The Kastner Case
Introduction
The most notorious case of Nazi-Zionist collaboration is that involving Rudolf Kastner.
Most Jewish people have never heard of Rudolf Kastner. Those who have, are generally under the impression that there is some 'controversy' about negotiations he undertook for 'the purchase of Jewish lives for money and military equipment', but that he was 'fully rehabilitated' by the Supreme Court of Israel.
The Accusations
Briefly, the accusations against Kastner are as follows:
Dr. Rudolf Verba, a Doctor of Science now serving at the British Medical Research Council, was one of the few escapees from Auschwitz. In his memoirs published in February, 1961, in the London Daily Herald, he wrote:
I am a Jew. In spite of that - indeed because of that - I accuse certain
Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war.
This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in
Hitler's gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence.
Among them was Dr. Kastner, leader of the council which spoke for all Jews in
Hungary. While I was prisoner number 44070 at Auschwitz - the number is still
on my arm - I compiled careful statistics of the exterminations...I took these
terrible statistics with me when I escaped in 1944 and I was able to give
Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks notice that Eichmann planned to send a
million of their Jews to his gas chambers...Kastner went to Eichmann and told
him, 'I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep
quiet.'
Eichmann not only agreed, but dressed Kastner up in S.S. uniform and took him
to Belsen to trace some of his friends. Nor did the sordid bargaining end
there.
Kastner paid Eichmann several thousand dollars. With this little fortune,
Eichmann was able to buy his way to freedom when Germany collapsed, to set
himself up in the Argentine...(Ben Hecht, Perfidy, pp261-2)
These accusations are confirmed by the 'Eichmann Confessions' published in Life magazine, 28 November and 5 December 1960:
I resolved to show how well a job could be done when the commander stands
100% behind it. By shipping the Jews off in a lightning operation, I wanted to
set an example for future campaigns elsewhere...In obedience to Himmler's
directive I now concentrated on negotiations with the Jewish political
officials in Budapest...Among them Dr. Rudolph Kastner, authorized
representative of the Zionist Movement. This Dr. Kastner was a young man about
my age, an ice-cold lawyer and a fanatical Zionist. He agreed to help keep the
Jews from resisting deportation - and even keep order in the collection camps -
if I could close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews
emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was a good bargain. For keeping order in
the camps, the price...was not too high for me.
...We trusted each other perfectly. When he was with me, Kastner smoke cigarets
as though he was in a coffeehouse. While we talked he would smoke one aromatic
cigaret after another, taking them from a silver case and lighting them with a
silver lighter. With his great polish and reserve he would have made an ideal
Gestapo officer himself.
Dr. Kastner's main concern was to make it possible for a select group of
Hungarian Jews to emigrate to Israel...
As a matter of fact, there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes
in the S.S. and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist
leaders....I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred
thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal...'You can have the
others', he would say, 'but let me have this group here'. And because Kastner
rendered us a great service by helping keep the deportation camps peaceful, I
would let his groups escape. After all, I was not concerned with small groups
of a thousand or so Jews...That was the 'gentleman's agreement' I had with
Kastner (Hecht, ibid., p.260-61)
Quite clearly these accusations, whether true or false, do not relate merely to 'the purchase of Jewish lives for money and military equipment'.
Are the accusations against Kastner true?
According to the Government of Israel, they are a lie. When Malchiel Greenwald, a strongly pro-Zionist Israeli citizen published these accusations against Kastner, the Israeli Government did rather more than demand that his views should not be broadcast. Because a prominent Zionist official (Dr. Kastner was a spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry) was involved, the Attorney General of the State of Israel prosecuted Greenwald for criminal libel.
The Verdict
Let the verdict of Judge Benjamin Halevi (who later became one of the panel of three judges that tried Eichmann) in Israel's District Court of Jerusalem speak for itself, given in criminal case No. 124 of 1953. The Attorney General v. Malchiel Greenwald. This material should be studied carefully.
The masses of Jews from Hungary's ghettos obediently boarded the
deportation trains without knowing their fate. They were full of confidence in
the false information that they were being transferred to Kenyermeze.
The Nazis could not have misled the masses of Jews so conclusively had they not
spread their false information through Jewish channels.
The Jews of the ghettos would not have trusted the Nazi or Hungarian rulers.
But they had trust in their Jewish leaders. Eichmann and others used this known
fact as part of their calculated plan to mislead the Jews. They were able to
deport the Jews to their extermination by the help of Jewish leaders.
