the war was in sight, that Germany was going to be defeated, and that Becher's role in saving lives at this critical moment would count in his favor in the war criminals’ trials at the close of hostilities.
When Becher insisted on returning to the essence of the original agreement, that he could guarantee nothing without concrete results from these negotiations, Mayer said they were present to make a deal.
McClelland—without due authorization from his superiors—offered Becher 20 million Swiss francs in return for the immediate cessation of deportations, the safety of the remaining inmates of all concentration camps, and respect for the lives of all civilians “without regard for their race or religion.” Mayer showed Becher a telegram from the American secretary of state, Cordell Hull, that confirmed $5 million was to be transferred to Mayer's special account for rescue efforts. The SS could use the funds to shop for whatever it needed, except, of course, war materials. Becher, in turn, and without due authorization from Himmler, agreed that men and women under sixteen and over forty would be spared.
At Kasztner's urging—he thought McClelland's demands too general and impossible to supervise—Becher agreed to make an effort to release the Bergen-Belsen group. But he said he could not allow the Slovak Jews to emigrate, because he had orders from Himmler that they were to be eliminated “for military reasons.”
The meeting ended at 1 AM the next day. Becher was satisfied with his performance on behalf of the Reich, so he enjoyed a pleasant sleep in a plush bed and went shopping in the morning for a gift for the countess, something smaller for his wife, and a special Swiss medication for Himmler's ailing kidneys.
Kasztner was up all night writing a report on the meeting. He was not pleased with the day's events. The agreements were all fine in principle, but they failed to make concrete demands of the Germans. McClelland's requirement that the Germans “respect the lives of all civilians” was nice, but it ignored the urgent needs of Hungary's remaining Jews. Kasztner had asked of Mayer that demands from the Joint include at least a guarantee for the security of those still alive; that the deportations of Jews stop immediately; that those who had foreign passports or protection papers be allowed to leave; that the Red Cross be permitted to enter the concentration camps, and that the Bergen-Belsen group depart at once for Switzerland.2
When Mayer accompanied the delegation to the Swiss border for their return to Budapest via Vienna, Kasztner produced the text he had been working on all night. It contained the conditions he thought essential in exchange for the 20 million francs.
Becher said he would consider those demands, except for the one about deportations. He was not about to leave behind Jews who could attack German soldiers once the Russians were close to Budapest. Then he turned to his SS aide, Herbert Kettlitz, and ordered him to remain behind to begin locating material goods to purchase with the 20 million francs. “When will you deliver the suitcase?” Becher asked Mayer.
“The suitcase?” Mayer asked.
“The one with the money,” Becher replied.
“What do you think?” Mayer shouted. “That we are throwing our millions at you now?”
Everyone froze. Finally, Becher broke the silence. “Herr Mayer, it seems, has lost his nerve,” he said.3 He had obviously decided to treat Mayer's outburst as an ill-conceived joke.
On the long drive back from the Swiss border to Vienna, Becher soon fell into a talkative, confiding mood. He complained to Kasztner about interference from the Gestapo in SS affairs, about being under observation himself because of his relationship with Kasztner, about his suspicions that Eichmann would continue to evade Himmler's orders. He made a serious, though completely ridiculous, effort to explain Himmler's sincere convictions regarding Jews, his idealism, and his honorable intentions. “He is, basically, a good-hearted man,” he told Rezső. “You should see him with his daughter, Püppi. He is devoted.”
Himmler, it seemed to Becher, would have preferred another way to rid Europe of the dominant Jewish presence. “Did you know that Himmler has never insulted the Jews in a single one of his speeches?” he asked Kasztner. And he would have preferred not to be at war with the British and the Americans. Himmler was a brilliant man, one who could see into the future. In the end, the British and the Americans would come to their senses and realize that the common enemy was Soviet Communism.
Hitler, he continued, had characterized the Slavs as untermenschen, sub-humans, like the Jews. He planned to use them all as illiterate slave labor and to annihilate those who were not capable of useful work. Becher said he was sure that Hitler's medications caused his fits of uncontrollable rage. Since the attempt on his life, the Führer had lost his sense of balance, not only physically but also psychologically. But Becher still admired him and knew how difficult his task must be: it required superhuman strength for him to continue to command the nation.
Kasztner, in contrast to the avuncular Becher, sat silent and chain-smoking all the way. He knew he had nothing left now except this polished Nazi with a weakness for wealth and an understandable concern about his fate at the end of the war.
From Vienna they continued their journey with Lieutenant-General Hans Jüttner, the head of the Waffen-SS and technically Becher's boss. While the shiny Mercedes was avoiding the craters from recent American and British bomb attacks, the strafing by low-flying aircraft, and the trucks carrying the wounded to hospitals in Berlin and Nuremberg and Vienna, the relentless “death marches” of Budapest's Jews toward Austria had begun.
Jüttner saw the battered columns of women, children, and old men staggering along the Budapest–Vienna road, dead bodies lying in the ditches, and claimed later to have been horrified. No preparations for rest or food along the 140-mile route had been made. Those who became ill were shot or left behind along the highway without medical help. The International Red Cross reported ragged, starved, exhausted people force-marched by truncheon-wielding gendarmes and Arrow Cross irregulars. Most of those who saw them were afraid to interfere. A few brave souls found the courage to take people out of the marching columns, claiming they were needed for urgent work elsewhere. Five men prepared a rough film to show to the papal nuncio and to send on to Red Cross headquarters in Bern.
