cantoresq – Your logic would dictate that no one other than Eichmann and Kastner can speak of the events in question, since they were the only two in the negotiating room. And since Eichmann is ruled out, you must insist that we take Kastner at his word – since you deny any other parties ability to impugn what was negotiated between him and Eichmann.
And regarding Hecht vs. Porter vs. White, you are the party who constantly resorts to ad hominems to disqualify anyone expressing facts not to your liking.
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Indeed only those who were there for the negotiations knew what actually happened. But there is more to it than just that. The type of conspiracy you and others allege just seems so implausible. How could Eichmann have pulled it off? How could he get it by his superiors in the Reich? How could the Jewish community not have found out what Kasztner was up to, asuming he was doing something so nefarious? My father was in Budapest at various relevant times, and I’ve met others who were there as well. Budapest was a rumor mill of epic proportions. Nothing in the Jewish community was a secret. Everyone knew what was coming. Even in the hinterland, Jews knew that Auschwitz was a train ride away. At my bar mitzvah my father spoke of the last package he recieved from his parents. He was a student in the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest and his parents were in Kisvarda. They sent him a package from the ghetto shortly before they were deported. That package contained a few pairs of socks, some smoked goose liver (my grandmother’s specialty), and all the family photos and vital documents. My grandfather also wrote my father that he knew the family would probably not survive what awaited them in Poland (my grandmother had diabetes, my uncle suffered from some form of muscualr dystrophy and my grandfather was not a robust man. They knew they would not last long in Poland, and in indeed my grandmother and uncle were killed upon arrival in Auschwitz. At best my grandfather lasted a few weeks), and that my father should do everything in his power to avoid falling under the Russians; the Americans would be safer. They knew; everybody knew. A cousin of mine told me how he traveled to Kisvarda from Munkacs, to save his father from deportation with a forged Swedish passport. His father preferred to be deported with his wife, and could not bring himself to abandon her. They knew, everybody knew. Incidentally, my cousing gave the passport to a friend rather than waste it. The friend survived the war as a result. No one needed Kasztner to tell them anything. Hungarian Jews just hoped that war would end before the deportations began. Sadly they miscalculated.
This will be my final post on this subject. I’ve grown weary of it. I perused Perfidy over Shabbat and I read a good deal of Gil White, as well as an attack on his intellectual credibility by Jared Israel on a related subject. At the end of the day, I really can’t definitively conclude if Kasztner ended up a Quisling or a saint. The scholarly community looks favorably upon him, but as someone, in a different discussion of Kasztner said “he just can’t seem to wash clean.” Ben Hecht certainly succeeded in rendering him a traitor to the Jewish people. But at the same time, I wonder if Hecht would have gone to all the effort had Kasztner been Revisionist zionist ala’ Jabotinsky, and not a Labor zionist? There is no doubt that Shmuel Tamir was a better trial lawyer than Haim Cohn. There is no doubt that Kasztner was a terrible witness. His arrogance and conceit along with the psychological damage done to him during the war, coupled with his poor Hebrew made him his own worst enemy. Indeed he also made himself a number of enemies during the way for his conduct during the war. As I said before when you lay down with dogs you wake up with fleas. Anyone who didn’t make it on to the train had good enough reason to hate Kasztner. Since the allies were determined not to bomb the railways leading to the death camps, Vrba would naturally be frustrated and incensed by the lack of a tangible response to this report. That he blamed Kasztner is not surprising since he entrusted Kasztner with a copy of his report. I long ago conceded that Kasztner may had made errors in judgment which become apparent only with the benefit of hindsight. The next time a tyrant stands to annihilte us, those who endeavor to save Jewish lives might learn from the sad experience of Israel Kasztner. But I simply don’t believe that he began his activities intending to sell out Hungarian Jewry simply to save his family. After all, if that is all Kasztner wanted to do, his father in law and other family members in Cluj could have simple walked to Romania and survivied the war there. No I think Kasznter had the best of intentions. They paved his road to Hell.