Rudolf Kastner - The Libel Trial

The Libel Trial

Kastner moved to Israel after the war, and became active in the Mapai party. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the first and second elections, and became the spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1952.

His role in negotiating with the SS in order to save Jewish lives made headlines in 1953, when he was accused in a self-published pamphlet produced by Malchiel Gruenwald of collaborating with the Nazis, enabling the mass murder of Hungarian Jewry, partnership with Nazi officer Kurt Becher in theft of Jewish assets, and saving Becher from punishment after the war.

Gruenwald was sued for libel by the Israeli government on Kastner's behalf, resulting in a trial that lasted two years. His attorney, Shmuel Tamir, was a former Irgun member and supporter of the opposition Herut Party led by Menachem Begin. Tamir turned the libel case against his client into a political trial of Kastner and, by implication, the Labor Party. The mother of wartime heroine Hannah Szenes had also accused Kastner of betraying her daughter to her death and spoke out against him during the trial.

In his ruling, Judge Benjamin Halevi (later also a Herut member of the Knesset) acquitted Gruenwald of libel on the first, second and fourth counts. He wrote:

The temptation was great. Kastner was given the actual possibility of rescuing, for the time being, 600 souls from the imminent holocaust, with some chance of somewhat increasing their numbers by payment or further negotiations. Not just any 600 souls, but those he considered, for any reason, most prominent and suitable for rescue...

But timeo Danaos et dona ferentes (I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts). By accepting this present Kastner had sold his soul to the devil... The success of the rescue agreement depended until the last minute on the Nazi goodwill, and the last minute didn't arrive until long after the end of the extermination of the Jews in the provincial towns.

The Israeli government's decision to appeal on Kastner's behalf led to its collapse, as Prime Minister Moshe Sharett resigned when the General Zionists, a member of his coalition, refused to abstain from voting on a no-confidence motion filed by Herut and Maki. Kastner became a hate figure in Israel, and compared the verdict against him to the Dreyfus affair. He resigned his government position and started working for the Israeli Hungarian-language newspaper Új Kelet. He was assassinated in 1957 (see below).

The Supreme Court of Israel overturned most of the judgment against Kastner in 1958. The judges overturned the first count by 3–2 and the second count by 5–0. The longest majority decision was written by Judge Shimon Agranat, who said:

1. During that period Kastner was motivated by the sole motive of saving Hungary's Jews as a whole, that is, the largest possible number under the circumstances of time and place as he estimated could be saved.
2. This motive fitted the moral duty of rescue to which he was subordinated as a leader of the Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest.
3. Influenced by this motive he adopted the method of financial or economic negotiation with the Nazis.
4. Kastner's behavior stands the test of plausibility and reasonableness.
5. His behavior during his visit to Cluj (on May 3) and afterwards, both its active aspect (the plan of the "prominents") and its passive aspect (withholding the "Auschwitz news" and lack of encouragement for acts of resistance and escape on a large scale) – is in line with his loyalty to the method which he considered, at all important times, to be the only chance of rescue.
6. Therefore one cannot find a moral fault in his behavior, one cannot discover a causal connection between it and the easing of the concentration and deportation, one cannot see it as becoming a collaboration with the Nazis.

But Judge Moshe Silberg disagreed on historical and moral grounds:

We can sum up with these three facts:

1. That the Nazis didn't want to have a great revolt — "Second Warsaw" — nor small revolts, and their passion was to have the extermination machine working smoothly without resistance. This fact was known to Kastner from the very best source — Eichmann himself ...
2. That the most efficient means to paralyze the resistance wheel or the escape of a victim is to conceal from him the plot of the coming murder ...
3. That he, Kastner, in order to carry out the rescue plan for the few prominents, fulfilled knowingly and without good faith the said desire of the Nazis, thus expediting the work of exterminating the masses.

All five Supreme Court Judges upheld Judge Halevi's verdict on the "criminal and perjurious way" in which Kastner after the war had saved Nazi war criminal Becher. Judge Silberg summed up the Supreme Court finding on this point: "Greenwald has proven beyond any reasonable doubt this grave charge."