As they drove toward Budapest, General Jüttner asked Becher directly: At whose orders were these civilians marched to their deaths? Who had the authority to order such an atrocity in full view of the population?
“It's Eichmann's regiment,” Becher told him. “They are marching at Eichmann's orders.”4 Initially, 27,000 civilians had been rounded up for the exodus, supplemented with 17,000 labor service men, but the numbers grew as the horrific state of those who arrived hardly met Ernst Kaltenbrunner's order for able-bodied workers.
Once Jüttner arrived in the capital, he sent an urgent request to Eichmann for a meeting to discuss the matter. In response, Eichmann sent one of his junior officers, a lad no more than twenty years old, who treated Jüttner's outrage with a smirk and suggested that, if Jüttner was willing to sacrifice military transports for Jews, perhaps they could discuss the matter further. Otherwise, the Sonderkommando had its orders for laborers to build fortifications against a possible attack along the Ostmark (Austrian) border. Becher promised Kasztner that he would also contact Himmler, and, in the meantime, he would have his adjutant deliver a hundred SS passes for the use of Jewish aid workers.5
Eichmann commanded Kasztner to attend his office again. He screamed, swore at his adjutants, and seethed about both the clerics and the interfering foreign governments. He raged that there were still too many Jews hiding in Budapest, that “others” were attempting to thwart his plans for the new Europe. But he was determined to show them all. They had told him it was impossible to “lift out” the Jews of Hungary, but he had almost accomplished the impossible. And he had done it in record time. It was the victory of National Socialism over the untermenschen, the lesser human beings. Now there were a mere 200,000 to 300,000 left. He had been rewarded with his lieutenant-colonel's stripes after he exterminated Poland's Jews; now he expected to be made a full colonel after his Hungarian campaign.
Himmler, he complained, had taken false counsel. He had been trapped into negotiations with “the Jew.” As for Hungary, the country was run by rabble, the government did not know how to govern, and the Arrow Cross was nothing but a bunch of kids with guns. In a real war, most of them would not know how to hit a moving target. If the Russians came close, the Arrow Cross would be even less useful than the Hungarian army.
Kasztner interrupted the invective with a plea for the Columbus Street camp. These were Jews he had brought in from the provinces with Eichmann's “help,” but now the SS guards were no longer there to keep away the thieving and marauding “rabble.”
Eichmann replied that he would arrange to have all the inmates of the camp taken to the Bergen-Belsen Ungarnlager, the section of the camp set aside for Kasztner's “exchange Jews,” once the first twenty-five trucks arrived. Then he turned his back on Kasztner, barked orders at his staff, buckled on his belt, and departed the meeting with long, swinging steps—the determined stride of a man on a mission.
Kasztner raced back to the still intact Va’ada offices and called everyone together to organize help for the survivors among the marchers he had swept by in the car. The news from the “Hungarian line” was terrible. Ottó Komoly and Samuel Stern learned that the men they had been meeting to organize effective armed resistance to the Arrow Cross had been betrayed, and many of the Hungarian leaders, including Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, were charged with treason.6
Becher went to see Raoul Wallenberg at the Swedish Embassy and offered to provide his protection and exit visas for four hundred Jews with Swedish passports in exchange for only 400,000 Swiss francs.7 But as Wallenberg's Hungarian activities were financed by the Joint, he could not enter into ransom negotiations any more than Mayer could. Becher suggested similar deals to the Portuguese and Spanish embassies, but there was not enough time for the transactions. The Russians were starting to encircle the city.
Jüttner cabled a furious report to Himmler about the forced marches. Both Jüttner and Becher claimed credit for what happened next: the marches were stopped by the SS Reichsführer. Becher's cable to Himmler regarding the meeting with Roswell McClelland, Kasztner thought, would have been the decisive factor in Himmler's decision. That was certainly how Becher presented the decision. “Now I hope,” he said, “that your Mr. McClelland will appreciate Himmler's willingness to meet him halfway: 20 million francs is a laughable sum in light of what I have just accomplished.”8 But at the end of the war even Rudolf Höss, the former commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau, claimed credit for stopping the death march. He said he had complained to Himmler about the poor condition of the new arrivals; he had been put in charge of the trench-digging in Vienna and had asked for able-bodied men. Yehuda Bauer, one of the foremost historians of this terrible era, suggests that the Swiss negotiations were the deciding factor.
Mayer continued to assure Becher, through telephone calls and telegrams to Kasztner, that the money was now ready for use for whatever materials the Reich required, in exchange for lives spared. Unbeknownst to Kasztner, this message, too, was a bluff. The U.S. State Department had cabled to expressly forbid any ransom deal. It was time, it said, for more “gestures” from the Germans.
The remaining captives in the Bergen-Belsen camp had heard little news about their fate either from home or from Hermann Krumey. They were emaciated. Many of them had succumbed to illness, and they were suffering from hunger and the infernal lice, from cold and damp amid the persistent rains, and, most of all, from mind-numbing boredom. Every day, they watched the hundreds of Allied bombers flash overhead on their way to their German targets. They had seen new groups arrive in other “privileged” camp enclosures, as well as in the häftlinger camp, where walking skeletons worked night and day. The exchange Jews organized more Hebrew lessons, musical and theatrical presentations, recitals and lectures. They waited.
