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IN-DEPTH FEATURES
"The year is 1953. I am 30 years old . . . One day Eli
Malkiel Greenwald and his daughter Rina come to me . . .
`Would you be able to take on Abba's defense?' asks Rina,
showing me the indictment the State filed against her father
. . . "
This is how Shmuel Tamir opens the story of his involvement
in the trial that he managed to transform from "the Greenwald
Trial" to "the Kasztner Trial." During the hearings, blame
for the failure to save Hungarian Jewry during the Holocaust
fell on Dr. Yisrael Kasztner, the Zionist leader in Nazi-held
Budapest.
In his recently released autobiography Ben Ha'aretz
Hazot, published years after his petiroh,
celebrated attorney Shmuel Tamir provides a comprehensive
review of the showcase trial that began half a century
ago.
"A few years ago," writes Tamir, "Judge Halevi was asked if
he still held his original opinion regarding the ruling in
the Kasztner Trial. Halevi replied that he remained steadfast
in his opinion and stuck to his ruling with all of its
components and implications, but that the expression `he sold
his soul to the devil,' he might have rephrased."
The phrase "he sold his soul to the devil" is what stuck in
the collective consciousness from that trial. It is the
memory hook that many people use to recall the affair. If you
ask people whose memories are vague about this dismal affair,
they are likely to say, "Kasztner? You mean the guy from the
Holocaust who sold his soul to the devil?"
Only the better-informed will recall that Kasztner was
eventually assassinated as a result of the trial and that the
High Court, by upholding the State's appeal, cleared Kasztner
of all allegations--posthumously. "He sold his soul to the
devil" is the ruling that will go down in history.
The Kasztner Trial involved the names of numerous leaders,
jurists and witnesses. Some of them have been almost wholly
forgotten, whereas others continued to stand out in other
contexts, such as High Court Judge Chaim Cohen who trampled
over every Jewish value, or Yosef Lapid, the now-infamous
party leader of Shinui, then working as a young journalist
for the Hungarian- language newspaper Uj Kelet edited
by Yisrael Kasztner. To this day, Lapid believes Kasztner was
right.
Yet probably no one has positive recollections of Malkiel
Greenwald, the man who opened up the Pandora's box with his
pen.
*
"My friends, members of Mizrachi of Hungary! The stench of a
corpse is passing beneath my nostrils! This will be the best
funeral money can buy! Dr. Rudolf Kasztner must be
eliminated! . . . " Malkiel Greenwald opened with these
glaring statements to induce whoever saw his leaflet to
continue reading all of the grave accusations he lodged
against Kasztner.
For many years, Greenwald, an old, embittered Jerusalemite
and the owner of a wretched pension on Jaffa Street, wrote
and disseminated incriminating leaflets against various
public figures. Producing the leaflet cost a considerable sum
in those pre-computer days, but apparently for Greenwald it
provided a way to vent his frustrations.
He told of his youth in Austria at the beginning of the Nazi
takeover, when he was badly beaten and humiliated for being a
Jew, but managed to escape and come to Israel. Most of his
family perished in the Holocaust and apparently he suffered
from unfounded feelings of guilt for having remained alive
and therefore resolved to fight the battle of those who
stayed behind and were killed. These leaflets were handed out
in botei knesses on leil Shabbos, and may have
been the forerunners of this genre.
At the time Greenwald was living in his pension with his
daughter. His wife had passed away and his son died in the
Israeli war of Independence in 5708 (1948). A few years later
his daughter committed suicide, accusing her father, in a
letter she left behind, of harsh treatment.
Greenwald's extended leaflet goes on to indict Kasztner,
saying, "For his underlying criminal ways and his
collaboration with the Nazis, I see him as the indirect
murderer of my dear brothers."
