His Word Against Theirs

By Steve Rodan and Elly Sinclair

Kurt Becher was a Nazi thug assigned to find and grab the money of the Jews in occupied Europe before they were sent to the death camps. He performed his job with great efficiency in 1944 during the nine-month German occupation of Hungary.

That much everybody agrees.

What is in dispute is how Becher was able to obtain and escape with so much money from Hungary with the Red Army knocking on that country's door months before Germany surrendered to the Allies. Historians, basing their conclusions on a Zionist leader who worked with the German colonel, explained that Becher pocketed the ransoms that Hungarian Jews offered in a usually vain effort to save themselves. Western Jewish organizations, particularly the American Joint Distribution Committee, were said to have refused to participate in this blackmail other than promise Becher and other Germans money after the war.

JDC money

Becher, however, provided a completely different narrative. From the first weeks of the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, Becher, appointed head of SS foreign intelligence, or Amt. 6, was working with JDC and other elements of the organized Jewish community in obtaining huge bribes -- as much as three million Swiss francs or more than $1 million -- to save at least some of the Jews.

JDC, which throughout the war refused to send money to rescue the Jewish masses, was said to have paid millions of Hungarian pengoes to Becher to stop the deportations to Auschwitz. JDC, Becher said, kept providing him, and indirectly SS chief Heinrich Himmler, with foreign currency, gold and other valuables for as long as Becher was in Hungary. The money was said to have been important for Himmler, who met Becher on average of twice a month. [1]

The U.S. Army interrogators of Becher had a hard time believing his tale of collusion with JDC. Over the last 50 years, most historians did not determine that JDC paid ransoms until August 1944. The only problem was that other parts of Becher's story had been confirmed.

In July 1946, Becher told interrogators that JDC first contacted Hans-Ulrich Geschke during the spring of 1944, when the deportation of Jews began from Hungary. Geschke was formally the commander of the security police under SS police chief Otto Winkelmann and launched the first roundup of Jews -- some 2,000 overall -- when Germany invaded Hungary on March 19, 1944. He was the superior of Adolf Eichmann, who led the SS team assigned to transport the Jews to Auschwitz.

No promises

"Before he would even listen, they [JDC] would have to lay a substantial sum on the table, and that he would promise nothing in return," Becher quoted Geschke as saying.

JDC soon came up with three to five million pengoes, Becher said. The money was transferred for use by Himmler's favorite fixer.

"When I entered the picture I had the 3-5 million pengo transferred to my office for the purchase of equipment for the account of Amt. 6," Becher said. But this was only the first installment by JDC. Becher said the handouts kept coming, including "100,000 Swiss francs, 1,000-1,500 British pounds and several hundred U.S. dollars" as well as 30,000 pounds of coffee and "a similar amount in [leather] hides." He said he concealed details of the JDC payments from Himmler. The flow continued beyond the summer of 1944. Becher said Rudolf Kastner, the Hungarian Zionist leader, became the conduit for a "large quantity of valuables, including foreign exchange, diamonds, etc." Becher said he deposited the assets with Karl Grabau, a haupsturmfuehrer, the equivalent of a captain in the German Army. Grabau served with Becher in Poland when the former was an SS administrative commander in Radom in 1942. Grabau, who needed a truck to bring the valuables out of Hungary to Bad Ischel, Austria, was said to have given some of the loot to a JDC representative for transfer to Switzerland.

U.S. interrogators did not believe Becher's claims of his relationship with JDC. Instead, they recommended that Kastner and Joel Brand -- both described as representatives of JDC -- as well as Grabau, be questioned as well.

"His [Becher] judgment, however, may be faulty," Jack Bennett, director of the U.S. Army interrogation unit, wrote. In the end, much of what Becher disclosed about the Jewish loot was confirmed by Grabau, captured in May 1945 and imprisoned at Dachau. Geschke, who first dealt with JDC, disappeared toward the end of the war. Some believe that he fell in the battle of Budapest in late 1944 and early 1945 but no evidence was found. He was declared dead by the public prosecutor in Frankfurt in 1959. Army probe ignored Bennett's evaluation ignored a U.S. Army investigation of JDC's representative in Switzerland, Saly Mayer. In the summer of 1945, Mayer was questioned and admitted that Becher managed to bring the money and assets taken from Hungarian Jews to Switzerland. He did not dispute Becher's claim that he had given the valuables to Mayer. The investigation was soon quashed by Washington. [2] Other damaging testimony was also ignored. The result was that a year after the Becher interrogation, the former SS colonel was on his way to freedom. Kastner issued at least three affidavits for Becher and aided the Nazi in a session with Nuremberg prosecutors in July 1947 that portrayed him as a savior of Jews. That description was disputed by some of Becher's colleagues in the SS. Josef Spasil was a Reich Security Main Office chief at Amt. 2 with a rank of the equivalent of senior colonel. Like Becher, Spasil's job was to steal money from the Jews before they were killed. His testimony against his former boss, security police chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, was introduced as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. That helped win a conviction that led to Kaltenbrunner's hanging. But when it came to Becher, Spasil, who died in 1967, was dismissed by Allied prosecutors. He told U.S. investigators that Becher was "responsible for many of the anti-Jewish excesses in Hungary." [3]

Serious questions

Becher's testimony raised crucial questions that were never addressed by mainstream historians. First, how much money did JDC give Becher in the spring of 1944 and what were the terms of the transfer? Two, why did JDC give large amounts of money for what the SS knew to be rescue efforts in Hungary while refusing to do the same in Poland and Slovakia? Three, how many, if any Jews, did the SS agree to save in Hungary?

On the last question, Becher provided the answer: In his interrogation, he referred to saving at most 2,300 Jews -- far fewer than the claims of Zionist historians who said more than 200,000 owed their lives to Becher and Kastner. Kastner, Becher asserted, asked to rescue only 1,700 Jews whom he had selected.

In the fall of 1944, Becher said, he obtained from Himmler an order -- which turned out to be bogus -- to end the extermination of the Jews. From April until July 1944, well over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed in Auschwitz, and the killings resumed in October.

With Jewish money, Becher became one of the richest men in West Germany. He died in his bed in 1995. Notes 1. "Subject: Interrogation of SS General Kurt Becher, Aug. 5, 1946. 2/225, NARA 2. "Whose Booty Did German Plunder Become?" Egon Mayer. May 4, 2000 3. Financial Intelligence Group. Subject: Fritz Schwend. March 26, 1948

Below: Kurt Becher during World War II