Rezso Kasztner: The Daring Rescue of Hungarian Jews: A Survivor's Account

Razsö Kasztner is the story of the man responsible for saving Bela Zsolt, and the author himself. Combining history with memoir, in what is ultimately a remarkably honest analysis of morality and survival, Ladislaus Löb examines the life and actions of a man of extraordinary contradictions.

Two months after his eleventh birthday, on July 9, 1944, the gates of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp closed behind Ladislaus Löb. Five months later, with the Second World War still raging, he crossed the border into Switzerland, cold and hungry, but alive and safe. He was not alone, but part of a group of some 1,670 Jewish men, women and children from Hungary, who had been rescued from the Nazis as a result of a deal made by a man called Rezsö Kasztner — himself a Hungarian Jew — with Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of the Holocaust.

Twelve years and a miscarriage of justice later, Kasztner was murdered by an extremist Jewish gang in Israel. To this day, he remains a highly controversial figure, regarded by some as a traitor and by many others as a hero.

Combining history with memoir, Rezsö Kasztner examines the life and actions of a man of extraordinary contradictions. It is a remarkably honest analysis of morality and survival.

Ladislaus Löb was born in Transylvania. He is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Sussex.