Had Kasztner blended into the general population quietly
following his aliyah, Greenwald would not have chosen to stir
up a debate with him about the role of Jewish leaders during
the Holocaust. But Kasztner, who his friends say arrived in
Israel with nothing, soon made his way into the Mapai
leadership. A glance at his headlines during the Holocaust
immediately reveals his close ties with Yishuv leaders such
as Moshe Sharett, Ehud Avriel, Teddy Kollek and others, and
Greenwald realized that his warm reception was due to the
Mapai heads' desire to cover up the part they played in
deserting European Jews and to keep Kasztner from talking.
"Who is spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce and Trade
today?" continued the leaflet. "Who licks the Mapai leaders'
plate clean? Who is the broadcaster in Hungarian and Romanian
on Kol Tzion LeGola? Who clinched Mapai's control of the
Hungarian newspapers?" Greenwald also mentions that Kasztner
was a candidate on Mapai's first and second Knesset lists
(though he was in an unrealistic spot and did not enter the
Knesset).
What was Greenwald really accusing Kasztner of? Kasztner, he
claimed, organized the "rescue train" for several hundred
Budapest Jews under the protection of Eichmann, Himmler and
Kurt Becher, thereby saving 52 of his family members. The
price: abandoning the rest of Hungarian Jewry. He earned
tremendous sums in this deal since the suitcases full of
gold, diamonds and valuable articles the Jews left with him
to pass on to the Nazi rulers remained in his possession and
he smuggled them to a safe location.
Greenwald also alleged that Kasztner testified for top-
ranking Nazi official Kurt Becher at the Nuremberg Trial,
saving him from the gallows. According to Greenwald, Kasztner
covered up for Becher to prevent him from revealing his
dubious deals with Kasztner.
Greenwald's leaflet claims Kasztner thwarted attempts to
bring Hungarian Jews to Israel because he wanted to curry
favor with Hungary's communist authorities, who sought to put
him on trial for alleged war crimes. "This carries an
obligation toward our victims!" he wrote. "This demands the
Hungarian Yishuv defend its honor! Kasztner must disappear
from political life!"
"When I finished reading the leaflet," recalls Shmuel Tamir,
"I asked Greenwald what proof he had. Greenwald, who spoke
broken Hebrew peppered with Yiddish, was taken aback. `It's
clear,' he said. `It's certain. Everything is clear.'"
With this reply Tamir launched a battle to prove Greenwald
had not committed libel.
Bringing the Suit
Slander and libel claims are generally between two
individuals. Kasztner, who did not have a clean conscience
and wanted to turn over a new leaf, did not at first consider
suing Greenwald, particularly since the leaflet was only
disseminated at Mizrachi botei knesses. It was then-
Attorney General Chaim Cohen who wanted to open a libel case.
Cohen, who later became a High Court judge, foresaw how far
Greenwald's mudslinging could reach and wanted to stop it by
taking him to court.
Cohen's decision was surprising. He explained it as an effort
to defend a state employee, for Kasztner was serving as
spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Commerce under Dr.
Dov Yosef.
Yosef showed no interest and Kasztner showed a lack of
initiative, but Chaim Cohen pushed. After seven months of
vacillation and another seven-month delay, the case of the
State vs. Malkiel Greenwald opened in May 1953, just over 50
years ago.
Building the Case
Shmuel Tamir says he was selected as defense attorney almost
by chance because of his slight acquaintance with Greenwald's
daughter. Greenwald was not even able to offer payment except
for his stamp album, but Tamir decided to accept the case
anyway, sensing it would provide him a platform to raise
accusations that the Mapai leadership had left European Jewry
to the Nazi wolves.
A relatively inexperienced lawyer, Tamir was known for his
devotion to revisionist ideas. He was raised in a family of
Jabotinsky supporters.
