The affair of the Judenrat (and perhaps also the Kastner case)
should, in my view, be left to the tribunal of history
in the coming generation. The Jews who were safe and secure during
the Hitler era ought not to presume to judge their
brethren who were burned and slaughtered, nor the few who survived.
DAVID BEN-GURION1
ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 1955, the New York Times reported that “Premier Moshe Sharett will force the resignation of the Israeli cabinet,” then “attempt to form a new government. These actions follow a tense session yesterday of the Knesset concerning the Kaszner–Greenwald case… there was a motion of no confidence in the government in connection with the case.”2 Sharett resigned, presented his new coalition, and then let the government fall. He had no choice but to call a new election. The Kasztner case haunted the halls of the Knesset, though most of the Mapai's representatives made no overt mention of it. Only Sharett dared state that the court's decision dealt with something almost beyond judgment, with the tragedy of a whole people. Menachem Begin and his Herut Party continued to charge the Mapai with collaboration. One of their slogans read, “When you vote for Mapai, you vote for a Jew who turned Jews over to the Gestapo.”3 In their newspaper, Herut, they accused the Mapai of willingly handing Joel Brand over to the British, and Kasztner of preventing armed resistance to the deportations. A July 25 Herut headline read, “Betar Groups in Nazi Hungary Planned and Demanded an Armed Uprising—Kasztner Destroyed These Plans.”
The New York Times reported that the judgment stirred all Israel, that “the question of how Jews should have behaved in Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944 on the brink of disaster was of such tremendous historic importance that it should not be adjudicated by a lone judge sitting in Jerusalem eleven years later.”4 Moshe Karen of the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz was one of the few journalists in Israel who dared criticize Halevi's judgment. “The judge explicitly admits that there was no hope of organizing a Jewish resistace… and if that is the case, what does he want?” he asked.5
The word “Kastnerism,” meaning duplicitous collaboration with the enemy, began to appear in speeches and in newspapers. Sharett was drawn into the fray, charging his enemies with base opportunism. He was forced, again, to defend his actions during Brand's mission and made much of his efforts to induce the Allies to bomb the train lines leading to Auschwitz, yet he was trapped into admitting that he, too, had been in favor of negotiating with the Nazis. As Karen of Haaretz wrote, “The repercussions of the Kasztner trial will continually poison the air we breathe,” at least until the air could be cleared by a new judgment.6
At one Mapai meeting, Yoel Palgi suggested that the party adopt the proposal that, if Kasztner was a collaborator, he must be sentenced to death. No one was willing to make that statement in public—or not yet. There was some hope that the court appeal would help both Kasztner and the party.
In the July 1955 elections, the Mapai lost five seats in the Knesset, and its major opposition, Begin's Herut, doubled its seats. David Ben-Gurion returned as prime minister. Unlike Sharett, Ben-Gurion had managed to distance himself from the whole Kasztner trial. He claimed he did not even bother reading the verdict.
Two weeks after Bandi Grosz left the courtroom, diminished even beyond his half-starved, out-of-work, out-of-luck self, he attempted suicide.
Kasztner, determined to clear his own name and restore his honor, spent many hours with lawyers, planning the appeal, working on the details. He told an interviewer that he was now sorry he had allowed the attorney general's office to handle the case before Halevi, that too many witnesses who would have painted a true picture of events in Budapest had not been called. Afraid of making enemies of his former colleagues, he did not wish to stress that he had acted on behalf of the Jewish Agency. He felt honor-bound to resist hiding behind the Mapai leadership; in truth, he agreed with both their motives and their actions. Even his testimony on behalf of Wisliceny—though this story had not come up during the trial—had made sense because Wisliceny knew where Eichmann was hiding, and finding Eichmann and bringing him to trial was more important than seeing Wisliceny hang.
The judge had become a tool of Grünwald's defense, allowing Tamir's harassment, badgering, and endless speeches that served no purpose other than to bolster the counsel's own ego. Kasztner had been afraid to make this point publicly at the time, as had most Israeli critics of the trial, but one or two independent observers from the United States had made the same observations.
At no time had either Chaim Cohen or the judge taken into account the point that Kasztner's primary objective had been to gain time, to keep negotiating till the war was over, to delay the Nazis’ murder machine for as long as possible. The evidence of those saved through the Strasshof scheme was ignored. Halevi had disregarded history.
The appeal was filed on August 21 over the signature of the attorney general. It was brief. It took issue with all of Halevi's conclusions and petitioned the Supreme Court not only to reverse the decision but to find Grünwald guilty of the original charge of criminal libel.
As Kasztner's despair deepened, his anger grew. His few interviews, now, were carefully planned, or so Hansi thought. She was the only adviser he accepted, the only person who was welcome to call on him at any time. The others, even Dezsö Hermann, felt they were no longer wanted. Hermann, who had appeared as a witness for the prosecution, had never explained why he claimed on the stand that he had never heard of Auschwitz-Birkenau from Kasztner or from anyone else.
Kasztner sometimes spent the night with Hansi, arriving home in the early hours of the morning or going directly to his office from her apartment. Joel, guilty about his part in the verdict, absented himself on these occasions. He would leave with his package of cigarettes, his jacket flung casually over his shoulder, nodding at Kasztner as he left, banging the door behind him. Understanding Kasztner's state of mind, even Bogyó thought it was wise to let them be together. Perhaps Hansi could help persuade him to leave Israel, or at least Tel Aviv. There was, for example, the invitation Kasztner had refused from former Hungarian halutzim, suggesting that the Kasztners go to live on their kibbutz near Haifa until the Supreme Court reached its decision on the appeal.
