Joel Brand - Aftermath

Aftermath

In Budapest, the Vaada waited anxiously for Brand's return. On 27 May, Hansi Brand was arrested and beaten by the Hungarian Arrow Cross, though she testified at Eichmann's trial that she withstood it and gave them no information. Hilberg writes that the Vaada did not expect the Allies would actually supply goods to Eichmann, but it hoped for a gesture that would allow protracted negotiations with the Nazis to begin while the Jews waited for the arrival of the Red Army.

Brand's failure to return to Budapest meant the Vaada was thrown back on its own resources, bitter about the lack of help from the outside world, and in particular from Jews living in safe countries. Bauer argues that their mistake was to adopt the almost anti-Semitic belief in unlimited Jewish power. The committee believed that Jewish leaders could move freely during the war and could persuade the Allies to do whatever needed to be done to save the Jews of Hungary. They had similar trust in the goodwill and power of the Allies, but the latter were gearing up for the invasion of Normandy just as Brand set out on his mission, and "t that crucial moment", writes Bauer, "to antagonize the Soviets because of some hare-brained Gestapo plan to ransom Jews was totally out of the question."

Rudolf Kastner wrote that the Vaada had no choice but to believe in the possibility of rescue. Of Jewish communities living in countries unaffected by the Holocaust, he wrote: "They were outside, we were inside. They moralized, we feared death. They had sympathy for us and believed themselves to be powerless; we wanted to live and believed rescue had to be possible."

Brand was a bitter man when he was finally released by the British. He joined the Lehi (Stern Gang), who were fighting to remove the British from Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The situation created a rift between him and his wife, who for many years wondered what the truth was behind her husband's failure to return in time. Bauer concludes that, despite the failure of the mission, Brand was an extremely courageous man who had passionately wanted to help the Jewish people, yet whose life was thereafter plagued by the suspicions of family and friends. Brand offered testimony in Israel and Germany about the "blood for goods" proposal during several trials, including that of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961, which saw Eichmann executed, and of Eichmann's assistant, Hermann Krumey, in Frankfurt in 1964. Ronald Florence writes that he seemed to live only to set the historical record straight. He died in 1964 of liver disease brought on by alcoholism, reportedly a broken man.