Dr. Israel Kasztner, a rising star in Israel politics, arranged for a train that carried nearly 1,700 Hungarian Jews, including the children above, to safety. But he was attacked for dealing with the Nazis.
by George Robinson Special To The Jewish Week
To be blunt, there are few moments in Israeli history that do less credit to the Jewish state, its politicians and journalists than the so-called Kasztner Affair, which is the subject of a new documentary film by Gaylen Ross, “Killing Kasztn er: The Jew Who Dealt with Nazis,” which opens Oct. 23. The story is a complicated one that the film tells confidently and with surprising clarity. Dr. Israel Kasztner, who was something of a rising star in the Labor Party’s predecessor, Mapai, had spent World War II in his native Hungary, where he was part of a network — the “Vaada Help and Rescue Committee” — that tried to save Jewish lives in occupied Europe. When the Germans invaded Hungary in 1944, his
mission took on a new urgency and he found himself negotiating face-to-face with Adolf Eichmann, offering money in exchange for sparing Jews. One result of his efforts was a train carrying 1,685 Hungarian Jews that took a wildly circuitous route (including a grim sojourn of a few months in Bergen-Belsen) before finally carrying its occupants to Switzerland. He also managed to get many thousands of Jewish prisoners transferred from the death camps to Mauthausen, not a summer resort by any means but also not an extermination factory. For reasons not entirely clear, at the Nuremburg trials he provided affidavits on behalf of several Nazi officials he’d dealt with — making himself the target of a hate campaign that had its roots in the rantings of a single gadfly, Malchiel Gruenwald. A would-be journalist whose output consisted of a newsletter that he wrote on his own and mailed out to public figures, Gruenwald accused Kasztner of collaborating with the Nazis and profiting from the deals he made with them. Uri Avnery, who had not yet become a stalwart of the Israeli peace movement and was still closely tied to old comrades from Irgun and the Herut party, grabbed the story for his weekly magazine, HaOlam Hazeh (This World). The potential to embarrass Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and other leaders of Mapai was obvious; the attorney general instituted legal proceedings against Gruenwald for libel and all hell broke loose. Eventually, Gruenwald would be acquitted and the judge in the case would call Kasztner a man “who sold his soul to the devil.” Kasztner would be exonerated on appeal, but days before that decision was issued he was shot down by a right-wing youth, Ze’ev Eckstein, in front of his own home. Filmmaker Ross became inspired several years ago when, at a gathering for Jews saved by Kasztner, she heard sociologist Egon Mayer, who was one of the “Kasztner Jews,” say that the train represented “the single largest successful rescue of Jews by Jews during the Holocaust.” Yet, Mayer added, “[Kasztner] was the target of accusations leveled against no one else and the price he paid was paid by no one else.” Ross became fascinated by this seeming paradox and spent the next seven years researching, filming and completing “Killing Kasztner.” Essentially, the film follows the trajectories of two survivors of the drama, Eckstein, the now-repentant murderer, and Zsuzsi Kasztner, the victim’s only child, now a middle-aged woman with daughters of her own. Ross counterposes Zsuzsi’s search for justice for her father’s memory, still frequently reviled in Israel when not completely forgotten, and Eckstein’s description of the transformation that led him to kill Kasztner (he served seven years for the murder). As he says of his former self, “I was then a decent Jewish boy, not a dark, feverish person with a lust and need to kill, to get revenge.” With those two parallel lines driving the film forward, Ross chronologically tells the story of the trial and its aftermath, saving some devastating revelations for the film’s last half-hour. As a director, Ross has a sharp eye for the homely but telling detail: the flapping laundry of a Greek Orthodox monastery that shares a courtyard with the government building where the trial took place; the quivering of Eckstein’s clenched jaw when he meets Zsuzsi Kasztner to apologize to her; the smirk of complacency that crosses Avneri’s lips when he talks about how he worked with Gruenwald’s attorney, Shmuel Tamir, to spin the news coverage of the trial. But the film suffers a bit from its exhaustive and exhausting attempt at completeness; at just under two hours, it has just a bit too much visual throat clearing. And Ross seems more interested in Eckstein’s revelation of a larger “Grassy Knoll” type conspiracy than in the historian and archivist who turns up some damaging new evidence about Ben-Gurion and the Mapai leaders and how they left Kasztner to twist in the wind while covering their own tracks. Regardless of these shortcomings, “Killing Kasztner” is frequently compelling and often infuriating. Nobody comes out of this story covered with glory except, perhaps, the daughter and granddaughters who remained loyal to Kasztner’s memory. n “Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt with Nazis,” directed by Gaylen Ross, opens Friday, Oct. 23 at the Cinema Village (22 E. 12th St.). For information, call (212) 924-3363 or go to www.cinemavillage.com.
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