The Kastner Affair: The Trial That Divided Israel

Summary of the Affair

The Kastner Affair (also known as the Kastner Trial) is one of the most turbulent and emotionally charged legal-public cases in the history of the State of Israel. At its center stands Dr. Israel (Rezső) Kasztner (1906–1957), a Hungarian-Jewish lawyer and journalist, who headed the Aid and Rescue Committee in Budapest during the Holocaust and negotiated with senior SS officials – including Adolf Eichmann and Kurt Becher – to save Jews. After the war, he immigrated to Israel, became involved with Mapai and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and in 1953, Attorney General Haim Cohn initiated a legal proceeding that would become one of the most formative in the country's history.

The trial ostensibly concerned an indictment for libel against Malchiel Gruenwald, but effectively became "Kastner's Trial" – a public inquiry into the question of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry. In 1955, Judge Benjamin Halevi ruled that Kastner "sold his soul to the devil," a decision that shook the country and led to the resignation of Moshe Sharett's government. In 1958, the Supreme Court overturned most of the findings against Kastner – but he himself had already been assassinated by unknown assailants in Tel Aviv in March 1957.

Historical Background: The Aid and Rescue Committee in Budapest

In March 1944, Nazi Germany invaded Hungary. Within about two months, the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau began – at an unprecedented rate of about 12,000 Jews per day. Around 437,000 Jews were deported in less than three months, and most were murdered upon arrival.

The Aid and Rescue Committee in Budapest (Va'adat Ha-Ezra ve-Hatzalah), established back in 1943, tried to prevent the catastrophe. It was headed by Otto Komoly, Joel Brand, and Israel Kastner. Kastner, who was the dominant figure on the committee, conducted direct negotiations with senior SS officials in Hungary, including:

• Adolf Eichmann – commander of the extermination operation in Hungary.
• Kurt Becher – Heinrich Himmler's personal representative.
• Dieter Wisliceny – Eichmann's right-hand man.

From these efforts arose two main initiatives: "Goods for Blood" (Blut für Ware) – an offer to exchange trucks and goods for Jewish lives, which failed when the British arrested Joel Brand, the initiative's envoy; and the "Kastner Train."

The Kastner Train: Rescue at the Cost of Elimination

In June-July 1944, two trains (often collectively referred to as the "Kastner train") departed from Budapest carrying 1,684 Jews, most of them from Cluj (Kastner's hometown), including rabbis, intellectuals, Zionist party activists, wealthy individuals, and members of Kastner's own family. The train first arrived at the Bergen-Belsen camp, and then, with a payment of hundreds of dollars per person, proceeded to neutral Switzerland. All its passengers were saved.

Alongside this rescue, a significant historical controversy persists: at the same time, around 380,000 Jews were deported from Cluj and other provincial cities to Auschwitz. Kastner, who knew about the existence of the extermination camps (having received the "Auschwitz Protocols" from Vrba and Wetzler in April 1944), was later accused of concealing the truth from the provincial communities to avoid jeopardizing the deal with the Nazis.

The Testimonial at Nuremberg: Defense of Kurt Becher

After the war, Kastner testified at the Nuremberg trials on behalf of SS officer Kurt Becher. His affidavit contributed to the decision not to prosecute Becher as a war criminal. This matter later became one of the central pieces of evidence in the accusation against him in the trial in Israel.

The Document That Started It All: Gruenwald's Indictment

In 1952, Malchiel Gruenwald – a religious Jew, a Jerusalem journalist who lost 52 family members in the Holocaust – published a pamphlet titled "Letters to My Friends in Mizrachi." In pamphlet number 51, he attacked Kastner, who was then serving as spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and was about to enter the Knesset on behalf of Mapai. Gruenwald detailed four main allegations:

1. Collaboration with the Nazis.
2. Paving the way for the "genocide" of Hungarian Jewry by concealing the truth.
3. Partnership with Becher in the "robbery" of Jewish property.
4. Saving Becher from the gallows at Nuremberg.

Attorney General Haim Cohn filed an indictment against Gruenwald for libel. Gruenwald was represented by the young lawyer Shmuel Tamir (later Minister of Justice), who saw the trial as a political opportunity to turn the tables and put the Zionist leadership during the Holocaust on trial.