Zeev Jabotinsky was a prominent figure who despised the
Haganah and the official Zionist institutions. In his war
against the British Mandate, he saw the Zionist leadership as
enemy collaborators for colluding with them in hushing
reports on the Holocaust in Europe. If Jews in Eretz Yisroel
learned the truth they might apply pressure to open the gates
and allow unrestricted aliyah. He worked on illegal aliyah in
the years before his death in 1940. "Perhaps through some
chance of fate," wrote Tamir, recording his thoughts, "I will
have an opportunity here to uncover even a bit of the
Holocaust period and the responsibility for the errors and
sins and crimes right here at home, and not just on the
outside."
Greenwald and Kasztner merely played supporting roles,
against their will, in the grand production Shmuel Tamir was
planning to stage.
And it was a smashing success. During the first three days of
the trial, Yisrael Kasztner laid forth, with breezy
confidence, his version of what took place in Hungary during
the years 1944 and 1945. (The Nazis did not take over Hungary
and Romania until 1944, which helped a relatively large
portion of Hungarian and Romanian Jews to survive.) Judge
Binyamin Halevi, the only judge hearing the case in the Tel
Aviv District Court, listened attentively and the proceedings
clearly made a strong impression on him.
"I was born in Klozh," Kasztner began, referring to the well-
known Chassidic center of Klauzenburg. He later moved to
Budapest because of familial ties. Kasztner recalled that
Hungarian Zionists had decided to set up the Zionist Aid and
Rescue Committee (known as "the Vaadah") in Budapest and
decided to negotiate with the Nazis in the hope that they
could prevent the deportations of Hungarian Jewry to the
death camps--or at least buy time. The plan was to offer them
a large ransom in exchange for the Jews. The negotiations
were held with Eichmann and Dieter Wisliceny, his
representative in Hungary.
Because it was unfeasible to secure the entire sum the
Germans demanded in Hungary itself, a proposal was made to
send Joel Brand, one of the heads of the Zionist leadership
there, to the Zionist office in Constantinople, the
organizational headquarters for rescue operations. Eichmann
proposed allowing Hungarian Jewry to leave in exchange for
goods rather than money-- a deal that came to be known as
"trucks for lives"-- because the German army had begun to
feel the strain of the Allied push. Brand was sent to
Constantinople accompanied by an intelligence agent named
Andor (Bandi) Grosz, who never returned to Hungary.
Brand was captured and detained by the British. Soon Eichmann
began to lose patience. Nevertheless Kasztner managed to
obtain Eichmann's permission to transport a train full of
Jews to Spain rather than annihilation as a sign of the
Nazis' "good faith." Kasztner put most of his family members
on the passenger list, along with most of the leaders of the
Zionist movement in Hungary. The money was collected by
selling some seats to wealthy Jews. This train, it appears,
was slated to be the first of several.
In his testimony Kasztner touched on the famous story of Yoel
Palgi and Hana Senesh, the Eretz Yisroel residents who
bravely parachuted into occupied Hungary and were handed over
by Kasztner to the Hungarian authorities who collaborated
with the Nazis.
Kasztner continued recounting his activities in detail,
including his journeys back and forth to Switzerland, Berlin
and various other cities to meet with Nazi heads. This was
extremely rare -- perhaps even the only case of a Jewish
leader who traveled freely in occupied Nazi territory with
official permission to hold negotiations for the rescue of
his Jewish brethren.
When Prosecutor Amnon Tal asked Kasztner about the alleged
claim that he testified for Nazi war criminal Kurt Becher,
Kasztner replied that he did not give formal testimony and
that Becher was released because the court did not find any
evidence that he was guilty of exterminating Jews.
In conclusion Kasztner said that after the war certain claims
were lodged against him. He himself asked the Zionist
movement to look into the matter and a court set up in Basel
and headed by Yosef Shprintzak found the accusations were
unfounded.
A Dramatic Reversal
The three days of Kasztner's testimony were the only days
Greenwald was considered the defendant and Kasztner the
plaintiff. As soon as Tamir opened his cross-examination, the
wheel turned.
Tamir systematically shattered Kasztner's remarks, quickly
transforming the proceedings into "the Kasztner Trial" and
generating big headlines.
