“I came to Israel to find a hero of the Holocaust but instead I found a murderer,” says Gaylen Ross the director of “Killing Kasztner.” “This story has remained a mystery for 60 years.” Ross narrates this award-winning documentary, revealing a plot so thick and twisted you will be on the edge of your seat. June 30th marked the anniversary of the 1944 Kasztner Train that ignited so much controversy, to this day it still remains shrouded in mystery. “We arrived here in Israel (then Palestine from Switzerland) and it was like we got our yellow star all over again”, said a survivor. Ross navigates the murky waters of intrigue dating back to World War 2 Germany with some survivors calling Kasztner a hero, others a traitor and his family simply asking why.
Mrs. Peska Friedman also a survivor of the Kasztner Train recalls her arrival in Palestine, “I was treated with contempt and called a ‘sabonit,’ Hebrew for a female cake of soap. Friedman who lives in Brooklyn, has grandchildren in Teaneck, and is the mother of JLBC editor, Jeanette Friedman.
If everything in wartime is expendable, did Kasztner trade tens of thousands of Jewish lives for a mere 1,700? Did he ‘sell his soul to the devil’ as he would later be accused of? The documentary released on June 30, the 70th anniversary of the day the train left Budapest, was first released in 2008. The expanded material explores the measure of a Jewish hero. Is death the necessary price of being a hero, or was there something more sinister at play that prevented this man from receiving recognition? Some of his family members were aboard that train while he so-called “danced” with the enemy to save more—while other members of his family were murdered in Auschwitz.
Because he raised funds to bribe the Nazis, many claimed he helped himself to the spoils while saving his wife and child from the gruesome fate of millions of others. Many Jews fought and died through resistance, like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising but Kasztner under the Jewish Rescue Committee aka the Va’ada, fought and lived with the power of words and money. And that, according to the film, is precisely what cost him his life.
The film shows how Reszo Kasztner suffered in the court of public opinion, never embraced by the Israeli people, and his unswerving loyalty to the government proved worthless. He was instead scorned by his own people—and those he rescued and found “refuge” in Israel were also scorned and treated with contempt.
“People spat at my father, they actually spat in his face,” recalled his daughter Zsuzsi, who grew up with this paradoxical concept of her father as a hero, hated by thousands. Her wounds are fresh. “He is murdered over and over with every accusation and with every omission of his sacrifice.”
A plaintiff in a simple libel suit, the tables turned mid-trial and Kasztner was forced to defend himself, in what became a 17-month trial, that bashed his character and critiqued his wartime actions. It turned the fledgling nation upside down. Stripped of any semblance of heroism, the ultimate “sentence” was carried out by a 22-year-old assassin who for the first time ever, reveals in this documentary the story and events that led to Kasztner’s murder.
Strong ties to the early government and Ben-Gurion’s party was of no help. Kasztner stood alone, unsupported by the government or Ben-Gurion himself. Damaging evidence, government silence and his own steadfast testimony led Kasztner, a spokesman for Mapai, Ben Gurion’s party, to a scathing court decision, public shame and the traitorous label of Nazi collaborator.
Real-life events dramatically unfold in this tell all documentary. The killer, Ze’ev Eckstein, who gunned Kasztner down, goes on the record revealing for the first time, shocking new details surrounding the chilling murder. Ross captures this compelling information, revealing a twisted powerful tale of espionage, lies, misinformation and murder. Said Friedman, who was with the Satmar Rebbe on the transport, “Everyone should see how many thousands of descendants there are from those he saved. He was never a Nazi collaborator, those who say those things about him never wanted to know the truth. When I came from Poland I tried to tell them, and they would tell me to shut up.”
Ross reports that when the Satmar Rebbe, Joel Teitelbaum, was asked to testify that Kasztner saved him, he said, “God saved me, not Kasztner.”
A gripping narrative from the mouth of the killer himself reveals untold secrets behind the tragic life and death events, double agents and hidden political agendas. Kasztner’s was the biggest group set free from Bergen-Belsen. He was the consummate negotiator with strong ties to Becher, Eichmann and others high in the Third Reich but how did he a Jew, survive the Nazis? This DVD is a living history that expertly explores these and many other hard ethical, moral and political questions.
‘Save a life it’s as if you’ve saved an entire world’, but the only world Kasztner knew was shame. Tried and convicted in the press by Uri Avnery’s newsmagazine, Haolam Hazeh, Kasztner was brought down publically in print , while the paper fueled a growing hatred that led to his cold blooded murder. Enemy of the state or slain hero? Watch the gripping tale and see for yourself. The truth will shock you.
To learn more about the movie and to order the DVD visit www.killingkasztner.com or go to www.amazon.com
By Elyse Hansford
