JUDENRAT Collaboration Kasztner Hecht

Perfidy, by Ben Hecht. 2012

German Guilt Diffusion and Rudolf Kasztner’s Jewish-Nazi Collaboration

This work indicts both non-Jewish and especially Jewish leaders (e. g. Yitzhak Gruenbaum: p. 50, 258) for having failed to have alleviated the Holocaust.

THE CONVENIENT “SELF-HATING JEW” ACCUSATION AGAINST THE AUTHOR

Far from being some sort of superficial or self-hating Jew, Hecht identifies with his Jewishness and is proud of it. (p. v). He also praises the Israelis for their achievements in constructing a nation. (pp. 7-8).

GERMAN GUILT DIFFUSION IN ACTION: BOUGHT FROM THE JEWS

Hecht identifies the main reason for the Israelis’ soft-peddling of German guilt: “The Jewish Prime Minister is probably putting over a deal with the Germans. Something helpful for Israel’s economy. He has already put over several neat ones, recently a large sale of Israel manufactured submachine guns for to the German army.” (p. 46).

RUDOLF KASZTNER GUILTY OF COLLABORATION WITH THE NAZIS: EXCULPATIONS DEBUNKED

Defenders of Hungarian Zionist Jew Rudolf Kastner (Kasztner) argue that his obtaining the release of nearly 1,700 Hungarian Jews, in return for being deliberately silently deceptive (p. 178, pp. 260-261) on the impending extermination of the remaining half-million, was justified because the latter were all doomed anyway. Hecht strongly disagrees with this exculpation, and considers Kastner a worse Nazi collaborator than Petain or Quisling. (p. 172; The locals also consider him a war criminal: p. 173).

Hecht points to the fact that there was only a thin contingent of Germans and Hungarian collaborators guarding the Jews (p. 95), and many Jews could have overpowered or evaded these guards, and avoided the Auschwitz-bound trains, had they been warned. In Kluj, Kastner’s home town, for example, 20,000 Jews were guarded by a handful of armed Germans. (p. 102). What’s more, the Hungarian Jews were planning armed resistance (p. 98), and the Germans could not afford a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising because of their rapidly-deteriorating military situation, as well as the fact that there were many foreign eyewitnesses in Budapest.

For a more recent work on this subject, see KASZTNER’S CRIME, by Bogdanor [and read my review].

THE IMPENDING JEWS FOR TRUCKS DEAL CANNOT BE SUMMARILY DISMISSED

Those who suggest that the trucks-for-Jews deal (involving Joel Brand and Adolf Eichmann, and eventuating the release of up to a million Jews in exchange for thousands of trucks, etc.), was a hoax, point to the fact that the mass extermination of Jews at Auschwitz was not halted for even one day. What they forget is the fact that, as a precondition for halting the gassings and releasing 100,000 Jews initially as a good-faith measure (pp. 220-221, 229-231), Brand had to return after discussing the matter with Allied and Jewish officials. He was not allowed to do so!