In his opening statements, Tamir claimed that the Jewish
leadership needed a top-to-bottom inquiry by a government
investigating committee, but since no such committee had been
formed he would take advantage of the court hearings. Tamir
displayed an astonishing command of the material and the
period, making it clear he had studied the issue thoroughly
and he had uncovered gaps in Kasztner's testimony.
He began with the problematic -- and seemingly peripheral
matter -- of testifying for Becher, managing to extract from
Kasztner an admission that Becher was really released thanks
to Kasztner's personal intervention. This cast doubt on
Kasztner's credibility.
Later Tamir tried to prove Kasztner could have informed Klozh
Jews of the plans to exterminate them which might have
induced them to try to flee to the Romanian border, but he
refrained from doing so to maintain his good relations with
the Nazi murderers.
Over and over again Tamir alleged that Kasztner collaborated
with the Nazis by hiding the extent of the Holocaust from
Hungarian Jews -- to ensure that the preparations for the
underground railroad would not be halted.
At this point the examination turned to the subject of the
parachutists. No topic touched the hearts of the Israeli
public more than those heroic paratroopers sent into Europe
at the height of the war, who were the pride of the Yishuv
and the emblem of mobilization in Eretz Yisroel for the sake
of European Jews. Their heroic story, particularly the story
of how Hana Senesh withstood torture, had quickly become a
part of Zionist legend.
Along came Tamir and said the paratroopers did not have a
chance to accomplish anything because a Zionist leader
coldheartedly turned them over to the Hungarian fascists to
avoid any suspicion that he was collaborating by hiding
them.
The idea behind the parachuting mission itself was really
showy and irresponsible. What could a handful of paratroopers
accomplish in an occupied land where it was impossible to
hide any Jew from extermination? The idea to send them in
order to "do something" was a wanton loss of life as a result
of the concepts of "the new Israeli" and not "going like
sheep to the slaughter."
Particularly shocking was the testimony of Katrina Senesh,
Hana Senesh's mother, who was still living in Budapest at the
time. Unaware of her daughter's aerial infiltration and
arrest, when the Hungarian authorities suddenly summoned her
to the prison in an effort to break Hana's will at the sight
of her mother's sorrow. The poor woman tried to pressure the
Jewish leadership to save her daughter, testified Katrina,
but she was sent away time after time and was not even given
an audience with Kasztner.
Kasztner claimed he never knew Mrs. Senesh had tried to
contact him. But she claimed that her daughter could have
been saved and negligence on the part of the Zionist
leadership was responsible for her death.
Witnesses for both the prosecution and the defense were
called to the stand, one after another. Most of them were
prosecution witnesses in support of Kasztner, but Tamir often
managed to ruin their testimony and turn it against Kasztner.
Yoel Palgi, Joel Brand and many others admitted that
Kasztner, together with leaders such as Moshe Sharett, made
inadequate efforts to save European Jewry in general and
Hungarian Jewry in particular.
Widening the Net
Tamir's strategy was not just to demonstrate how the Zionist
leadership in Hungary tried to conceal the Holocaust. He was
also out to implicate the Zionist leadership in Eretz Yisroel
and the U.S., claiming that those leaders saw the destruction
of European Jewry as an impetus for the establishment of a
national home in Eretz Yisroel.
In his book on the affair, Joel Brand writes that when he met
with Tamir, who wanted to convince him to testify in court,
Brand told him, "I have such incriminating and shocking
material against the heads of the State--then the heads of
the Jewish Agency--that it could shake the whole country . .
. If I testify, blood will run in the streets of Tel Aviv . .
. "
"You don't know the Yishuv," replied Tamir. "Not a single
pane of glass will break in Tel Aviv . . . Senses are dulled
and the body politic does not exhibit normal reactions."