At last, on November 18, the Ungarnlager welcomed its first visitor since the first group had left—Bergen-Belsen's commandant, Hauptsturmführer Adolf Haas, a handsome young man in an immaculate uniform. He informed József Fischer that a train would be leaving for Switzerland in a few days. He was polite and deferential. He asked to see Mrs. Kasztner, personally. When he was told that she was too ill to come—Bogyó had been suffering from pneumonia—he asked Fischer to tell his daughter that “Dr. Kasztner sends his good wishes and I send mine for her speedy recovery. In a few days she will see her husband again.”
“And the rest of us?” Fischer asked.
“All of you,” the commandant lied, and he respectfully nodded his head at Fischer before leaving.
November 18 was also the day that Becher received word from Kettlitz in Saint Gallen in Switzerland. Kettlitz still had not seen any of the Joint's promised Swiss francs, so he concluded that Mayer and McClelland had been bluffing when they met Becher earlier in the month.
Becher was outraged. He told Kasztner he would have to report the facts to Himmler. He was not going to take further responsibility for the Joint's inaction. Kasztner immediately cabled Saly Mayer, but, without waiting for Mayer's reply, he informed Becher that the “payments had been held up due to unforeseen technical difficulties” in Switzerland. But, he added with a flourish, “I guarantee that the money will be there.”
Eichmann ordered Kasztner to appear for another audience at the Majestic Hotel. “I need 65,000 to 70,000 Jews,” he announced. “Immediately—20,000 for the Ostmark wall; the rest for factories in the Reich.” He said that all the women and children could stay in their Budapest homes, and he would respect the protection papers—even the fake ones—if Kasztner would make the Jewish Council understand that it had to produce the required number of workers.
“You are actually asking that I locate the Jews who you claim have been hiding and force them to appear for your convenience?” Kasztner asked, incredulous.
Eichmann assured him that he, personally, would root out everyone with or without cooperation, so why not cooperate to mutual advantage? Kasztner politely declined. He was hoping he could reach Becher and persuade him to intervene again.
Eichmann started up the marches anew. About thirty thousand Jews, mostly women and children, began the journey toward Austria.9 This time, though, there were a great many more helpers along the highway—Hungarian gentiles, priests, and even some former members of parliament who dared now to show themselves once more. It was obvious to everyone that Germany was losing the war. The new Romanian government announced its intention to deport Germans from Romania to Siberia, unless the Germans returned the Transylvanian Jews.10 Kasztner noticed how shocked Becher appeared when he registered the news that others were willing to use SS methods to free themselves of unwanted people. They both knew that few Transylvanian Jews would be left in Auschwitz and that extracting even those few would be impractical. “Perhaps,” he suggested to Becher, “we could engineer a fair exchange? Our live Jews for their live Germans?”
On November 28 the Hungarian police, following orders from the Ministry of the Interior, began to herd Jews from the Star Houses into the Seventh District, which would now be designated Budapest's ghetto. The Jewish Council had been given a few hours’ notice about the boundaries of the ghetto, where all Jews who lacked international papers or protection certificates were to be located. The ghetto contained 290 buildings, but only 240 could be used to house the 45,000 people—by the end of December, they numbered about 85,000—who had been ordered to live there. Given the number of apartments and rooms in the area, this meant an average of six persons in each room.11 Those with papers from the different embassies were put in their own “protected houses,” duly identified by both the Star of David and the emblem of the particular country granting its protection.
Kasztner had been waiting for Becher in the foyer of the Chorin house. If Becher was as much a realist as he appeared to be, he would, surely, have started planning for his future after the end of the Reich. He was a practical man. Kasztner wondered whether Becher had been fooled by Mayer's tactics or McClelland's inspired speeches. Perhaps they had all been playing for time. The vast sums of money they had been discussing were a mirage, and perhaps smaller amounts would do, if only to grant Becher some grounds to continue his pretense to Himmler that the negotiations were going well. But where was Kasztner going to find real valuables at this stage? How many people had managed to keep anything?
He need not have worried. Becher arrived in high spirits. He had picked up some champagne along the way from the military airport, and his chauffeur had brought a lovely young lady to the house. Becher had met her a few weeks before at one of Edmund Veesenmayer's parties. She was Hungarian and a real baroness. Tonight was going to be a night for celebrations. “I have convinced the Reichsführer-SS to stop the Final Solution,” he announced. “Himmler has authorized the destruction of the gas chambers and the crematoria in all the camps—not only in Auschwitz, in all of them.”12 He poured Kasztner a glass of champagne. “It's French,” he boasted. “The real thing, not the phony stuff you Hungarians make.”
At first Kasztner did not believe what he had just heard. If they were blowing up the death machinery, they must be destroying evidence. The Allies must be closer than he had realized. Or had the meeting with McClelland led to some sort of exit for the Germans? “Has there been another meeting with McClelland?” he asked.
“And what exactly would be the point of that?” Becher asked. “Another explanation? Another wait?”
