Perfidy

In 1952 Malchiel Greenwald, an elderly Hungarian-born hotel keeper in Jerusalem, mimeographed a three-page pamphlet accusing Rudolf Kastner (Kasztner), a prominent official of Israel's ruling party, of collaborating with the Nazis during the Holocaust in Hungary. The government of Israel charged Greenwald with criminal libel. What followed became one of the most explosive trials in the country's history.

Defended by the young lawyer Shmuel Tamir, Greenwald turned the case around. The courtroom heard how Kastner, head of the Jewish rescue committee in Budapest, had negotiated with Adolf Eichmann and SS officer Kurt Becher. A trainload of prominent Jews was saved while hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, many without warning of what awaited them. After the war, Kastner testified on Becher's behalf and helped him escape trial at Nuremberg. Judge Benjamin Halevi's verdict, that Kastner had "sold his soul to the German Satan," brought down Prime Minister Moshe Sharett's government. Kastner was assassinated in Tel Aviv before Israel's Supreme Court heard the appeal.

Ben Hecht, the celebrated screenwriter, journalist and Zionist activist, tells the story from the trial record, and he makes no claim to be neutral. Perfidy is a fierce indictment of the Jewish Agency and Mapai leadership of David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Sharett. Hecht charges that they failed Europe's Jews during the Holocaust, sided with the British against the Irgun, and then tried to bury the truth in the new State of Israel. Along the way he recounts Joel Brand's doomed "blood for trucks" mission, the Altalena affair, and the courage of the ordinary people who refused to stay silent.

First published in 1961 and long controversial, Perfidy remains essential reading on the Kastner affair, the destruction of Hungarian Jewry, and the moral questions that shadowed Israel's founding. This edition includes an introduction by David Morrison summarizing the trial, the appeal and their political aftermath.