"I'm talking about the biggest crime to take place in the
last thousand years," continued Brand. "The principal and
real culprits are the heads of the Jewish Agency, Chaim
Weizmann and others, not Kasztner. The Nazis did not need his
help to murder the Jews . . . But the Allies, particularly
the British, did not allow any rescue activities, and the
Jewish Agency collaborated with them on everything, without
demanding anything."
Following a painful exchange with Tamir, Brand said, "They
wouldn't let me say everything I have to say. I'm beginning
to worry. Lately I've begun to sense strange movements around
me. They won't let me. They simply cannot afford it." Brand
also said that when he was arrested in Egypt after traveling
to Eretz Yisroel under Eichmann's auspices, the British
minister to the Middle East, Lord Moyne (who was later
assassinated by the underground), said, "What will I do with
a million Jews? Where will I put them?"
During the trial Tamir quoted a book by Yitzhak Greenbaum, a
well-known Zionist leader, and a hater of the chareidim.
"When I was asked [whether I could] give Keren Hayesod funds
to rescue the Jews from Diaspora countries I said, `No. In my
opinion we must stand up to this wave, which would push
Zionist activity to [a position of] secondary
importance.'"
The written evidence was particularly shocking. Tamir
presented one of the letters written by Rav Weissmandel,
which described in great detail the Nazis' deeds and their
means of extermination, issuing a call for help to Jews
around the world. Directed toward Jewish leadership, the
letter read in part, " . . . For the sake of the cruel
silence you have been keeping and for the sake of the arm-
crossing you have been maintaining. You have the ability to
prevent and delay right now! Therefore with the blood of
thousands upon thousands, the tears of thousands upon
thousands, we ask and beseech and demand that action be taken
immediately . . . Our brothers, the Sons of Israel, have you
gone mad? Do you not know what Gehennom we are living
through?"
The Verdict
All the evidence had been presented. The closing arguments by
prosecutor Chaim Cohen lasted one day. The closing arguments
by Shmuel Tamir lasted seven days, ending just before Yom
Kippur 5715 (1954). The trial had been spread out over almost
a year-and-a-half.
Judge Halevi considered his verdict for nine months. The
reading of the verdict, which was dozens of pages long, began
early in Tammuz 5715 (June 1955). In his ruling Halevi
describes sequentially and in detail what occurred in Hungary
from the time of the Nazi invasion and the destruction of the
Jews at Eichmann's orders.
"A deeply disturbing picture of the deception of thousands of
Jews on one hand, and the failure of Jewish leaders on the
other, is revealed in the testimony of members of the large
former communities of Klozh and Nodvorod in Transylvania,"
wrote Halevi, making special note of Kasztner as a
participant in concealing the dimensions of the Holocaust
from Jews who might have been able to flee.
Halevi writes that these leaders did not go with the
community to the concentration camps, but saved their own
skins on the Kasztner Train. He states that Eichmann and his
assistants permitted the rescue train to encourage the
"privileged" to cooperate in allaying the concerns of
Hungarian Jewry. The rescue of a minority was essentially a
gift to Kasztner, and "by receiving this gift Kasztner sold
his soul to the devil."
This phrase was not the end of the ruling, but it sent out
huge shock waves. The press ran large headlines and the
debate raged. Later Halevi recounted the parachuting mission,
including harsh accusations of informing, the abandonment of
Hana Senesh and the testimony for Nazi war criminal Kurt
Becher. "The accused [Greenwald] has proven the truth in the
allegations [against Kasztner]," he concluded.
The Reaction
The heads of the Yishuv, by then the heads of the State of
Israel, could not allow themselves to be cast as leaders who
left the Jews of Europe to face their fate alone as the price
to pay for gaining the cooperation of the British. Attorney
General Chaim Cohen decided to appeal to the High Court,
which accepted the case and set up a bench of five judges.
The hearings began in Teves 5717 (January 1957).
During the appeal Cohen decried the ruling handed down by
Judge Halevi. "A perversion [of justice] has not been done by
any court, either in Israel or among the nations, like the
perversion [of justice] done to Mr. Kasztner."
