Rudolf Kasztner> August 21, 1944
12 Rudolf Kasztner
On the bridge over the Rhine: Rudolf Kasztner negotiating with the SS
Lustenau - St. Margrethen, August 21, 1944
On the Rhine bridge across the border between Lustenau and St. Margrethen, Rudolf Kasztner, the representative of the Hungarian Aid and Rescue Committee, Va’adat Ha-ezrah Ve-ha-hatzalah, based in Budapest, and Saly Mayer, the former president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, negotiate with the SS representative in charge of economic affairs in Hungary, Kurt Becher. Beforehand, Becher had participated in the Soviet Union in the so-called “fight against partisans” and hence in the murder of 14,000 Jews. In view of the approaching German defeat, the Aid and Rescue Committee has been engaged for months in a desperate poker for the life of the Hungarian Jews. In the spring of 1944, most Jews from the Hungarian provinces are deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Yet thousands of Jews in Budapest are still alive. Moreover, the SS has taken 1,684 Jews to Bergen-Belsen as pawns or, in the words of Adolf Eichmann, to “put them on ice,” and is now trying to barter these human lives away. Kasztner and Mayer pretend to be able to procure industrial goods and raw materials from the USA, while Becher demands the delivery of 10,000 trucks. Kasztner and Mayer are not authorized by the Americans in this respect and they do not know whether Becher is just playing them or possibly already trying to improve the situation for him and other high-ranking SS members for the time after a lost war. Soon thereafter, 318 individuals are released via St. Margrethen to Switzerland.
These talks continued until well into November 1944. There was mention of individual ransom money and of transfers to Swiss accounts. On December 7, 1,368 Jewish concentration camp inmates from Bergen-Belsen arrived in St. Margrethen.
Kurt Becher was spared prosecution after the war and established successful trading firms in Bremen as well as in Hungary. In 1950, he wrote to Saly Mayer’s widow, shortly after the latter’s death, a “letter of condolence” and made demands:
“Mr. Mayer told me that he had deposited in a safe the sum of SFr. 20,000 from the funds of the Joint for the benefit of my four children … in recognition of our humanitarian work at the time.” [1]
Jeanne Mayer did not reply to this.
[1] Hanna Zweig-Strauss, Saly Mayer (1882-1950): ein Retter jüdischen Lebens während des Holocaust. Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2007, p. 228 and 355.
12 Rudolf Kasztner
On the bridge over the Rhine: Rudolf Kasztner negotiating with the SS
Lustenau - St. Margrethen, August 21, 1944
On the Rhine bridge across the border between Lustenau and St. Margrethen, Rudolf Kasztner, the representative of the Hungarian Aid and Rescue Committee, Va’adat Ha-ezrah Ve-ha-hatzalah, based in Budapest, and Saly Mayer, the former president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, negotiate with the SS representative in charge of economic affairs in Hungary, Kurt Becher. Beforehand, Becher had participated in the Soviet Union in the so-called “fight against partisans” and hence in the murder of 14,000 Jews. In view of the approaching German defeat, the Aid and Rescue Committee has been engaged for months in a desperate poker for the life of the Hungarian Jews. In the spring of 1944, most Jews from the Hungarian provinces are deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Yet thousands of Jews in Budapest are still alive. Moreover, the SS has taken 1,684 Jews to Bergen-Belsen as pawns or, in the words of Adolf Eichmann, to “put them on ice,” and is now trying to barter these human lives away. Kasztner and Mayer pretend to be able to procure industrial goods and raw materials from the USA, while Becher demands the delivery of 10,000 trucks. Kasztner and Mayer are not authorized by the Americans in this respect and they do not know whether Becher is just playing them or possibly already trying to improve the situation for him and other high-ranking SS members for the time after a lost war. Soon thereafter, 318 individuals are released via St. Margrethen to Switzerland.
These talks continued until well into November 1944. There was mention of individual ransom money and of transfers to Swiss accounts. On December 7, 1,368 Jewish concentration camp inmates from Bergen-Belsen arrived in St. Margrethen.
Kurt Becher was spared prosecution after the war and established successful trading firms in Bremen as well as in Hungary. In 1950, he wrote to Saly Mayer’s widow, shortly after the latter’s death, a “letter of condolence” and made demands:
“Mr. Mayer told me that he had deposited in a safe the sum of SFr. 20,000 from the funds of the Joint for the benefit of my four children … in recognition of our humanitarian work at the time.” [1]
Jeanne Mayer did not reply to this.
[1] Hanna Zweig-Strauss, Saly Mayer (1882-1950): ein Retter jüdischen Lebens während des Holocaust. Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2007, p. 228 and 355.