Rudolf Kastner

Rudolf Kastner
In the early 1950s
Born	1906 Kolozsvár, Austria-Hungary
Died	15 March 1957 Tel Aviv, Israel
Resting place	Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery
Other names	Rezső Kasztner, Israel or Yisrael Kasztner.
Education	Law degree
Occupation	Lawyer, journalist with Új Kelet in Budapest, civil servant in Israel
Known for	Saving 1,684 Jews on the Kastner train, who were otherwise destined for Auschwitz
Political party	Mapai
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth, née Fischer
Children	Zsuzsi
Parent(s)	Yitzhak and Helen Kastner

Rudolf Israel Kastner, also known as Rezső Kasztner (1906 – 15 March 1957), was a Jewish-Hungarian journalist and lawyer who became known for having helped Jews escape from occupied Europe during the Holocaust. He was assassinated in 1957 after an Israeli court accused him of having collaborated with the Nazis.

Kastner was one of the leaders of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee (Va'adat Ezrah Vehatzalah, or Vaada), which smuggled Jewish refugees into Hungary during World War II, then helped them escape from Hungary when in March 1944 the Nazis invaded that country too. Between May and July 1944, Hungary's Jews were deported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz at the rate of 12,000 people a day. Kastner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS officer, to allow 1,684 Jews to leave instead for Switzerland on what became known as the Kastner train, in exchange for money, gold and diamonds.

Kastner moved to Israel after the war, becoming a spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1952. In 1953 he was accused of having been a Nazi collaborator in a pamphlet self-published by Malchiel Gruenwald, a freelance writer. The allegation stemmed from his relationship with Eichmann and another SS officer, Kurt Becher, and from his having given positive character references after the war for Becher and two other SS officers, thus allowing Becher to escape prosecution for war crimes. The Israeli government sued Gruenwald for libel on Kastner's behalf, resulting in a trial that lasted 18 months, and a ruling in 1955 that Kastner had, in the words of Judge Benjamin Halevy, "sold his soul to the devil". By saving the Jews on the Kastner train, while failing to warn others that their "resettlement" was in fact deportation to the gas chambers, Kastner had sacrificed the mass of Jewry for a chosen few, the judge said. The verdict triggered the fall of the Israeli Cabinet.

Kastner resigned his government position and became a virtual recluse, telling reporters he was living with a loneliness "blacker than night, darker than hell". His wife fell into a depression that left her unable to get out of bed, while his daughter's schoolmates threw stones at her in the street. Kastner was shot on 3 March 1957 by Zeev Eckstein, who was part of a three-man squad from a group of veterans from the pre-state right-wing militia Lehi led by Yosef Menkes and Yaakov Heruti, and died of his injuries twelve days later. The Supreme Court of Israel overturned most of the judgment against Kastner in January 1958, stating in a 4–1 decision that the lower court had "erred seriously".