The false information was spread by the Jewish leaders. The local leaders of
the Jews of Kluj and Nodvarod knew that other leaders were spreading such false
information and did not protest.
Those of the Jews who tried to warn their friends of the truth were persecuted
by the Jewish leaders in charge of the local 'rescue work'.
The trust of the Jews in the misleading information and their lack of knowledge
that their wives, children and themselves were about to be deported to the gas
chambers of Auschwitz led the victims to remain quiescent in their ghettos. It
seduced them into not resisting or hampering the deportation orders.
Dozens of thousands of Jews were guarded in their ghettos by a few dozen
police. Yet even vigorous young Jews made no attempt to overpower these few
guards and escape to nearby Rumania. No resistance activities to the
deportations were organized in these ghettos.
And the Jewish leaders did everything in their power to soothe the Jews in the
ghettos and to prevent such resistance activities.
The same Jews who spread in Kluj and Nodvarod the false rumor of Kenyermeze, or
confirmed it, the same public leaders who did not warn their own people against
the misleading statements, the same Jewish leaders who did not organize any
resistance or any sabotage of deportations...these same leaders did not join
the people of their community in their ride to Auschwitz, but were all included
in the Rescue train.
The Nazi organizers of extermination and the perpetrators of extermination
permitted Rudolf Kastner and the members of the Jewish Council in Budapest to
save themselves, their relatives, and friends. The Nazis did this as a means of
making the local Jewish leaders, whom they favoured, dependent on the Nazi
regime, dependent on its good will during the time of its fatal deportation
schedule. In short, the Nazis succeeded in bringing the Jewish leaders into
collaboration with the Nazis at the time of the catastrophe.
The Nazi chiefs knew that the Zionists were a most vital element in Jewry and
the most trusted by the Jews.
The Nazis drew a lesson from the Warsaw ghetto and other belligerent ghettos.
They learned that Jews were able to sell their lives very expensively if
honorably guided.
Eichmann did not want a second Warsaw. For this reason, the Nazis exerted
themselves to mislead and bribe the Jewish leaders.
The personality of Rudolph Kastner made him a convenient catspaw for Eichmann
and his clique, to draw into collaboration and make their task easier.
The question here is not, as stated by the Attorney General in his summation,
whether members of the Jewish Rescue Committee were or were not capable of
fulfilling their duty without the patronage of the S.S. chiefs. It is obvious
that without such S.S. Nazi patronage the Jewish Rescue Committee could not
have existed, and could have acted only as an underground.
The question is, as put by the lawyer for the defense, why were the Nazis
interested in the existence of the Rescue Committee? Why did the S.S. chiefs
make every effort to encourage the existence of the Jewish Rescue Committee?
Did the exterminators turn into rescuers?
The same question rises concerning the rescue of prominent Jews by these German
killers of Jews. Was the rescue of such Jews a part of the extermination plan
of the killers ?
The support given by the extermination leaders to Kastner's Rescue Committee
proves that indeed there was a place for Kastner and his friends in their Final
Solution for the Jews of Hungary - their total annihilation.
The Nazi's patronage of Kastner, and their agreement to let him save six
hundred prominent Jews, were part of the plan to exterminate the Jews. Kastner
was given a chance to add a few more to that number. The bait attracted him.
The opportunity of rescuing prominent people appealed to him greatly. He
considered the rescue of the most important Jews as a great personal success
and a success for Zionism. It was a success that would also justify his conduct
- his political negotiation with Nazis and the Nazi patronage of his
committee.
When Kastner received this present from the Nazis, Kastner sold his soul to the
German Satan.
One cannot estimate the damage caused by Kastner's collaboration and put down
the number of victims which it cost Hungarian Jews. These are not only the
thousands of Jews in Nodvarod or any other community in the border area, Jews
who could escape through the border, had the chief of their rescue committee
fulfilled his duty toward them.
All of Kastner's answers in his final testimony were a constant effort to evade
this truth.
Kastner has tried to escape through every crack he could find in the wall of
evidence. When one crack was sealed in his face, he darted quickly to another.
(Judgement of Judge Benjamin Halevi, Criminal Case 124/53; Attorney General v.
Malchiel Greenwald, District Court, Jerusalem, June 22, 1955).