When Kasztner told him that the delays in Switzerland were caused by misunderstandings, that the deal was still substantially in place, Becher just smiled. “What's wrong with you, Rudolf,” he said, “is that you cannot enjoy the moment. Tonight we are going to the Hungaria [Hotel]. There is a chanteuse I want you to hear and, tell you what, why don’t we fetch Hansi on the way over? God knows, she looks like she needs a bit of fun in her life…”
Kasztner started talking about the ghetto, the Arrow Cross, and the random shootings, but Becher waved him aside. “There is a time for everything, Kasztner. Tonight is one for celebrations.”
At the Hungaria the crystal chandelier was still in place, in defiance of the bombings. The waiters were still in tails, their starched shirtfronts gleaming in the candlelight. Becher's baroness, enchanted by the atmosphere, clung to his arm as if in a trance. She was about nineteen years old, a bit unsteady in her studded high heels. The chanteuse, her lips brushing the microphone as if it were a lover, sang “Lili Marlene”—“Vor der Kaserne, vor den grossen Tor…” An SS officer near the entrance was crying.
ON SUNDAY, December 3, the Ungarnlager group at Bergen-Belsen was ready for departure for Switzerland by train, as promised by Haas. Everyone had packed and lined up for the last head count. Hermann Krumey arrived to personally oversee the transfer of the remaining Red Cross packages to the Germans and to ensure that Eichmann's final orders for the “Kasztner transport” were obeyed: Joel Brand's family was not to be included. His eighty-year-old mother knelt in the mud before Krumey and begged that at least her granddaughter, Margit, be allowed to leave. “Es schadet uns viel [We are very sorry],” said Krumey, and he turned his back on the weeping woman.13
Margit, ill with scarlet fever, remembers the misery of the days after the others left. The family was put into the neighboring Dutch enclosure, where she was allowed to remain in the hospital until her fever subsided. It was there that she met a young girl of about her own age, tall and pale, with short, dark stubble where her hair had been cut off. The other members of her family, the girl told Margit, were all dead. She, too, was ill with the fever. Her name was Anne Frank.
THAT SAME DAY, a large force of Arrow Cross thugs attacked the Columbus Street camp, murdered many of the people inside, and dragged some survivors to the ghetto. The commander of the camp and his entire family were among the victims. About four thousand others were herded into boxcars and transported to the Ungarnlager in Bergen-Belsen, where they met some of the Strasshof exchange Jews.
Later, Ferenc Szálasi's secretary explained the attack to the Red Cross, whose flag and emblem at the gate had been ignored. “There were some shots fired from inside the camp,” he claimed. André Biss, in Kasztner's absence—once again, Kasztner was on his way to the Swiss border—tried to reach Becher, but his appropriated house on Andrássy Avenue was locked up. Not even a guard had been left at the doors to say where he had gone. So Biss went to the Majestic and demanded to see Eichmann. He threatened Otto Hunsche with sending a message to Himmler that all negotiations should cease because the Sonderkommando was ignoring Himmler's orders.14 After keeping him waiting for an hour, Hunsche confirmed that peace had been restored at Columbus Street and said there would be no further disturbances.
On December 5, Kasztner and Saly Mayer met again in Saint Gallen, with Erich Krell standing in for Becher. Kasztner carried an anguished letter from the Budapest Jewish Council, asking the Joint and the Jewish Agency to recognize that they were all about to die. Urgent help was needed to deter the killers.
As before, Mayer had neither money nor goods. He complained to Kasztner that, while nobody had said no, neither had anyone said yes, and without that, the promised 20 million Swiss francs was unavailable. He was able to show only that a deposit of 207,600 Swiss francs had been made by the War Refugee Board into the account of a Lucerne manufacturer that could sell sixteen tractors to Germany. (As it happened, no tractors were delivered, and the board defined the amount transferred as “show money.”)
While he was in Switzerland, Kasztner received a cable from Biss. The situation of the Budapest Jews in the ghetto had become intolerable, Biss warned. There was an immediate need for further funds. Telegram in hand, Kasztner returned to Mayer's room and exacted further promises, though Mayer was still unable to give Kasztner any money to bribe the Germans. Although Kasztner never believed his claim that he didn’t have any real cash, Mayer was telling the truth. The best he could hope for was to reach an agreement with the Swiss Red Cross to increase its supply of food for Budapest. When Kasztner accused him of complicity in the murder of Jews, Mayer said he would resign his position. These had been terrible months for him. He did not need to be setting up meetings with the SS, and he certainly did not need to take abuse from a man such as Kasztner.
Kasztner refrained from further criticism, but it took him the rest of the day to persuade Mayer to stay on the job. His resignation now would have signed the death warrants of all the Jews that Kasztner had worked to save. Having softened Mayer's stance, Kasztner went to cajole the Germans. He persuaded Krell to send a cable to Becher telling him that the Joint would take it as a sign of good faith if the Bergen-Belsen group was allowed to cross the border.
On December 7, at seven o’clock in the evening, the second Kasztner group, including Bogyó, arrived at Bregenz in Ostmark, near the Swiss border. They had traveled in an ordinary passenger train with ordinary windows and ordinary toilets but no heat. Rezső was waiting for them along with Becher's adjutants, Kettlitz and Krell. The two Germans argued over whether to allow the passengers through to the Swiss side, where a well-heated Swiss train was waiting for them. Kettlitz kept insisting that, because Krell had not been able to collect the Swiss goods on the obersturmbannführer's behalf, further orders from Becher were required. Krell argued that their task was to deliver the 1,368 stück, or “pieces,” not to ask unnecessary questions. His orders, however, included a final accounting; as the exchange rate stood, Becher was still owed $65,000. “According to my calculations,” Kasztner insisted, “I am owed another four hundred people.” They did not settle the argument, but each man agreed to discuss the matter with his superiors.