Judge Benjamin Halevi's Verdict: "Sold His Soul to the Devil"

On June 22, 1955, Jerusalem District Court Judge Benjamin Halevi published a 273-page verdict – one of the longest in Israeli legal history. The judge acquitted Gruenwald of most of the libel charges and made four severe findings:

"By receiving this benefit... K. sold his soul to the devil."

The central findings:

• Kastner collaborated with the Nazis by concealing the truth from Hungarian Jews.
• Kastner knowingly concealed information about Auschwitz to secure the "train of the privileged."
• Kastner enjoyed a personal benefit – the rescue of his relatives on the train.
• Kastner gave false testimony in favor of Kurt Becher at Nuremberg and saved him from death.

Conversely, the fifth charge – the accusation of "robbery" of property – was rejected by the judge, who determined that Gruenwald had indeed committed libel. Gruenwald was convicted solely on this charge and fined only one lira.

The Political Crisis: Sharett's Government Resigns

The verdict led to a political earthquake. The Progressive Party and the National Religious Party demanded a discussion in the Knesset. On June 29, 1955, the Knesset passed a vote of no confidence in the government after Prime Minister Moshe Sharett announced an appeal. Following the vote, the government resigned. The affair became one of the factors that led to a split in Israeli society between supporters of David Ben-Gurion and his critics, and between Socialist Zionism and the right-wing camp.

The Supreme Court Appeal: Reversal of Findings (1958)

The appeal was heard by an expanded panel of five justices: Yitzhak Olshan (President), Shimon Agranat, Moshe Zilberg, David Goitein, and Shneur Zalman Cheshin. On January 17, 1958 – about ten months after Kastner's murder – the Supreme Court ruled by a majority of four to one:

• Three of the four findings against Kastner were overturned – collaboration, concealment of information, and personal benefit.
• Only one finding remained: the testimony in favor of Kurt Becher at Nuremberg remained an act of aiding a Nazi criminal.
• Justice Agranat explicitly stated: "Kastner acted in good faith for the sake of rescue and was not a collaborator with the Nazis".
• Justice Zilberg, in a minority opinion, sought to uphold most of Halevi's findings.

The acquittal came, but too late – Kastner himself did not live to see his name cleared.

The Assassination: March 3, 1957

On the night of March 3-4, 1957, returning from his work at the newspaper "Uj Kelet" (Hungarian: "New East") to his home on Emanuel HaRomi Street 6 in Tel Aviv, Ze'ev Eckstein fired three shots at Kastner. Kastner died of his wounds on March 15, 1957, at Hadassah Hospital. Within days, three members of an underground cell were arrested: Ze'ev Eckstein (the shooter), Yosef Menkes, and Dan Shemer. All were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment but were released after only about seven years. All three belonged to the circle of Lehi activists and a radical right-wing underground movement.

Later investigation revealed that Eckstein was, in fact, also an agent of the General Security Service (Shin Bet), who had been planted among the right-wing underground – a fact that led to serious allegations (never proven) of indirect involvement by state authorities in the murder.

Significance and Historical Implications

The Kastner Affair remains an "open case" in Israeli consciousness to this day. It touches upon several pivotal junctures:

• The question of Jewish leadership during the Holocaust: Was the actions of the Zionist leadership in Europe appropriate? Can the "rescue of a few" at the cost of sacrificing many be justified?
• The limits of public trials: Can a libel trial against one person become a trial of an entire historical period?
• The split in Israeli society: The affair sharpened the rift between Mapai and Ben-Gurion and the new right (Herut – the Revisionist movement), which saw it as a moral failure of the Zionist Histadrut leadership.
• Collective memory: To this day, there is no agreement among historians as to whether Kastner was a rescue hero or a collaborator. Books by Yechiam Weitz ("The Man Who Was Murdered Twice," 1995) and Hannah Arendt ("Eichmann in Jerusalem," 1963) present opposing views.

Additional Resources

• Wikipedia article: Israel Kasztner
• Wikipedia article: Kastner train
• Wikipedia article: The Holocaust in Hungary
• Book: Yechiam Weitz, The Man Who Was Murdered Twice: The Life, Trial, and Death of Dr. Israel Kasztner, Keter Publishing, 1995.

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Watch the academic lecture by Tel Aviv University on the Kastner trial and the dilemmas that arose from it, embedded at the top of the page.