The Amazing Nazis and Their Friends

By Steve Rodan

Ziga Halpert lived in the river city of Chust, population 20,000, when the Germans came to deport the Jews in May 1944. Halpert wanted to run with his family through the nearby Carpathian Mountains to neighboring Romania, which promised to serve as a haven for Hungarian Jews.

But in Chust, the Nazi-appointed Judenrat and its Zionist allies urged the Jews to trust the Germans and board the trains that would take them to camps where the men would work, the women would take care of their children and there would be plenty of food for all. Somehow, Halpert contacted the man he believed would surely know: Rudolph Kastner, the de facto Zionist chief of Hungary and head of the so-called Budapest Rescue Committee.

Kastner's reply: As sure as the sun shines every morning, no harm will come to you. The worst is behind us." [1]

Halpert, his wife and their nine-year-old daughter boarded the train from Chust. Within two days, they arrived at Auschwitz.

Obedience

From May 15 to July 9, 1944, Hungarian gendarmerie officials, under the guidance of German SS officers, deported around 440,000 Jews from Hungary. At the train stations were Kastner's aides, Zionist functionaries who assured the assembled Jews that they would be saved from the hunger and brutality that raged throughout the Jewish community.

The SS was amazed by the obedience of the Jews. Virtually no force was required by the Germans or Hungarians. The Jews marched in long columns to the railway stations and allowed themselves to be stuffed into cattle cars. The Jews could have fled, and even at the stations, could have overpowered the guards. But the vast majority believed the lie trumpeted by the Zionist apparatchiks that the Jews would not be harmed.

The masses of Jews streaming to Auschwitz required an overhaul of the death facility, which had been idle since the fall of 1943. Under the supervision of commandant Rudolf Hoess, the rail line was extended to enter the camp. Additional gas chambers and crematoriums were built or restored.

The train to Auschwitz was itself a death trap. At least 75 Jews were packed in cars meant to hold no more than 40 people. They were unable to lie down or sit. They were left without food or water. The windows and ventilators were sealed. By the time, the 2-3 day journey was over many of the passengers were dead.

Several Jews managed to jump from the moving trains. But most did nothing. Once, two young Zionists broke open several wagons when the train reached Kassa. They shouted for the Jews to run. Nobody moved. [2]

The deportation of the Jews in Hungary was unprecedented and became the fastest and most efficient extermination of World War II. What took years to accomplish in Poland and Slovakia took merely a few weeks in Hungary.

Four times more than planned

The Germans weren't expecting such success. On May 4, 1944, Edmund Veesenmayer, the highest-ranking diplomat in Hungary, told Berlin that 300,000 Jews would be deported from Hungary. Within weeks, he revised those figures upward. By May 25, he reported the deportation of 150,000 Jews, saying the trains would continue daily through June 7. From May through July, three to five trains arrived daily in Auschwitz, totaling between 10,000 to 14,000 Jews.

Veesenmayer could not have been more surprised. A year earlier, the SS officer, Hitler's expert on Eastern Europe, said the Hungarian government was protecting the Jews more than ever to ensure favorable treatment by the Allies during and after the war. He warned that this "threatens to grow into a serious danger for Axis policy." [3]

But that was the spring of 1943, In 1944, the Hungarians abandoned the Jews. By July 10, the German Foreign Ministry reported the number of deported Jews at 437,402. In all, the rate was four times that envisioned by the SS in April. [4]

The massive deportation had one aim -- death. Very few Jews were selected for slave labor. The vast majority were killed as soon as they reached Auschwitz. Before they entered the gas chambers, disguised as showers, they were robbed of their last belongings. After the gassing, Jews were sent into the chambers to check the dead for gold teeth. On some days, the Germans smelted as much of 35 kilograms of the precious metal.

"Suitcases full of jewelry, paper money and coins were dragged to the cellar of the administration building because they could not keep up with the sorting and counting. A whole staff was employed to count the enormous sums of money day after day." [5]

The efficiency of the German killing machine was attributed to the Zionists, particularly Kastner. His first real test was to convince the Jews of his hometown of Cluj to board the trains to Auschwitz. On April 28, the SS conducted the first major deportation of Hungarian Jews -- 1,500. On May 3, Kastner was ordered by Adolf Eichmann to travel to Cluj to prepare for much larger transports. To assure compliance, Kastner told his Zionist and Judenrat colleagues that they could be saved after the deportation of the rest of the 18,000 Jews.

Smokescreen

At the same time, the SS, in coordination with the Zionist leadership, ensured that Kastner would be the only partner of the Germans. On the eve of the German occupation, the most senior member of the Rescue Committee, Samuel Springmann, was sent to Turkey and then Palestine. Just before the daily deportations, Eichmann ordered Kastner's partner and later nemesis, Joel Brand, to fly to Istanbul ostensibly to discuss a plan to stop the gas chambers. Brand's wife, Hansi, saw the mission as merely a smokescreen for an accelerated extermination.

While you are bargaining with the Germans, the murders go on in the provinces. In Russian Carpathia and Transylvania, tens of thousands are being herded together in the open without bread and water. They will be deported and gassed before Joel ever gets to Constantinople [Istanbul]. [6]

The Zionist leadership was briefed on a nearly daily basis of the Final Solution in Hungary. Their alliance with the Third Reich ensured that they would help complete the extermination mission. Formally, the leadership could claim to have known nothing, pointing to Kastner's optimistic cables of how he was saving Zionists. Meanwhile, some of the leaders were busy negotiating the freedom of Zionists imprisoned in France and Germany, which culminated in the release of 283 Jews from Bergen-Belsen and Vittel in June.

Get the money

But what held the greatest attention of the Zionist leadership was the huge amount of money taken from the Hungarian Jews. On May 5, 10 days before the start of the daily deportations, Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion made clear his goals in a letter sent from his emissary Nathan Schwalb to the Zionist leadership in Hungary. Schwalb wrote a long letter that instructed Brand and Kastner on how to deal with the SS. The two Hungarians were told to focus on saving the Zionists and to employ rigorous accounting of the vast sums of money expected to be sent for rescue in Budapest.

Then came the crux of the message:

"Besides murder, deportation and dissolving the concentration camps, Aliya and emigration, you have to talk about the frozen accounts [of the Jews] so that the frozen accounts can be used for charitable purposes and for emigration. In this way, your acquisitions could be combined with rescue." [7]

Notes

1. Testimony of Lily Zamir, daughter of Halpert. Quoted in Kasztner's Crime. Paul Bogdanor. Page 111. Routledge, 2016.

2. ibid. Page 104

3. Veesenmayer memo, April 30, 1943. Cited in The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz; George Mantello El Salvador and Switzerland's Finest Hour. David Kranzler. Page 48. Syracuse University Press, 2000.

4. "The Destruction of the Jews in Hungary. Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team.

5. Gestapo staffer Perry Broad, in "Auschwitz Chronicle." Page 541. Cited in "Holocaust Assets." Part V. "From the Extermination Camps to the Banks." Page 250. Clinton Presidential Library.

6. Hansi Brand quoted in Desperate Mission. Joel Brand and Alex Weissberg. Pages 102 and 107. Andre Deutsch, 1956.

7. Schwalb to Brand and Kastner, May 5, 1944. JDC Archives

Below: Waiting to board the train to Auschwitz.