Krumey, who had been following the train in a German staff car, strolled down the platform, stopped to converse with the other SS officers, and finally approached Kasztner, who had been smoking near the compartment where he had seen Bogyó at the window. He told Kasztner that the dice were cast in his favor. The group could cross the Rhine into neutral territory. The guards said their suddenly polite goodbyes on the German side and asked to be remembered when the war was over. Bogyó and Rezső embraced and held each other, briefly, on the platform. He had worried she would be kept back as a hostage.
The Kasztner group was taken to the military barracks in Saint Gallen. There they found nurses and doctors to take care of the sick, medicines and warm clothes, and delicacies such as chocolates, fresh fruit, and pastries, gifts for the children, and fine underwear for the women. For the first time in months they had real news, both in newspapers and on the radio, so they could learn what had happened in Budapest and in Kolozsvár.
“Their departure,” Kasztner recalled, “ended my five-months’ nightmare.”15
ON DECEMBER 8, five million of the long-awaited 20 million Swiss francs was finally deposited. Krell was able to cable Becher from Bregenz that the procurement of goods was in process, that the remaining 15 million “was being worked on,” that Dr. Billitz was needed for further discussions, and that Kasztner should be allowed to go to Switzerland for a few days.
Becher agreed to a short trip for Kasztner because the Joint's European representative, Joseph Schwartz, was expected in Switzerland, but a follow-up telegram on December 11 demanded immediate information about the 15 million. ”The situation in Budapest,” Becher said, “had become precarious.”16
Rezső Kasztner crossed the Swiss border on December 20. The next day, he was reunited with his family and his wife. It had been a long time, and a great deal had happened to change both of them. Bogyó had been ill in Bergen-Belsen; she had become extremely thin, her once luxurious hair had been cut short, and her face showed the signs of stress, fear, and hunger. Rezső had trained himself to display no emotion, his face almost a mask of faked composure; his constant smoking had stained his teeth and his hands yellow, and he seemed a stranger even to himself. One night in Budapest he had promised Hansi that, if they survived this slaughter, they would remain together—he would leave Bogyó. Now, seeing his lovely, fragile wife again, he was no longer sure about that vow.17
There had been talk in the Bergen-Belsen camp about Rezső and Hansi, but Bogyó, when she was at last alone with her husband, gave no indication that she had heard anything at all. She was determined to ignore the rumors. Rezső had always been attractive to women, so, in all probability, she thought, this affair was no more than another fleeting flirtation.
ON DECEMBER 10 the Budapest ghetto was surrounded by a sixteen-foot wooden fence. Inside, 63,000 people had been crammed into 293 houses and 4,500 apartments, at least fourteen people to each room. There was little food, supplies of water were sporadic, and toilet facilities were few. Corpses lined the streets and piled up in central Klauzál Square. Ottó Komoly, still the nominal head of the Red Cross's Section A, now also took charge of delivering food to the ghetto, but delivery vans were frequently robbed on the way. “Inadvertently,” he told Miksa Domonkos, “we are feeding the Arrow Cross mobs with subsistence suppers, courtesy of the Joint.” 18
Becher returned briefly from Berlin to supervise the packing of paintings, furniture, antique mirrors, and jewelry in the Chorin villas. He worked with Hans Geschke's group of SS men loading fifty-five freight cars with valuables that they and their fellow officers had collected while stationed in Hungary.19 It was a small portion of the more than 600,000 tons of goods and valuables that the Germans looted from their ally when they finally abandoned all hope of turning back the Russians from invading Hungary. About a quarter of this total had come from the Jews. The Germans had also collected 2.5 billion reichsmarks from the Hungarian government for the removal of the Jews from the provinces.20 Between October 20, 1944, and early May of the next year, they emptied the National Bank of all its deposits and sent to Germany 1,227 steam engines, 3,839 passenger wagons, 43,741 boxcars, 63,900 trucks, 605,000 beef cattle—and that was just the beginning. In his report to Szálasi, parliamentarian Endre Rajk complained in particular that he had difficulty preventing “SS Colonel Becher's countless excesses.”21 Some weeks earlier, the Hungarian government had already begun to assemble the contents of what became known as “the Gold Train.” That train, containing the confiscated assets of Hungary's Jewry—precious stones, gold and silver objects, jewelry, valuable furs, rare carpets, and art, packed in sixty-one large cases—crossed the border into Ostmark just before the end of the war in Europe.22
Becher's mistress had returned to Budapest a few weeks earlier. “She used to be a barmaid,” Becher had confided to Kasztner, “but she is magnificent on a horse.” The countess was sad to see the last of the city. The Allied bombings were difficult to endure, but they were bombing Germany, too, and in Budapest she had enjoyed some of the comforts of prewar Berlin—maids, a cook and valet, a chauffeur, and the luxury of fine furnishings. Except for the battles over Becher's unfaithfulness, she had enjoyed her time in the Chorin villas.