“What would we do on a kibbutz?” Rezső always asked.
“I could work in the kitchens—,” Bogyó ventured.
“You have no idea how to work in a kitchen,” Rezső told her. She had learned how to do a lot of things since she had arrived in Palestine, and he had never criticized her before. “And I suppose I would dig potatoes?” he suggested.
That was the end of that discussion.
It was typical of him, she said later, that he would never run from danger, that he always looked it in the eye, daring it to approach. The danger was so real that the government assigned two bodyguards to watch over the apartment and to follow him at a discreet distance when he ventured outside.
In March 1956, the chief magistrate in Jerusalem dismissed the charge of perjury against Kasztner. He agreed with Kasztner's contention that the affidavit had been filed at the Denazification Court. Tamir raged that he would take the matter to a higher court, but the year presented greater challenges than a retrial of the perjury case.
On October 29, 1956, the Israeli army invaded Egypt and occupied the Sinai Peninsula. It was a pre-emptive strike at the heart of Egypt's occupation of the Suez Canal. The invasion's chief achievement, as far as the Israelis were concerned, was that it signaled to the surrounding Arab states that Israel could preserve its security against its enemies. Headlines in Israeli papers were occupied with news of the victory and the ensuing peace negotiations. Kasztner was no longer in the headlines. The government canceled his protection.
He continued to work for Új Kelet and coproduced some radio programs. He took on some freelance work as a translator. Sometimes, there were flashes of the old Kasztner, the man who could make the women in the office smile when he walked by their desks. Tomy Lapid said that Kasztner seemed aware of his life being in danger. “He became a hunted man,” Lapid said. “And he knew it.”7 Kasztner now looked along the street carefully before he stepped out of a doorway; he hesitated when he turned corners; once, when a car backfired, he ducked into a store; he stayed close to walls; he had seemed nervous even while the government-appointed guards followed him. There were so many abusive, threatening calls that he stopped answering his phone at the office. At home, too, he disconnected the telephone. He didn’t want his wife or daughter listening to deranged ravings about how his life was to end.
Late one evening he called Zsuzsi to him, put his arm around her, and told her that no matter what happened, she had to remember that her father had done his best to save human lives. “There are two kinds of people in this world,” he said, “mensch [a good human being] and the others who are not mensch.” “He himself was a real mensch,” Zsuzsi says, “and he wanted me to be the same.” In hindsight, she realized that her father believed he would not live much longer.
On March 3, 1957, Kasztner was working the night shift at the editorial offices of Új Kelet. He drove a colleague and his longtime boss, Ernő Márton, home. A few minutes after midnight, Kasztner parked his car in front of his apartment building at 6 Sderot Emanuel Street. While he was still in the driver's seat, he was approached by two young men. A third, he saw, was standing in the shadows of the building. One of the men asked if he was “Doctor Kasztner.” When he replied that, yes, he was, the man drew a gun and shot him at point-blank range. The gun misfired. Kasztner opened the car door, pushing his assailant aside, then ran toward the entrance of the building. The man fired, again, twice in quick succession. This time the bullets found their target. Kasztner ran a few more steps, then collapsed. He shouted for help as the three assailants fled. He saw the gunman run to a jeep and speed off.
He was still conscious when the first person from the building arrived at the scene and tried to administer first aid. A woman who had gone to her balcony when the shots rang out ran to wake Bogyó. Another man heard Kasztner say that the assailant had gone in a jeep; that neighbor jumped on his bike and gave chase. Two men emerged from the jeep near the city zoo, where their pursuer, a former army man, found a phone booth and called the police.
A crowd gathered around Kasztner. Someone had called an ambulance. Bogyó, a neighbor reported later, seemed strangely calm when she saw that Rezső had been shot. Perhaps she, too, had been expecting something like this to happen. She knelt next to her bleeding husband, put a pillow under his head, covered him with a blanket, stroked his forehead, and whispered to him.
The ambulance took Kasztner to Hadassah Hospital. He remained conscious while the doctors examined him. He asked for the police to attend while he was X-rayed to determine where the bullets had entered. His statement to the police was detailed, cogent, precise. He tried to console Bogyó as he was wheeled into the operating room.
Friends and a few passengers from the Kasztner train went to the hospital with flowers. There were hundreds of telegrams with good wishes for a speedy convalescence. Strangely, there was even a telegram from Malchiel Grünwald, wishing him a complete recovery despite “our fundamental disagreements.” Shmuel Tamir expressed shock and disgust at the attack on the man he had worked so hard to destroy. Zsuzsi sent her father a note with her warm kisses. Yoel Palgi sent flowers. Newspapers that had denounced Kasztner now shouted in headlines that the attackers had aimed at the heart of the nation of Israel.
Kasztner's room was guarded by two policemen. He was conscious but spoke little. He wished to see no visitors except his immediate family and Hansi. Bogyó had intended to bar Hansi from the room, but she managed to plead her way in. At one point he asked her, “Why did they do this to me?” Hansi was with him on March 12 as his condition began to deteriorate.
On March 15, at 7:20 AM, Rezső Kasztner died.