Kastner train

The Kastner train, or Kastner transport, refers to a trainload of 1,684 Jews who escaped from Nazi-controlled Hungary in 1944. The train was named after Rudolf Kastner, a Hungarian Jewish leader who was a major player in the negotiations that led to the rescue.

In April 1944, for reasons that are still disputed, Nazi officials under the direction of SS officer Adolf Eichmann offered to sell the Zionist Aid and Rescue Committee (Vaada), of which Kastner was the de facto leader, exit visas for 600 Jews who held Palestinian immigration certificates, in exchange for 6.5 million pengö (RM 4,000,000 or $1,600,000).

The negotiations between the SS and the Vaada were expanded to include more Jews, and the Vaada compiled a list of ten categories of Jews they wanted to rescue, a list that included Orthodox Jews, Zionists, prominent Jews, orphans, refugees, Revisionists, and "paying persons." The list also controversially included 388 people from Kastner's home town of Cluj. Although Kastner was later criticized for putting his own family on the train, Hansi Brand, a member of the Vaada, testified at Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem in 1961 that Kastner had included his family to reassure the other passengers that the train was safe, and was not destined, as they feared, for Auschwitz.

Kastner, who became a government minister in Israel, was assassinated there in March 1957 following allegations that he had collaborated with the Nazis in connection with his rescue work.

Rescue
On June 30, a train with 1,684 (or 1,685) Jews left Budapest. Three suitcases of cash, jewels, gold, and shares of stock, amounting to about $1000 per person, were paid to SS officer Kurt Becher in ransom.

Despite Eichmann's promise that the train would go directly to a neutral country, it went to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where the Jews were held in a special section. Several hundred of them were sent to Switzerland in August and the remainder in December. Among those who escaped by this route was Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the rebbe of Satmar, and his whole court, leaders of Orthodox and Neolog communities, members of Zionist youth movements, Polish and Slovak refugees, and many others. Controversially, Kastner included a contingent of 388 people, including his own extended family and friends, from his home town of Cluj.

Kastner trial
The transport played a major role in the Kastner trial in Israel in 1954, in which the government of Israel sued Malchiel Gruenwald, a hotelier, an amateur journalist and stamp collector, for libel after he self-published a pamphlet charging Kastner, by then an Israeli government minister, with collaboration. A major detail of Greenwald's allegations was that Kastner had agreed to the rescue in return for agreeing to keep silent on the fate of the mass of Hungarian Jews who were being transported to Auschwitz. This accusation was accepted by the court, leading Judge Halevy to declare that Kastner had "sold his soul to the devil." In 1958, most of the ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel, but not before Kastner had been assassinated. The issue remains the subject of heated debate.