The sacrifice of the vital interests of the majority of the Jews, in order
to rescue the prominents, was the basic element in the agreement between
Kastner and the Nazis. This agreement fixed the division of the nation into two
unequal camps: a small fragment of prominents, whom the Nazis promised Kastner
to save, on the one hand, and the great majority or Hungarian Jews whom the
Nazis designated for death, on the other hand. An imperative condition for the
rescue of the first camp by the Nazis was that Kastner will not interfere in
the action of the Nazis against the other camp and will not hamper them in its
extermination. Kastner fulfilled this condition. He concentrated his efforts in
the rescue of the prominents and treated the camp of the doomed as if they had
already been wiped out from the book of the living.
Judge Halevi reverts to the meeting of Kastner with the S.S. officers Becher and Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz at the time when the 'new line' of rescuing Jews was revealed by Hoess. He says:
From this gathering in Budapest, it is obvious that the 'new line'
stretched from Himmler to Hoess, from Jutner to Becher and Krumey.
According to Kastner, however, these Nazis were all active in rescuing Jews.
This meeting of these important German guests in Budapest exposes the 'rescue'
work of Becher in its true light. It reveals also the extent of Kastner's
involvement in the inner circle of the chief German war criminals.
Just as the Nazi war criminals knew they needed an alibi and hoped to achieve
it by the rescue of a few Jews at the eleventh hour, so Kastner also needed an
alibi for himself.
Collaboration between the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee and the Exterminators
of the Jews was solidified in Budapest and Vienna. Kastner's duties were part
and parcel of the general duties of the S.S.
In addition to its Extermination Department and Looting Department, the Nazi
S.S. opened a Rescue Department headed by Kastner.
All these extermination, robbery and rescue activities of the S.S. were
coordinated under the management of Heinrich Himmler". (ibid.)
Judge Halevi continues:
Kastner perjured himself knowingly in his testimony before this court
when he denied he had interceded in Becher's behalf. Moreover, he concealed the
important fact that he interceded for Becher in the name of the Jewish Agency
and the Jewish World Congress.
As to the contents of Kastner's affidavit, it was enough for the defense to
provide Becher was a war criminal. It was up to the prosecution to remove
Becher from this status, if they wished to negate the affidavit.
The Attorney General admitted in his summation that Becher was a war
criminal.
The lies in the contents of Kastner's affidavit, the lies in his testimony
concerning the document, and Kastner's knowing participation in the activities
of Nazi war criminals, and his participation in the last minute fake rescue
activities - all these combine to show one overwhelming truth - that this
affidavit was not given in good faith.
Kastner knew well, as he himself testified, that Becher had never stood up
against the stream of Jewish extermination, as Kastner has declared in the
affidavit.
The aims of Becher and his superior, Himmler, were not to save Jews but to
serve the Nazi regime with full compliance. These is not truth and no good
faith in Kastner's testimony, 'I never doubted for one moment the good
intention of good Becher'.
It is clear that the positive recommendation by Kastner, not only in his own
name but also in the name of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish World Congress
was of decisive importance for Becher. Kastner did not exaggerate when he said
that Becher was released by the Allies because of his personal intervention.
The lies in the affidavit of Kastner and the contradictions and various
pretexts, which were proven to be lies, were sufficient to annul the value of
his statements and to prove that there was no good faith in his testimony in
favor of this German war criminal. Kastner's affidavit in favor of Becher was a
wilfully false affidavit given in favor of a war criminal to save him from
trial and punishment in Nuremberg.
Therefore, the defendant, Malchiel Greenwald, was correct in his accusations
against Rudolf Kastner in the first, second and fourth of his statements."
(ibid.)
Judge Halevi's verdict found Malchiel Greenwald generally innocent of libel against Kastner, but fined him one Israeli pound for the one unproved accusation - that Kastner had actually collected money from his Nazi partners for his aide to their slaughter program. The judge also ordered the Government of Israel to pay Greenwald two hundred Israeli pounds as court costs.
In fairness to Kastner it should me mentioned that as well as having been unpaid, it was never established that he ever wore S.S. uniform.
If the story ended there, it would only prove conclusively that the individual Kastner was a collaborator and the Israeli Government had attempted to defend him, although facts brought out in the trial pointed to much more than that.
But the story does not end there.
The Reaction
Public opinion in Israel was almost unanimous in demanding that Kastner and his associates should be put on trial. Remember that up to now it was Kastner's accuser who was on trial.
The Communist Party newspaper Kol Ha'am (Voice of the People) wrote:
All those whose relatives were butchered by the Germans in Hungary know now clearly that Jewish hands helped the mass murder" (23 June 1955)
In the authoritative Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the leading political journalist, Dr. Moshe Keren wrote:
Kastner must be brought to trial as a Nazi collaborator. And at this trial, Kastner should defend himself as a private citizen, and not be defended by the Israeli Government..." (14 July 1955).
