Dressed in German and Hungarian army uniforms, they rescued people from the hands of Arrow Cross gangs, brought provisions to the children’s homes and took an active part in supplying the Budapest ghetto with food. The most sobering case of incredulity verging on suicide is described by Asher Arany, who in the latter period of deportations secretly approached Jews in temporarily unguarded wagons on the Polish border, prising open the doors and described what awaited them, offering false documents, food and money, and escape to the woods. Not one took up the chance, and some even threatened to call the guards.My own mother found herself among a group of 200 women rounded up by four Arrow Cross men and marched towards a collection camp. When she made a run for it, the young recruits took shots at her but missed. The ensuing confusion was the perfect opportunity for some or even most of the others to try and do likewise – to run for it – but instead they stayed put and awaited their fate. It is easy to ridicule the lack of response even by those who did believe the horrific information, in the light of our knowledge today of the six million who perished. In 1944, the attitude of “where there’s life, there’s hope” was reinforced by the murderous brutality of the vast array of Hungarian Nazis. Survivors even testified that, when it came to the crunch, it was preferable to board the deportation trains than to face instant demise or cruelty. In those days the notion of ‘fight and die’ simply did not occur. As surprising as this may seem, additional information about gas chambers was immaterial. Everybody in my family and neighborhood knew that deportation equaled certain death.The position of the JRC was clear: there was no hope of receiving assistance from abroad or from domestic sources. Eichmann’s Blood for Goods deal offered the release of one million Jews to neutral territory in exchange for 10,000 trucks and other goods. The Committee bluffed and pretended to accept this, knowing full well that whatever international connections they could muster, they would never be able to persuade the Allied leadership to bring forth the goods. It was never more than a highstake poker game to gain time, knowing that after the Normandy landing, the American and British forces from the west and Russians from the east were getting within a few hundred kilometers. Thus while Brand (and later Kasztner) negotiated with the Germans and achieved the release of one trainload of Jews as a test of the scheme, this resulted in around 1,700 being rescued on the “Kasztner Train” and another 20,000 being diverted from Auschwitz to an ordinary labor camp where they survived.Meanwhile, Komoly and other committee members used their contacts with neutral embassies, the Red Cross and, towards the end, with the Hungarian government’s more enlightened members to set up safe houses, ease the misery of starving and other cruelties, keeping tens of thousands out of the ghetto, in particular some 5,000-6,000 orphaned children. Komoly was murdered by the Arrow Cross just before liberation.After the war there was a formal attempt to hold members of the Jewish Council to account. In Israel, in 1954, Kasztner brought a case for libel after being accused of collaboration. The case was turned against him by a skilled attorney, and the judge declared that Kasztner had “sold his soul to the devil.” Kasztner was subsequently murdered by a right-wing extremist before he could hear the Supreme Court reversing that judgement.The British Bomber Command received undeserved condemnation after the war, but 70 years later the government saw fit to raise a memorial to them. Is it not time that Israel – after commemorating Otto Komoly and saluting Kasztner in the Knesset last April – gives proper recognition to all the Zionist heroes at Yad Vashem or elsewhere?
The writer was born in Budapest in 1936, left in 1956 and now lives in England, but visits Hungary regularly to keep in touch with his surviving relatives.