While Kasztner waited for Nathan Schwalb's arrival, he was visited by two brothers, Elias and Yitzhak Sternbuch, who were part of the Orthodox relief work in Switzerland. They had managed to funnel some cash to the beleaguered Bratislava Working Group and were now hot on the trail of a new contact, a man who had once been friendly with Himmler and could be persuaded to go to Berlin—even in these times—to negotiate the release of a group of Orthodox Jews. They voiced their visceral hatred of Mayer, who they thought was incompetent and unwilling to take any chances. They assured Kasztner that their new contact, former Swiss president Jean-Marie Musy,23 had no misgivings about dealing with the Nazis. He did not share Mayer's tender sensibilities when it came to saving people. Kasztner, despite his own misgivings about Mayer, was reluctant to abandon his own line to the Joint. As he explained to the Sternbuchs and, later, wrote in his report, he decided that the Joint was a more reliable ally than even the most influential of Swiss leaders. He would stay the course.
Unfortunately, Kasztner's meeting with Schwalb did not produce any quick solution to his immediate problem of getting those 15 million Swiss francs to the Germans. The best he could do was to extract a letter from Mayer promising that the millions would be ready to transfer to the SS during his next meeting with Becher himself. Budapest was now surrounded by Soviet troops. Kasztner, determined to be of help to “his people,” crossed the border again to Bregenz. He wanted to be in Budapest “in these terrible times of the siege, to be with his friends in the Va’ada.” He explained to Bogyó that he could not sit in the comfort of Switzerland knowing what those he had left behind had to endure.
On January 1, 1945, Kasztner traveled to Vienna. He was determined that his tauschjude, or “exchange Jews,” as Eichmann had billed them, should survive the war. He had been concerned that the SS would murder them all when the Soviet army reached Ostmark (Austria). He had a German passport, issued by the German Embassy in Budapest, which made no mention of his birthplace or of his being a Jew. Becher said this document would make it easy for Kasztner to move around, and it would save Becher the bother of extricating “Rudolf” again from tricky situations. Kasztner's German was fluent, faultless, literate, and witty, and he could easily pass for an Aryan. Becher was so confident of Kasztner's ability that he arranged with the assistant chief of the Vienna Gestapo that Kasztner be given a room at the Grand Hotel.24
First, Kasztner went to the SS Arbeitzentrals headquarters in Castellangasse, where all the records of the Strasshof Jews were carefully filed by name and number.25 The secretarial tasks had begun with a card for each arrival at the Strasshof transit camp. Every person, even the babies, had been examined by a doctor and judged suitable or unsuitable for work. Since then, the individual cards had been updated regularly with any piece of new information. This office also kept the books for amounts paid by the users of Jewish slave labor, all food or medication distributed, and the transfers from one work area to another. With each passing week, the health of the exchange Jews had deteriorated. There were more transfers to Bergen-Belsen and other concentration camps, and Kasztner suspected that none of these transfers were intended to improve the health of the prisoners.
Krumey had allowed a small hospital to be set up at 16 Malzgasse, and that's where Kasztner went next. He met Emil Tuchmann, the most senior of the ten Jewish doctors who were now working there. Naturally, they could not call the place a hospital, or refer to Tuchmann and the others as doctors, because all Jewish doctors had lost their medical degrees.26
Nevertheless, they attended to the immediate medical needs of the Jews in and around Vienna. Tuchmann told Kasztner that the doctors regularly lied to the SS about the seriousness of their patients’ illnesses. They knew that those crippled in work-related accidents or seriously ill were often transferred to death camps. No matter how serious the illness, they claimed that patients would recover quickly and be able to return to work. They pretended that broken limbs were minor sprains, that dysentery was a temporary stomach ailment, that tuberculosis was a cold. They gave advice to diabetics about how to stay alive without medication. Anyone openly diagnosed with diabetes, even small children, was immediately sent to an extermination camp.
Rezső Seress, the Budapest composer of the hit song “Gloomy Sunday,” occupied one of the hospital's beds. He had been on the forced march from the capital, and, when he tried to escape, he was wounded. The Gestapo officer who found him had delivered him to the hospital to recuperate; the officer had fond memories of the maudlin song.
On Himmler's orders, the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau were blown up in early January. A few days later, the German guards killed 700 prisoners at random and began the westward march of 65,000 others, lined up in rows of five abreast. In one of the harshest winters in Europe, in below-freezing temperatures and blinding, drifting snow, wearing only their thin prison clothes, they began their long journey from Poland to other camps in the Reich. Anyone who stopped was shot, and only half of them reached their destination camps. About 20,000 ended up in the overcrowded, typhoid-infected Bergen-Belsen camp.27
When members of the First Ukrainian Front of the Red Army arrived at Auschwitz, they found only about 8,000 prisoners. Most of them had been deemed too ill for the march, and there had not been enough time to kill them all. According to Gábor Kádár and Zoltán Vági's book Self-Financing Genocide, throughout the existence of the death camp “nearly 690 Norwegian, 7,500 Italian, 10,000 Yugoslav, 23,000 German and Austrian, 25,000 Belgian, 27,000 Slovak, 46,000 Czech, 55,000 Greek, 60,000 Dutch, 69,000 French, and 300,000 Polish Jews were deported to the Auschwitz complex. The largest contingent, 430,000 people,28 came from Hungary. Of the 1.1 million Jews deported to Auschwitz, 1 million died.”29
Other accounts claim that out of a total of 1.3 million people deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, 1.5 million had been murdered by all the various means available to their captors.30 Initially, Rudolf Höss, the camp commandant, himself had estimated the number of dead (“executed and exterminated”) at around 3 million, including those who had died of “starvation and disease,”31 but he lowered his estimate to 1,135,000 at his trial in Warsaw.
