Rezso Kasztner

Rezso Kasztner: The Daring Rescue of Hungarian Jews: A Survivor's Account (2009) is a semi-autobiographical novel related to the heroism of Jewish Hungarian lawyer and Zionist political figure Rezso Kasztner (anglicized Rudolf Kastner), by Ladislaus Lob, Professor Emeritus of German literature at the University of Sussex. Lob escaped near-certain death in the Nazi concentration camps on a train that Kasztner arranged, after an intense negotiation with the Nazi party’s chief Holocaust architect, Adolf Eichmann, to transport over 1,600 Jews out of Hungary. The train thereafter became known as the Kastner Train, symbolizing the great resilience and hope of the Jewish community even in a time of despair. It also became an example of the pathological evil of the Nazis, who only released the prisoners because it was a stepping stone in the execution of their larger plan to systematically exterminate the Jewish people and control the western world. The book follows an earlier biography, Dealing with Satan: Reszo Kasztner’s Daring Rescue Mission, for which Lob was awarded the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award.

Lob begins with a brief recollection of his childhood. He was born in Kolozsvar, one of the most populous cities in northern Transylvania, in 1933. His father, Izso, was a well-respected businessman. His mother, Jolan, lived only until he was nine, dying after a battle with tuberculosis. While Lob was growing up, his family lived in Marghita, a small township near Koloszvar, home to only 8,600 people.

The book next shifts to World War II. In 1944, when Lob was 11 years old, he and his family were forced to live in a Jewish ghetto in Kolozsvar. The Holocaust was well underway; Hungary and its resources had already been absorbed into Hitler’s regime by this time. Fearing their death, Lob escaped with his father to Budapest and joined the Kastner group.



Lob was supremely lucky to be chosen to board the Kastner Train. The 1,670 Jews aboard the train represented just a fraction of a percent of the hundreds of thousands of Jews exterminated in Hungary, and millions exterminated throughout Europe. The train was granted safe passage from Hungary to Switzerland due to a deal struck by Rudolf Kastner, a trained lawyer, with the notorious Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann. The journey consisted of two parts. First, the train made it to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp outside Hannover, Germany. From there, Eichmann allowed the Jews to travel to Switzerland in two groups, one in August and one in December. After making it to Switzerland and surviving the end of the war, Lob enrolled at the Ecole d’Humanité, followed by the University of Zurich. While he was in school, Kastner, accused of helping the Nazi party, was killed by Jewish extremists.

Lob went on to work as an academic at the University of Sussex in England. There, he taught German and comparative literature, with occasional roles at other universities, including Middlebury College in Vermont. After a long career, he retired and continued working as a translator of German and Hungarian. At the end of the book, he emphasizes that his intellectual and spiritual life have been colored by his survival of an atrocity that so many Jews he knew and loved did not survive.