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Yankel: Katner’s defense of Nazi mass murderers AFTER the war in the Nuremberg Trials is quite well known and a matter of the historical record. He was even condemned for it in Israeli courts (the Judge Levy trial).
I definitely recognize you are not defending Kastner.
But aside from the train, read read about the Vrba-Wetzler Report. Kastner knew IN ADVANCE what Eichmann and the Nazis were planning to do to the Hungarian Jews, deport them to Aushwitz and gas them to death, and he yet refused to publicly disclose that information to the Hungarian Jews so that they would otherwise refuse to voluntarily go on the trains to Aushwitz.
Yaakov: In מושיען של ישראל Rabbi Shlomo Yaakov Gelbman points out that Kastner and the SS officers (Kurt Becher and Dieter Wisliceny) formed a genuine camaraderie. The book emphasizes that they drank together, played cards, and socialized while Jews were burning. The book highlights Kastner’s post-war testimony at Nuremberg on behalf of Kurt Becher and others like Hermann Krumey as the ultimate proof of his betrayal. It says that Kastner testified for Becher not because of a “promise,” but because they were “partners in crime.” It says that Kastner needed Becher to survive and remain free so that their shared secrets (and potentially shared loot) would not be exposed.
The book mentions that Kastner and the Zionist establishment in Palestine actively blocked or sabotaged rescue attempts that did not lead to Palestine. It says the Zionists believed that saving Jews to send them to America or Romania would not help build the State of Israel. They needed “Chalutzim” (pioneers) for the state, not refugees for the Diaspora.
The book brings evidence that the Va’ada (Kastner’s committee) had access to vast sums of money from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (“The Joint”) and other sources. It states Kastner refused to use this money to bribe border guards or finance underground railroads into Romania (a safer option for the masses). The book points out that Kastner feared that “disorderly” mass escapes would anger Eichmann and jeopardize the “VIP Train.”
It suggests that while the “Blood for Goods” (Trucks for Jews) offer was on the table, the Zionist leadership did not genuinely try to raise the money or fake the negotiations to stall the slaughter, because they were fixated on the smaller, surer “Zionist” victory of the train.
מושיען של ישראל concludes that Kastner was a traitor who sacrificed the 450,000 Jews of the Hungarian provinces to save a few thousand “Zionist assets” and his own family.
The memoirs of Adolf Eichmann ym”s were published in 1960 by Life Magazine. Eichmann described Kastner with a chilling “respect.” He called Kastner an “ice-cold lawyer” and a “fanatic Zionist.” This is quote from Eichmann’s memoirs:
“I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal… He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting in the deportation camps if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate to Palestine. It was a good bargain.”
Eichmann essentially confirmed the prosecution’s theory: Kastner (who regularly drank cognac and played cards with Eichmann) traded the orderliness of the masses (“biological waste” in Eichmann’s eyes) for the “best biological material” (the pioneers/Zionists).
Even if everything that UJM said about Mr. Kastner is true
(and why should we believe it is true, without Shomer Shabbos witnesses)
that *** DOES NOT JUSTIFY *** UJM’s relentless fanatical hate
against *** ALL *** Zionists, even Religious Zionists, 75 years later.
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