GENERAL GEORGI ZHUKOV’S armies launched a massive Soviet offensive against Berlin on January 12, and British and American bombers had already reduced Germany's major cities to rubble. The war in Europe was obviously coming to an end, but Hitler and his generals made a last, desperate move to enlist everybody into the defense of the tottering Reich. They also continued with their plan for the destruction of the Jews.
Having come to a tenuous understanding with Becher, Kasztner now tried to make a similar deal with Krumey. It was his last hope for the Strasshof Jews. He promised Krumey that, when the war was over, he would put in a good word for him. “When the time comes,” he told him, “you will be glad you helped me now. We always remember our friends.” Krumey, who had been moved to Vienna by Eichmann as punishment for his relative friendliness to the Jews,32 was at first reluctant, but Kasztner finally persuaded him to give the Red Cross permission to distribute ten thousand sets of underclothes, twelve thousand pairs of shoes, and five thousand lots of warm clothes to the prisoners. He also obtained Krumey's agreement to bring in more medical supplies, dental equipment, and even painkillers. Kasztner was particularly anxious that the Strasshof Jews should still be classified as schutzhäftlinge, protected prisoners or exchange Jews, even though no exchange goods had arrived from the Joint. He complained that his Jews were not allowed to use the underground shelters during Allied bombings. “It is not too late to prove your humanity,” he advised Krumey, as General Zhukov's armies crossed the Oder River less than sixty miles from Berlin.
Kasztner traveled to Bratislava to purchase canvas, tobacco, woolens, and cooking oil for Becher, in exchange for sixty Bratislava “prominent Jews” who had been in hiding since the deportations resumed. He visited Rabbi Weissmandel in the cellar of a boarded-up villa on the outskirts of Bratislava. Weissmandel was hoping to be part of the last group to escape to the west before the Soviet army arrived and, indeed, he was driven to Switzerland on April 1, four days before the Russians took the city.
While he was in Bratislava, Kasztner brought forty pounds of tobacco for Krumey, along with clothing for the eighty-five babies who had been born in captivity in Vienna. The Red Cross had shipped two thousand pairs of shoes for this Strasshof group, not nearly enough, but even that number was difficult to sift through the thieving fingers of Krumey's officers. Unfortunately, most of the medical supplies had already been confiscated by the SS, and it took several more weeks for the warm clothing to arrive from the Red Cross. In addition to all the suffering these various wants caused, Vienna was now undergoing daily Allied bombardments. Already much of central Vienna had become a warren of ruins.
Kasztner tried to reach Budapest from Bratislava, but all roads and railway lines were blocked by the fighting. On his return to Vienna, he called on Dieter Wisliceny at the hauptsturmführer's cozy apartment on one of the lower floors of an old building that had, so far, withstood the bombing. He was fascinated by Wisliceny's library. Considering that the SS captain had been an active participant in the implementation of the Final Solution, it was extraordinary that he had collected works by Stefan and Arnold Zweig, Emil Ludwig, and other Jewish writers. Like his former colleague Eichmann in Budapest, Wisliceny had become, in his own eyes, a savior of Jews. He talked fondly of Gizi Fleischmann and nostalgically of the evenings he had spent in Budapest's nightclubs with Kasztner. He claimed he had sent the sick and exhausted Jews from the border of Hungary to Vienna for treatment at the Jewish hospital, so it was fortunate that he had been in charge of receiving them at the end of their long march from Budapest.33
Kasztner considered this change of heart a very good sign: if Wisliceny continued to picture himself in the role of savior, he could perhaps be relied on to prevent more murders at the Ostmark border. Wisliceny blamed Eichmann for everything that had happened to the Hungarian Jews, and, now that Himmler had decided to spare the remaining Jews, Wisliceny complained that Eichmann would ignore the order. Eichmann had given instructions to the camp commandants to “severely punish” Jews if they did not fully cooperate when the camps were evacuated, but, he complained, some commanders did not fully understand his message and left behind live Jews for the Russians to find. The last time they had met in Berlin, Wisliceny reported, Eichmann had said, “I will laugh when I jump into the grave because of the feeling that I have killed five million Jews.” As Wisliceny saw it, only he had been blameless in this whole tragic story.34 He confided in Kasztner that when he first learned of the gas chambers, he told Eichmann, “God grant that our enemies will never use these methods against us.”35 And in November he had ordered one day of rest for those who arrived on foot from Budapest. Once Eichmann found out, he threatened to have him court-martialed.
When Himmler visited Vienna, Becher tried to arrange a meeting between Kasztner and the SS Reichsführer. “He is deeply concerned about the fate of the Jews,” Becher explained to the astonished Kasztner. “In these situations, there is always a chance that some hothead will decide to act on his own or refer to earlier orders.” Becher and Kasztner were sitting in the Metropole Hotel bar, surrounded by senior German officers of various stripes. The air-raid sirens had been shrieking their regular warnings, but the piano player was still at the keys, singing with a deep, husky voice something soft about home, and the bar stayed open. Only a few men chose to go for the exits.
