Kastner Train - The Passengers

The Passengers

The passengers were chosen by a committee that included Kastner, Ottó Komoly, and Hansi Brand from the Aid and Rescue Committee, as well as Zsigmond Leb, a former president of the Orthodox community in Cluj. Israeli legal scholar Asher Maoz writes that Kastner told the Zionist Congress after the war, in a report he wrote about the actions of the Aid and Rescue Committee, that he saw the train as a "Noah's ark," because it contained a cross-section of the Jewish community, and in particular people who had worked in public service.

According to Jeno Kölb, a passenger who kept a diary, there were 972 female and 712 male passengers in all; the oldest was 85, the youngest was born on the train. Ladislaus Löb, another passenger (see right), writes that the exact number on board when the train left Budapest remains uncertain, because in the early stages of the journey several passengers disembarked, fearing that the train would end up in Auschwitz, while others took their places. Several women threw their young children on board at the last minute. What is known is that 1,684 passengers were registered when the train (unexpectedly) reached the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Hannover on 9 July.

According to Löb, the passengers included 199 Zionists from Transylvania and 230 from Budapest, and 126 Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews, among them 40 rabbis; one of the rabbis was Joel Teitelbaum, the Satmar rebbe. There were scholars, artists, housewives, peasants, farmers, industrialists and bankers, journalists, teachers and nurses. The writer Béla Zsolt was on board, as was the psychiatrist Leopold Szondi, the opera singer Dezső Ernster, the artist István Irsai, and Peter Munk, who became a businessman in Canada. There were also 388 people from Kastner's home town of Cluj, including family members. His mother, Helen Kastner, was given a place, as was his brother Ernő, his pregnant wife Bogyó (she gave birth to a daughter, Zsuzsi, in Switzerland in December 1944), along with her father József Fischer, and Bogyó's other relatives. Erno Szilagyi of the Aid and Rescue Committee was on board, as were Joel Brand's mother, sister, and niece Margit, and the daughters of Ottó Komoly and Samuel Stern.

Porter writes that each passenger was allowed to bring two changes of clothing, six sets of underwear, and food for 10 days. 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.