*Haboker*, the pro-Government General Zionist party paper stated:
The public wants to know the real facts about Kastner, and not about him alone. The only way to find out the truth is to put all the Rescue Committee people on trial and give them a chance to offer their defense." (23 June 1955)
But public opinion was not quite unanimous. The problem with bringing Kastner and his associates to trial was that his associates were the Government of Israel.
As the evening paper *Yedi'ot Aharonot* said:
If Kastner is brought to trial the entire government faces a total political and national collapse - as a result of what such a trial may disclose." (23 June 1955)
Accordingly, the Government of Israel did not put Kastner on trial, instead it filed an appeal against the acquittal of Greenwald for criminal libel.
As Dr. Karlebach wrote in Israel's largest evening newspaper, *Ma'ariv*:
What is going on here? The Attorney General has to mobilize all the
government power, appear himself in court, to justify and defend collaboration
with Himmler! And in order to defend a quisling, the government must drag
through the streets one of the grimmest stories of our history!
At 11 P.M. the verdict was given. At 11 A.M. next morning the government
announces the defense of Kastner will be renewed - an appeal filed. What
exemplary expediency! Since when does this government possess such
lawyer-genius who can weigh in one night the legal chances of an appeal on a
detailed, complex verdict of three hundred pages?! (24 June 1955)
At the appeal hearings before the Supreme Court, the Attorney General of
Israel, Chaim Cohen, explained clearly why the Government of Israel was
defending Kastner so strongly:
The man Kastner does not stand here
as a private individual. He was a recognized representative, official or
non-official of the Jewish National Institutes in Palestine and of the Zionist
Executive; and I come here in this court to defend the representative of our
national institutions." (Hecht, p. 268)
The truth of this statement cannot be denied. Kastner's collaboration was not that of an individual. It was the collaboration of the Zionist leadership.
So far, it has only been established that the Government of Israel continued to support a Nazi collaborator after the facts about his collaboration had been conclusively established in an Israeli court. But the story gets worse.
The Supreme Court of Israel unanimously found that Becher was indeed a Nazi war criminal and that Kastner had without justification, and in the name of the Jewish Agency, helped Becher to escape justice. On this point Greenwald was acquitted of libel and Kastner was not 'fully rehabilitated'.
The Supreme Court also accepted the facts established in the lower court - that Kastner deliberately concealed the truth about Auschwitz from the majority of Hungarian Jews in exchange for Nazi permission to take a thousand or so to Palestine. Again, Kastner was far from being 'fully rehabilitated'.
The Majority Judgement
But now comes the really nasty bit. After unanimously acknowledging these facts, the Supreme Court of Israel, by a majority of three to two, found that Kastner's actions were morally justifiable and convicted Greenwald of criminal libel for calling this 'collaboration'.
Kastner's actions only proved that he was a Nazi collaborator. It is the defense of these actions by the Government and Courts of Israel that prove conclusively that Zionism approves of Nazi collaboration.
The majority of the Supreme Court of Israel did not rehabilitate Kastner. They joined him.
Let us read from the majority judgement of Supreme Court Judge Shlomo Chesin:
...What point was there in telling the people boarding the trains in
Kluj, people struck by fate and persecuted, as to what awaits them at the end
of their journey...Kastner spoke in detail of the situation, saying, 'The
Hungarian Jew was a branch which long ago dried up on the tree'. This vivid
description coincides with the testimony of another witness about the Hungarian
Jews, 'This was a big Jewish community in Hungary, without any ideological
Jewish backbone' (Moshe Shweiger, a Kastner aide in Budapest, protocol 465).
I fully agree with my friend, Judge Agranot, when he states that, 'The Jews of
Hungary, including those in the countryside, were not capable, neither
physically nor mentally, to carry out resistance operations with force against
the deportation scheme'...From this point of view no rescue achievement could
have resulted by disclosing the Auschwitz news to the Jewish leaders there, and
this...is a consideration which on can properly conclude that Kastner had in
front of his eyes.
...And I take one more step. I am certain that the silence of Kastner when he
arrived in Kluj was premeditated and calculated and did not result from his
great despair because of the helplessness of the Jewish community. Even then, I
say, this is still not considered wilful collaboration and assistance in the
extermination, because all the signs indicate that Kastner's efforts were aimed
at rescue and rescue on a big scale...And towards the end I take one last step.