Becher showed Kasztner the new orders from Himmler: “Unter keinen Umstanden durfen Sie angestastet werden [Under no circumstances must they be harmed].”36 Those words meant that Kasztner's tauschjude would not be dragged away to concentration camps. Better still, the camps would stop killing the surviving Jews. Himmler, it seemed, had discovered that his murder apparatus had disposed of a great source of labor for the Reich.37
“What will the SS commandants do with this order?” Kasztner asked. “Will they follow it?”
Becher thought they would have no option but to obey, although, he complained, Ernst Kaltenbrunner had been undermining his every action. He had gone directly to Hitler for authorization over Himmler's orders. The Führer, understandably after the attempt on his life, was suspicious of everybody. He had ordered General Hermann Fegelein's execution on suspicion of desertion, and Fegelein, as Becher could attest, had been one of the most upright soldiers to defend the Reich.
Himmler, unlike Goebbels and most of the other Nazi leaders, had not sought further honors for himself. He had, however, confided to Becher that he would sign a treaty with the Allies if they did the sensible thing and united against the Soviet Union. Even the Führer had predicted that the coalition of the Allies would disintegrate. The West had nothing in common with the Communists. Perhaps Kaltenbrunner knew that Himmler had dealt with the organization of Orthodox Jews and their emissary, former Swiss president Musy. Unlike Saly Mayer, Musy had not found it difficult to turn over the necessary funds to Himmler to save 1,200 There-sienstadt Jews. Now Kaltenbrunner was saying that while Becher tootled back and forth between Budapest and Switzerland in the company of a Jew, Musy had successfully paid for his 1,200 Jews and trucked them out of Germany. “I have lost credibility, Rudolf,” Becher complained. “As to your Ostmark Jews, under the circumstances, this was the best I could do.”
It was not the first time that Becher had shared his concerns with Kasztner, but it was the first time he openly discussed his fear of Kaltenbrunner and mentioned the rift between Hitler and Himmler. Hitler had not agreed to the release of Kasztner's Jews to Switzerland, and he had been furious—after he recovered from the assassination attempt—about Joel Brand's failed mission. There were times, it seemed, when the SS Reichsführer had taken matters into his own hands.
“With Brand's mission?” Kasztner asked.
“No. With Grosz's mission. Or haven’t you put the puzzle pieces together yet, Rudolf?” He had assumed that Kasztner, being so smart, would have known long ago that the Brand mission was just a front for another mission, the one that Bandi Grosz was to accomplish.
“Why would he have chosen Grosz?” Kasztner asked. Becher had now confirmed what he had learned from Palestine's Yishuv emissaries in Istanbul: Grosz was carrying a message from Himmler. “Why Grosz?” he repeated.
Becher shook his head in disbelief. “Rudolf, I have always admired your brains! Think about it. With someone like Grosz, the whole thing was deniable. It needed denying when Hitler heard about it on the BBC. Do you think the Reichsführer-SS was going to take any chances?”
Kasztner left the bar with a sense of unreality, not because of what he had heard about the Brand mission—he had suspected something from the beginning—but because a decorated SS officer had trusted him with information that could mean his own execution. He felt strangely elated, proud of his unique station. It didn’t last long.
When he went again to see Dr. Emil Tuchmann at the “Jewish hospital,” the building was guarded by Hitler Youth, some as young as twelve or fourteen but swearing they would kill every Jew inside if the Russians approached Vienna. The youngsters had been armed and empowered to act on behalf of the Reich. They would not, they swore, let the Jews fall into enemy hands alive. Smiling, Kasztner reassured Tuchmann that they would all be safe now. After all, he believed he had Himmler's word for it.
Kasztner learned the next day that some of his “Jews on ice” were no longer in the Ungarnlager of Bergen-Belsen but had been transferred to the häftlingslager by the new camp commandant, SS Captain Josef Kramer, “the Beast of Belsen.” Kramer had immediately canceled all the so-called camp privileges for “exchange Jews.” Kasztner knew what they would be facing: starvation, brutality, stacks of corpses, the stench of burning bodies. He had to reach Becher to tell him that the Germans had reneged on an agreement. He had to get the Red Cross access to the camp, so that food and clothing would be available for the inmates.
Six-year-old Paul Varnai was transported with his family in a cattle car to Bergen-Belsen. He remembers the unbearable hunger, the thirst, the cold, the dirt, and the dreadful sickness that killed hundreds around him. He remembers the endless early morning roll calls in the snow, the prisoners’ frozen black toes, and everyone's breath in the air. When the numbers did not add up as the guards expected, the roll call started again—and again, until the guards were satisfied.
In early April they were herded into boxcars once more. “The train was attacked by American planes. The guards took cover in the fields and woods nearby while the prisoners stayed padlocked in the wagons. The planes dropped bombs and strafed the flimsy roofs. The noise was horrific. The exploding shells, the screams of the wounded. Blood splattered all over the walls. So many died…” He barely recalls arriving in There-sienstadt. It was his seventh birthday.38