Killing Kasztner
This film deals with the true story of Rezso Kasztner 50 years after his assassination in Tel Aviv, Israel. Hero or collaborator?, you decide (or can you?) as you watch this important documentary by Galen Ross, who spent eight years filming it.
Kasztner was a leader of a Hungarian Jewish aid and rescue committee in World War II that helped Jewish refugees escape to Hungary from Nazi-occupied Europe. However, Jews were not safe in Hungary after Hitler invaded that country in March, 1944, when the Nazis began sending them to Auschwitz. That is when Kasztner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann to save more that 1600 Jews who, through Kasztner’s efforts, were put on a special train that took them to safety in Switzerland. He was also credited with saving many more lives when he rode in a limousine with an SS Colonel to stop the killings in Theriesenstadt and Mauthausen death camps. A hero then, but later after the war and after he moved to Tel Aviv, he was accused of being a traitor, a collaborator with the Nazis and put on trial as a “Man who sold his soul to the devil.” In 1957, he was assassinated by a gunman, Ze’ev Eckstein, one of three men convicted of the conspiracy to murder Kasztner. A court posthumously overturned the verdict against Kasztner, but even so, Mr Eckstein, who was sentenced to life in prison for his murder, was released after serving only seven years!
In the film, Ross spends time with family members of Kasztner and a number of the men and women who survived the Holocaust through his endeavors. It may seem obvious to anyone watching the film as to where her feelings lie. After seeing the film, I tend to follow her feelings.
Killing Kasztner will continue playing in theaters in Houston, Dallas and Santa Fe.