On the eve of Purim 5717 (March 4, 1957) Dr. Yisrael Kasztner
was murdered by a young Jew (see side bar). The assassination
did not halt the hearings since Mapai heads wanted to clear
their names. Officially they achieved their goal. One year
after the appeal began, the five judges read their rulings.
Each of them wrote a separate decision, but all determined
that Kasztner could not be judged by objective standards.
They maintained he must be judged according to the conditions
under which he acted, out of a genuine desire to save what
could be saved. Perhaps his decision-making was flawed, but
finding fault in retrospect is easy. Judge Cheshin, for
instance, wrote, "A man sees an entire group is doomed. May
he make efforts to spare the minority, even if the efforts
involve hiding the truth from the masses? . . . It seems to
me the answer to this is clear: What profit is there in the
blood of the few if all go down to the grave?"
Most of the judges did not address all of the individual
libel accusations. From a purely legal standpoint, if even
one instance of libel can be proven the defendant is guilty.
So they found at least one instance. Greenwald received a
suspended sentence of one year imprisonment and a monetary
fine of 200 liras. (Greenwald continued his leaflet campaign
in spite of the suspended sentence, but nobody sought to try
him again.)
The partial exoneration, which acknowledged the facts but
interpreted them differently, satisfied the heads of the
Yishuv. Ma'ariv's Shalom Rosenfeld wrote, "This is the
day Kasztner has been waiting for, and he got it. This is the
day on which not only did the High Court judge reverse . . .
the conclusions of the Court President . . . Halevi, but he
also totally cleared Dr. Kasztner's name and crowned him with
the garlands of dedicated public activism for the rescue of
his community . . . all that was dark and gloomy in the lower
court decision turned to white and pure in the higher court
decision . . . "
The Aftermath
Here the legal proceedings came to an end, but the historical
and moral deliberations had just begun. Over the years since
the trial and the assassination, several studies and books on
the subject have been published. Most of them justify
Kasztner's actions in one way or another or seek to judge him
in the historical context.
The more information on the Holocaust becomes available the
harder it becomes to judge the people who lived through it
from our own perspective.
While Kasztner may not have been guilty of everything
Greenwald accused him, neither was he as white as snow.
Clearly the feeling of power misled him; clearly he benefited
from the preferential treatment he was given by the Nazis;
clearly he put his own relatives first. And it was even
clearer that the Zionist leadership did not do enough to
alert the world and publicize what was taking place in the
concentration camps and in the gas chambers. This is what
most bothers the historians, the majority of whom belong to
the Leftist camp.
Dov Dinur, for example, claims the Kasztner trial was held at
a time when the Yishuv was steeped in self- reflection. He
asserts that the country felt relieved to have found the
guilty party--a Jewish leader by the name of Kasztner. "Many
years had to go by," writes Dinur, "until the Jewish state
learned that timing, pressure and a lack of alternatives give
rise to special modes of leadership that cannot be judged
according to general criteria."
In conclusion he writes, "Already now it is clear that many
of us will have to go up to his grave to ask forgiveness, in
the ancient Jewish tradition passed down through the
generations." Yechiam Weitz entitled his book, The Man Who
was Murdered Twice.
The Israeli public, however, which has since been witness to
the Eichmann Trial (a case that was certainly impelled by the
Kasztner Trial), did not entirely exonerate him. Opinions are
still split.
Yisrael Kasztner's granddaughter wrote, "Shmuel Tamir, the
man who built his career as an attorney on the blood of my
grandfather, Yisrael Kasztner, had the honor of having a
street named after him. This honor has been denied to my
grandfather . . . The State of Israel accused Greenwald of
libel, but through Tamir's initiative and leadership the
deliberations turned into the Kasztner Trial . . . Yisrael
Kasztner's family members tried and are still trying to have
a street named after him. We have not succeeded . . . "
Perhaps this is for the best. Perhaps it is better not to
revive a debate drenched in Jewish blood.
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