All posts tagged as: yechiam weitz
Killing Kasztner
Limited screenings have just been announced for a new/controversial Israeli film called Killing Kasztner. The film asks the question of hero or traitor. Rezso Kasztner, was a Jewish-Hungarian journalist and lawyer who became known for helping Jews escape Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust. Kasztner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS officer, to allow 1,685 of them to leave instead for Switzerland on what became known as the Kastner train, in exchange for money, gold, and diamonds. Israeli historian Yechiam Weitz writes that, in so doing, “with his own two hands Kasztner saved more Jews than any Jew before him or since.”
Yet Kasztner was condemned as a traitor in his adopted country of Israel; accused as a collaborator in a trial and verdict that divided a nation and forever stamped him as the “man who sold his soul to the devil.” He was ultimately assassinated by Jewish right wing extremists in Tel Aviv in 1957.
Director Gaylen Ross investigates this tale of murder, intrigue, and heroism through accounts of the inflammatory political trial, startling revelations after 50 years by Kasztners assassin, Zeev Eckstein, and a chilling meeting between the killer and Kasztners daughter, Zsuzsi.