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Rudolph Kasztner, a Transylvanian journalist and lawyer, arrived in Budapest in late 1941, alarmed at the news of the horrors that were descending on Jews in Poland under Nazi rule. He soon became a leader of Hungary’s small Zionist movement and plunged into rescue and relief work on behalf of Polish and other Jews escaping Nazi persecution in Hungary. He partnered with Joel and Hansi Brand, a resourceful Zionist couple involved in the same relief work. By late 1942, Kasztner and the Brands were convinced that the Germans would occupy Hungary and institute the same destruction of Hungary’s Jews that was decimating Polish Jewry. In contrast, those of the Hungarian Jewish leadership refused to believe they were in danger as long as Admiral
Horthy, the Regent, was still in control. Nevertheless, an Aid and Rescue Committee was established, with Kasztner as its head, giving him authority to negotiate on behalf of Hungarian Jewry.
Ernie Michel was a 15-year-old from Mannheim, Germany who remembers the Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"), the night of November 9, 1938, very well. On that night, the German government, the Nazis (short for National Socialists) sanctioned the first official acts of discrimination against the Jewish people, and burned their synagogues, looted their shops and homes, breaking windows everywhere.
Ernie was in a local suburb that night and watched the local synagogue burn to ash as everyone stood and watched. That night, he barely escaped being arrested by the Gestapo and grabbed the first train back to Mannheim to find that his father, a tobacconist whose shop was confiscated by the Nazis, was arrested. Panic stricken, Ernie’s mother went to find him, and he was released the next day.
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Above: The Star of David rises over the cemetery in front of the walls of the Terezin (or Theresienstadt) prison. The flowers are planted at every grave marker.
Ernie Michel was a 15-year-old from Mannheim, Germany who remembers the Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"), the night of November 9, 1938, very well. On that night, the German government, the Nazis (short for National Socialists) sanctioned the first official acts of discrimination against the Jewish people, and burned their synagogues, looted their shops and homes, breaking windows everywhere.
Ernie was in a local suburb that night and watched the local synagogue burn to ash as everyone stood and watched. That night, he barely escaped being arrested by the Gestapo and grabbed the first train back to Mannheim to find that his father, a tobacconist whose shop was confiscated by the Nazis, was arrested. Panic stricken, Ernie’s mother went to find him, and he was released the next day.
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Above: The Star of David rises over the cemetery in front of the walls of the Terezin (or Theresienstadt) prison. The flowers are planted at every grave marker.
Photo Credits: Searagen/BigStockPhoto (right); Courtesy of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum (right); Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration,
College Park/USHMM (background image)