Rudolf Kasztner

Rudolf Kasztner 

Rudolf Kasztner, lawyer, journalist, Zionist activist. Kasztner’s name is associated with several rescue operations during the Holocaust. In 1942, he helped found the Relief and Rescue Committee (Budapesti Segélyező és Mentőbizottság or Va‘adat ‘Ezrah ve-Hatsalah) of Budapest, a clandestine group that smuggled Jews from Slovakia and Poland to Hungary. Kasztner brought copies of the so-called Auschwitz Protocols from Slovakia to Hungary at the end of April 1944. In the summer of 1944 Kasztner attempted a rescue operation that became known as the Kasztner Train. After Kasztner's immigration to Palestine in 1947, in 1952 Malkiel Grünwald accused Kasztner of collaborating with the Nazis. In March 1957 Kasztner was assassinated in Tel Aviv by three men associated with the Israeli extreme right.