Kasztner train
커스트네르 열차
The train that left Budapest on 30 June 1944 under a ransom deal Rezső Kasztner negotiated with Eichmann. Over 1,600 Jews reached Switzerland in August and December by way of Bergen-Belsen.
In depth
The train consisted of 35 cattle wagons and was organised during the deportations of May–July 1944, when 437,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to Auschwitz. Its passengers were chosen from a wide range of social classes and included around 273 children, many of them orphaned. The wealthiest 150 passengers paid $1,500 each to cover their own and the others’ escape, and gold, diamonds and cash were handed to the SS officer Kurt Becher. The train was diverted to Bergen-Belsen, where the passengers were held for weeks and in some cases months.
The deal was deeply controversial. Kasztner was criticised for knowing of the gassings at Auschwitz without alerting the wider community, and for including his family and 388 people from his home town of Kolozsvár. In a 1955 Israeli libel trial the judge ruled that he had “sold his soul to the devil”; after his assassination in March 1957 the Supreme Court overturned most of the ruling.