Joseph
Member
cantoresq, I’ve read it. In fact he advised the kehila they would be saved. So it demonstrates no such advanced knowledge. The masses were surely unaware of the pending doom.
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Saved from what? People knew what the Germans were up to. As I said before Hungarian Jews hoped they would be spared. But they full well knew of the annihilations that had taken place in Russia and Poland. More than anything Kasztner was accused of doing or not doing, it may have been this speech and (perhaps) other such “reassurances” from rabbanim that molified the Jews of Budapest into inactivity. Certainly the Belzer Rebbe and his brother the Rav of Bilgoray, who had come form Polish Galicia, knew what was happening in Poland. Why did they not arouse the Jews to do something? And before all you start to flame me, this is not my complaint. R. Teichtal in the Eim Habanim Smeicha made the same accuastion.