In doing so I go very far and say that even if Kastner ordered himself to keep
silent knowingly, in submission to the strong will of the Nazis, in order to
save a few Jews from Hell - this is still no proof that he stained his hands by
collaborating with the enemies of his people and carrying out their plan to
exterminate most of the Jewish community in Hungary.
Even if, through these activities of his - or rather, his omission - the
extermination became easier. And as to the moral issue, the question is not
whether a man is allowed to kill many in order to save a few, or vice-versa.
The question is altogether in another sphere and should be defined as follows:
A man is aware that a whole community is awaiting its doom. He is allowed to
make efforts to save a few, although part of his efforts involve concealment of
truth from the many or should he disclose the truth to many though it is his
best opinion that this way everybody will perish. I think that the answer is
clear. What good will the blood of the few bring if everybody is to
perish?...As I said, I am not arguing with the basic factual findings of the
learned President of the Jewish District Court (Judge Halevi) but it seems to
me, with all due respect, that his findings do not, as of necessity, demand the
conclusion he has arrived at. That is to say, collaboration on the part of
Kastner in the extermination of the Jews. And that they better coincide with
bad leadership both from a moral and public point of view...
In my opinion, one can say outright that if you find out that Kastner
collaborated with the enemy because he did not disclose to the people who
boarded the trains in Kluj that they were being led to extermination, one has
to put on trial today Danzig, Herman, Hanzi, Brand, Revis and Marton, and many
more leaders and half-leaders who gagged themselves in an hour of crisis and
did not inform others of what was known to them and did not warn and did not
cry out of the coming danger....
Because of all this I cannot confirm the conclusion of the District Court with
regard to the accusation that Greenwald has thrown on Kastner of collaboration
with the Nazis in exterminating the Jewish people in Hungary during the last
war." (Hecht, ibid., pp.270-2)
In other words, the Court approved of Kastner's contempt for the Hungarian Jews and could not allow him to be condemned for doing exactly what many other Zionist leaders had half-leaders did - concealing their knowledge of the Nazi extermination plans so that Jews would board the trains to Auschwitz peacefully while their Zionist 'leaders' boarded a different train for Palestine.
The Minority Judgement
It cannot be said that all top Zionists leaders actively approved of Nazi collaboration in this way. Indeed the most precise answer to this sickening judgement of Judge Chesin is provided in the minority judgement of Supreme Court Judge Moshe Silberg:
I do not say that he was the only man who possessed information among the
leaders. It is quite possible that somebody else as well does not have a clear
conscience with regards to this concealment. But we are dealing here with the
guilt of Kastner and we do not have to make judgements on the guilt of
others....
The declaration of the learned Attorney General therefore shrinks into an
opinion....'Kastner was convinced and believed that there was no ray of hope
for the Jews of Hungary, almost for none of them, and as he, as a result of his
personal despair, did not disclose the secret of the extermination in order not
to endanger or frustrate the rescue of the few - therefore he acted in good
faith and should not be accused of collaborating with the Nazis in expediting
the extermination of the Jews, even though, in fact, he brought about its
result.'
I am compelled to state that it is very difficult for me to conceive such an
intention. Is this good faith? Can a single man, even in cooperation with some
of his friends, yield to despair on behalf and without the knowledge of 800,000
other people? This is, in my opinion, the decisive consideration in the problem
facing us. The charge emanating from the testimony of the witnesses against
Kastner is that had they known of the Auschwitz secret, then thousands or tens
of thousands would have been able to save their lives by local, partial,
specific or indirect rescue operations like local revolts, resistance, escapes,
hidings, concealment of children with Gentiles, forging of documents, ransom
money, bribery, etc. - and when this is the case and when one deals with many
hundreds of thousands, how does a human being, a mortal, reject with complete
certainty and with an extreme 'no' the efficiency of all the many and varied
rescue ways? How can he examine the tens of thousands of possibilities? Does he
decide instead of God? Indeed, he who can act with such a usurpation of the
last hope of hundreds of thousands is not entitled to claim good faith as his
defense. The penetrating question quo warrento is a good answer to a claim of
such good faith...
If the superintendent of a big hospital lets thousands of sick people die so
that he may devote himself to the sure rescue of one soul, he will come out
guilty, at least morally, even if it is proven that he as an individual
erroneously thought that there was no hope of saving the other patients. He is
a collaborator with the angel of death.
