Joel Brand
Encyclopedia
Joel Brand was a Hungarian sailor and odd-job man who became known for his role during the Holocaust in trying to save the Hungarian-Jewish community from deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp
.
Described by historian Yehuda Bauer
as a brave adventurer who felt at home in underground conspiracies and card-playing circles, Brand teamed up with fellow Zionists in Budapest to form the Aid and Rescue Committee
, a group that helped Jewish refugees in Nazi-occupied Europe escape to the relative safety of Hungary, before the Germans invaded that country too in March 1944. Shortly after the invasion, Brand was asked by SS
officer Adolf Eichmann
to help broker a deal between the SS and the United States or Britain. Eichmann said he would release up to one million Hungarian Jews, if the Western Allies would supply Germany with 10,000 trucks and large quantities of soap, tea, and coffee.
The negotiations, described by The Times as one of the most loathsome stories of the war, became known as the "blood for goods" proposal. Nothing came of it and historians can only guess whether Eichmann's offer was genuine. There are theories that it was a trick intended to persuade the Jewish community to board the trains to Auschwitz thinking they were being resettled, or that it was a cover for high-ranking SS officials to negotiate a peace deal with the U.S. and Britain that excluded the Soviet Union and perhaps even Adolf Hitler
himself.
Whatever its purpose, the deal was thwarted by a suspicious British government and the Jewish Agency for Israel
, to Brand's great distress. Their reasons have been the subject of bitter debate ever since, particularly among Hungarian Holocaust survivors, some of whom say it was an unforgivable betrayal. Brand himself said: "Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry's official leaders ever since. All these things shall haunt me until my dying day. It is much more than a man can bear."
, Transylvania
, now Romania, moving in 1910 with his family to Erfurt
in Germany, where he was raised and educated. He became a communist and worked for the Comintern
as a sailor and odd-job man, spending time in the Philippines, Japan, China, and South America, before returning to Germany, where he became a middle-ranking communist functionary. His position led to his arrest after the Reichstag fire
in 1933, when the Nazis began rounding up socialists and communists. When he was released in 1934, he left Germany and settled in Budapest, Hungary, where he got a job with the Budapest Telephone Company and became a Zionist
, joining the Mapai
(Israel Labour Party) youth movement.
In 1935, he married another member of the Zionist movement in Budapest, Hansi Hartmann, who owned a factory that produced gloves, socks, and sweaters. In July 1941, Hansi's sister got caught up in the so-called Kamenets Podolskiy
deportations, when the Hungarian government decided to deport 18,000 Jews to German-occupied Ukraine, because they could not prove they had Hungarian citizenship. Between 14,000 and 16,000 of the deportees were gunned down by the SS on August 27 and 28, 1941, but Brand paid Josezf Krem, a Hungarian espionage agent, to get Hansi's sister back safely.
The incident was the beginning of Brand's involvement in smuggling Jewish refugees from Poland and Slovakia to the relative safety of Hungary. Bauer writes that Brand enjoyed easy living and adventure, felt at home in cafés and bars, and that his honesty was "not always impeccable," but he was also a brave and intelligent operator who genuinely wanted to help Jews escape death. As the situation for Jewish communities in Europe worsened, Brand teamed up with Rudolf Kastner
, a Zionist lawyer and journalist from Cluj
, and Samuel Springmann, a Polish Jew and center-left Zionist who owned a jewellery store, and who began to function as treasurer of their fledgling rescue committee.
In early 1943, the group was joined by Ottó Komoly
, a Budapest engineer, reserve officer, war veteran, and member of the Liberal Zionist Party, who was known and highly respected among the Jewish community in Budapest. Komoly's membership gave the group the credibility it needed. He became their chairman, and with that, the Va'adat Ezrah Vehatzalah (Vaada)—the Aid and Rescue Committee
—was born, consisting of Komoly, Kastner, Joel and Hansi Brand, Moshe Krausz and Eugen Frankl (both Orthodox Jews and Zionists), and Ernst Szilagyi from the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair
. Operating outside the structure of the formal Jewish institutions, the committee embodied a "daring and activist ethos", according to historian Ronald Zweig
, that the Judenrat
, the official Jewish Council set up at the instruction of the Nazis, lacked entirely.
(military intelligence), who had been taking money from Brand in exchange for information about Jewish refugees, and whom Brand paid between $8,000 and $20,000 for a place to hide. According to testimony Brand gave in 1954 to the District Court in Jerusalem during a libel case—and which he repeated during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961—on April 16 or 25, 1944, he was told by one of the German agents in Budapest, probably Winninger, that he was to wait at a certain street corner at an appointed time, and would be taken to meet Eichmann.
