Kasztner’s Train
Author: Anna Porter

Published by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., Vancouver BC, Canada
438 pages  $37.95

Every once in a very long while there comes a book that changes or challenges your understanding of events that you have previously learned. Kasztner’s Train is such a work. It tells the story of an average man who through guile, subterfuge and sheer tenacity managed to arrange with senior SS officials to have trains take hundreds of Hungarian Jews to a neutral country. Originally the SS requested that the Jewish Agency provide the Germans with 10,000 trucks. Through bravado and bluff, Kasztner managed to come to a more achievable solution and the train loads of Jews were allowed to proceed to their neutral destinations. It is also the story of the inability of the various Jewish agencies to act in concert with one another. Despite an awareness of the Nazi “Final Solution” groups squabbled with one another over minor issues and who should lead.  Kasztner’s genius is his ability to stir around these warring groups to gain enough funds to permit the saving of Hungarian Jews and others. Sadly, his reward for his courageous action is his assassination in Tel Aviv at the hands of a Jew who subscribes to the theory that Kasztner “collaborated” with the Nazis. It is only after extensive litigation is Kasztner and his actions fully exonerated, but by then his family had been reduced to a life of poverty and hardship.  

It is a story that has not surfaced in any great detail in any of the major works on the Holocaust that I have read. Porter’s story challenges the myths that all Jews were disorganized and unable to take action against the Nazi’s “purification” program and the myth that the members of the SS were only motivated by Nazi ideology. What we see in Porter’s work is a proactive defence by some members of the Jewish Community to rescue as many as they could and their dealings with a less than sterling characters of the SS who were bent on making personal fortunes from corrupt practices and thuggery. 

Anna Porter’s research is impressive. She maintains an objective view of her story and she neither moralizes nor chastises the principal actors for their actions or their inactions. The author obviously crafts her text by the dictum that a fact is a fact once it has been verified, nothing more, and nothing less.  She is neither emotive nor philosophical but, rather, an interested observer who recounts the actions of one brave man and his friends in a story that is largely unknown amongst World War II historians.

Her impressive research and extensive detail is also her only minor failing in the telling of her story.  The detail on every page is so rich that it sometimes overwhelms the story and readers may have difficulty keeping track of many of the players in this complex drama. Overall, her style is a delight to read.  It is tightly crafted, cogent and maintains an excellent pace throughout.

It is a book that no serious scholar of World War II history or the Holocaust should be without. When considering what to put on your book purchase list for the year this book should be at the top.
 

Book Review by Major (ret) Robert Day