Kasztner's Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust - Softcover

Porter, Anna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802717411 ISBN 13: 9780802717412

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2009

Synopsis

In March, 1944, the German army marched into Hungary, followed soon after by Adolf Eichmann and his SS Sondercommando. His single goal was to eliminate the entire Jewish population of the country. Rezso Kasztner-a lawyer and Zionist activist-stood in his way. In meeting after meeting with Eichman and other Nazis, he sought common ground, exploiting their twin weaknesses of greed and fear, in the process saving thousands of lives. Kasztner's Train-a reference to the famous train ride to freedom he organized-tells this dramatic story for the first time, including a shocking postscript. After the war, Kasztner emigrated to Israel, where in 1956 he was stunningly convicted of collaborating with the Nazis more than a decade before. As he awaited the appeal that would ultimately exonerate him, he was murdered by right-wing activists in Tel Aviv on March 4, 1957.

Hungarian by birth, Anna Porter lived through the Hungarian Revolution as a child, and brings to this book a determination and passion to tell the full story of one of the heroes of the 20th century. Kasztner's Train is based on interviews with survivors who were on the train, and with family members of other survivors, as well as with descendants of those murdered in concentration camps.

About this title

About the Author

Anna Porter was born in Hungary and personally experienced the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. A celebrated former publisher in Toronto, she is the author of five previous books published only in Canada, including The Storyteller, a memoir of her family through seven centuries of Hungarian history. She lives in Toronto.

From Publishers Weekly

Porter (The Storyteller) seeks to rehabilitate the reputation of Rezso Kasztner. This Hungarian Jew was branded a Nazi collaborator by Academy Award–winning screenwriter Ben Hecht in his 1961 book, Perfidy. But more recently Kasztner has been exonerated by Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem. After 400,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in 1944, Kasztner, a point man in a goods-for-blood deal with Nazi henchman Adolf Eichmann, arranged for a train to carry 1,684 Jews from Hungary to Switzerland, wealthy Jews paying $1,500 per person while the poor paid nothing. For $100 a head, Eichmann kept an additional 20,000 Jews alive in Austrian labor camps. After the war Kasztner relocated to Israel, where in 1952 he was accused of being a Nazi collaborator who saved a privileged few at the expense of thousands of others. Kasztner sued for malicious libel and lost on most counts; the trial made international headlines; and Kasztner was assassinated in 1957 by right-wing extremists. Although a well-researched counterbalance to Hecht's account, Porter's defense may swing too much in favor of Kasztner, given that most of the participants are deceased and much of the evidence is anecdotal. Readers, however, will welcome the opportunity to debate the ever-relevant moral issues of doing business with the enemy. Illus. 16 pages of b&w illus., 3 maps. (Mar.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0802717411
• ISBN 13: 9780802717412
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464