Kasztner's Train by Anna Porter

Author:Anna Porter [Porter, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000
Publisher: D & M Publishers
Published: 2007-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

(22)

Still Trading in Lives

I had no confidence in Horthy or those around him.

They were all lacking in courage… We had only one chance to

gain time and that was to negotiate with the SS,

to have recourse to ruse and to make, if necessary, a few deliveries.

ANDRÉ BISS, A MILLION JEWS TO SAVE

IN ISTANBUL, Menachem Bader was invited for coffee with a man who called himself Stiller and said he was attached to the German Consulate. They met in a café a short walk from the Pera Hotel. Stiller claimed he was authorized by the appropriate parties on the German side to offer Bader safe conduct and a plane ride to Vienna so that he could continue the discussions begun by Joel Brand.

The invitation was reviewed for two days by the Jewish Agency Executive. They concluded that Bader should not be allowed to make the journey, because, as a British subject, he was forbidden to travel in areas controlled by the enemy.1

The question for David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Shertok was how to continue negotiations without the knowledge of the British, whose spy system was a great deal better than the Yishuv's and who seemed unwilling to make something of the Brand proposition. Ben-Gurion would have preferred British cooperation, but he was not going to give up on any deal that might save Jewish lives, even if the British tried to veto it. He sent two cables to Franklin Roosevelt pleading with him “not to allow this unique and possibly last chance of saving the remains of European Jewry to be lost.”

In Palestine, Shertok reported to the Jewish Agency Executive on the whole “heartrending, discouraging affair” and his determination to “try every possible avenue” to persuade the British government to allow him to proceed.

In Cairo, a dispirited Brand was allowed to meet Lord Moyne in a private club, where the British minister reportedly asked him: “But Mr. Brand, what can I do with this million Jews? Where can I put them?”2

EICHMANN IGNORED Regent Horthy's command that deportations cease and continued to instruct the eager Hungarian Nazis to round up Jews from the areas close to Budapest. Hitler, he reasoned, had never agreed to accede to anything but the “correct course” of action. To make his point, Eichmann had the remaining inmates of the Kistarcsa and Sárvár camps put on trains and consigned to Auschwitz. He told Kasztner that, no matter what arrangement Kasztner had come to with Becher, unless the required goods began to appear at the borders Eichmann would add the passengers on Kasztner's train—still waiting at Bergen-Belsen—to the next transport and “have the whole lot of them gassed without a selection.”

“An interesting idea, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Kasztner replied, “but it would end any chance we had of negotiating for goods the Reich might need in exchange for Jews it does not want.”

On July 10, following Admiral Horthy's orders, the Hungarian police intercepted one of Eichmann's trains and returned it to Kistarcsa. When Eichmann discovered that the Regent had countermanded his orders, he flew into a rage.

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