Either a complete atrophy of the soul or a blind involvement with complete loss
of senses and proportion in his small but personal rescue operation could bring
a man to such a gigantic, hazardous play.
And if all this is not enough to annul the claim of good faith which was put
before us on behalf of Kastner by the Attorney General, then Kastner himself
comes and annuls it altogether. Not only did he never make this claim, but his
own words prove the contrary. He writes in his report to the Jewish Agency that
the Committee sent emissaries to many ghettos in the countryside and pleaded
with them to organize escapes and to refuse to board the trains. And though the
story of these pleadings is untrue, and the silence of Kastner in Kluj is
proven, the very uttering of these statements entirely contradicts the claim
that Kastner had concealed the news about the fate of the ghetto inmates in
good faith and only as a result of his complete despairing of the chances of
escaping or resisting the Germans. You can not claim at the same time
helplessness and activity. Anyway, such a claim is not convincing...
We can sum up with three facts:
A. That the Nazis didn't want to have a great revolt - 'Second Warsaw' - nor
small revolts, and their passion was to have the extermination machine working
smoothly without resistance. This fact was known to Kastner from the best
source - from Eichmann himself - And he had additional proofs of that when he
witnessed all the illusionary and misleading tactics which were being taken by
the Nazis from the first moment of occupation.
B. That the most efficient means to paralyze the resistance with - or the
escape of a victim is to conceal from him the plot of the coming murder. This
fact is known to every man and one does not need any proof of evidence for
this.
C. That he, Kastner, in order to carry out the rescue plan for the few
prominents, fulfilled knowingly and without good faith the said desire of the
Nazis, thus expediting the work of exterminating the masses.
And also the rescue of Becher by Kastner...He who is capable of rescuing this
Becher from hanging proves that the atrocities of this great war criminal were
not so horrifying or despicable in his eyes...I couldn't base the main guilt of
Kastner on this fact had it been alone, but when it is attached even from afar
to the whole scene of events it throws retroactive light on the whole affair
and serves as a dozen proofs of our conclusion."(Supreme Court Judge, Moshe
Silberg, 1957)
Conclusion
If that had been the majority judgement, one could say that whatever their attitudes to the Arabs, and whatever their past behaviour might have been under pressure, the Zionist leadership today did not advocate collaboration with the Nazis.
But Judge Silberg's judgement was that of a minority.
The Kastner case is therefore not an alleged episode in past history.
It is a continuing controversy in which the top Zionist leadership of Israel stand indicted of continuing to publicly defend collaboration with the Nazis in the extermination of Jews.
Despite the unanimous finding of the Supreme Court of Israel that Kurt Becher was a major war criminal, the Jewish Agency (World Zionist Organization) refused to withdraw the fraudulent certificate Kastner gave on their behalf, which saved Becher from hanging, and allowed him to remain a free man in West Germany, the head of several corporations and with an estimated personal worth of $30 million.
Becher has even used his certification as a 'good' SS officer to give evidence in support of his associates at other war crimes trials in West Germany.
Since the prosecution, representing the Israeli Government agreed with the Supreme Court that Becher was a major war criminal, one can only pressure that the Israeli Government did not want him put on trial for fear of what might come out.
Likewise, none of Kastner's associates on the Zionist Relief and Rescue Committee or his bosses in the Jewish Agency have ever been put on trial as demanded by Israeli public opinion. Let alone the hundreds of 'prominents' who helped Kastner to reassure the Hungarian Jews that they were going to Kenyermeze and not Auschwitz, in exchange for tickets on the one train that took them eventually to Palestine.
As for Kastner himself, he will cause no further embarrassment to the Zionist leadership with his undisputed claims that everything he did was approved by the Jewish Agency (World Zionist Organization) leadership in Palestine. He is 'now dead'. Or putting it less delicately, on 3 March 1957 he was shot by Zeev Eckstein - immediately after the appeal hearings were concluded, and before the judgement 'rehabilitating' him was delivered. Eckstein was not a Hungarian avenger. He was a paid undercover agent of the Israeli secret service. (Hecht, ibid., p.208). Another 'fantastic allegation' no doubt; but admitted in court during the murder trial).
The facts of the Kastner case show that the very existence of the Jewish Agency (World Zionist Organization) was an actual help to the Nazis and that more could have been saved if the Zionist movement had not existed. Having a State that approves of actions like those of Kastner for an insurance policy, is like using petroleum for a fire extinguisher.
(extracted from a pamphlet issued by BAZO-PS (British Anti-Zionist Organization/Palestine Solidarity, in 1981)