Brand was taken to a luxury hotel that Eichmann was using as his headquarters. He told the court in German that "[t]he words which then passed between us have imprinted themselves on my memory till I die." He said Untersturmbannführer Kurt A. Becher
, an SS officer and emissary of Heinrich Himmler
, was standing behind Eichmann during the meeting. If this is correct, it means the meeting was of extraordinary importance, according to Bauer, because Brand also testified that Gerhard Clages, the chief of Himmler's Security Service in Budapest, and a rival of Eichmann's, was present at a later meeting, again with Becher and Eichmann. This means that Himmler had involved three of his men of the same rank to negotiate with Brand: Eichmann, whose job it was to kill Jews; Clages, whose task for Himmler was to reach out to forge a positive relationship with the West, because Germany knew it was losing the war; and Becher, who Bauer writes was meant to ensure the SS did not lose any money or goods. Brand said that Eichmann asked him "Do you know who I am?" and continued:
Brand told Eichmann that he was not empowered to make that decision and asked where they were supposed to obtain the cargo from, given that the Germans had confiscated Jewish property. Eichmann suggested he go abroad and negotiate directly with the Allies
. Eichmann told him they wanted any kind of cargo, but particularly trucks. "Ten thousand trucks are worth a million Jews to me", Brand quoted him as saying. Eichmann also asked for one thousand tons of tea and coffee, and soap. According to Bauer, Hermann Krumey, an assistant of Eichmann's, also asked for machine tools, leather and other goods, but the proposal soon settled into 10,000 trucks and various consumer items. Figures that were mentioned according to later testimony from Rudolf Kastner were 200 tons of tea, 200 tons of coffee, 2,000,000 cases of soap, 10,000 trucks for the Waffen-SS
to be used on the eastern front, and unspecified quantities of tungsten
and other war materials.
Eichmann said he was willing to offer one thousand Jews in advance, and on receiving the first payment, a further ten per cent. He told Brand: "Pick them anywhere you want. Hungary, Auschwitz
, Slovakia—anywhere you want and anyone you want." Brand was asked where he wanted to go to make the offer to the Jews and the Allies. He chose Istanbul."The Jews, in the meantime, would be sent to Auschwitz to be gassed until such time as a favorable reply was received", according to historian Raul Hilberg
. Brand asked what assurance Eichmann could offer the Allies that the Jews really would be released. Eichmann responded:
Brand told the court: "On leaving the building, I felt like a stark madman." It was the first time anyone from the Aid and Rescue Committee
had met Eichmann. Brand testified: "What were we to do with this monster's offer? ... I had gotten to know the Germans and their cruel lies exceedingly well. But the thought of 100,000 Jews 'in advance' tortured my mind and gave me no respite. I had no right to think of anything but this advance payment." He believed that if he could only return from Istanbul with a promise, at least those 100,000 lives might be saved.
270,000. Brand told U.S. emissary Ira Hirschmann during an interview on June 22, 1944 that Eichmann had offered to blow up Auschwitz—"dann sprenge ich Auschwitz in die Luft"—and free the first "ten, twenty, fifty thousand Jews" as soon as he received word from Istanbul that an agreement had been reached in principle.
Eichmann told Brand he was free to travel but that he should return to Budapest soon. According to Yehuda Bauer, Brand was not consistent in his testimony regarding how long Eichmann had given him, but said at various points that it was within one or two weeks, within two or three weeks, and that he could "take [his] time". A report prepared by Kastner and entered as evidence during Eichmann's trial states that Eichmann expected Brand to return within two weeks.
Hansi Brand testified during Eichmann's trial that she and her husband met with Eichmann on the day before Joel left for Istanbul, and that she was given to understand that she and her children would effectively be held hostage in Budapest until Joel returned. "It was very obvious, although it was not actually said in so many words, 'you will remain behind as hostages.' I cannot recall that precisely. But I was told that I was not allowed to leave Budapest with the children, and that I had to report every day. By then we had had so much experience with our illegal work that it was not necessary to give any further explanations. What it means is obvious, if someone is told that he may not leave Budapest, and I have to report every day."
) and was told he had a traveling companion, Bandi Grosz, a Hungarian Jew alleged by various sources to have been a spy for the Germans, Hungarians, British, and Americans, who was traveling undercover as the director of a Hungarian transport company engaged in talks with the Turkish state transport corporation.
The men left Budapest on May 17, 1944 and were driven by the SS to Vienna, where they stayed the night in a hotel reserved for SS personnel. In fact, Brand's trip is now believed by many historians to have been a cover for Grosz's mission. Grosz, who was low level enough to provide plausible deniability for the Germans in case anything went wrong, later testified that he had been told by Clages, on behalf of Himmler, to arrange a meeting in a neutral country between two or three senior German security officers and two or three American officers of equal rank, or British officers as a last resort, to negotiate a separate peace between the German Sicherheitsdienst
(SD) (part of the SS) and the Allies. Slovak historian Miroslav Karny
writes that:
in Istanbul (then Constantinople
) to say he was about to arrive, then flew first to Sofia, then on to Istanbul, by German diplomatic plane, arriving on May 19. He had been told by the Jewish Agency by return cable that "Chaim" would be in Istanbul to meet him. Excited by his mission, and believing that others would understand its importance, he believed "Chaim" referred to Chaim Weizmann
, then president of the World Zionist Organization
who later became the first president of Israel. But in fact the man who intended to meet him was Chaim Barlas, head of the Istanbul group of Zionist emissaries.
Brand was further confused when, arriving in Istanbul, he found that, not only was no one waiting to meet him at the airport and no entry visa had been arranged, but that he was threatened with arrest and deportation, which he later took as the first sign of what he came to see as his betrayal by the Jewish Agency. In fact, when he landed, Chaim Barlas was at that very moment driving around the city trying to obtain Brand's visa. Yehuda Bauer argues that Brand, then and later, never understood the actual powerlessness of the Jewish Agency. The fact that his passport was in the name of Eugen Band, and not Joel Brand, would in itself have been enough to cause the confusion. The visa situation was eventually sorted out by Bandi Grosz, who had intelligence connections in Istanbul and who made a few calls, and the men were taken to a hotel, where the Jewish Agency emissaries were waiting.
Raul Hilberg
writes that Brand was angry and excited. He quotes Brand as saying: "Comrades, do you realize what is involved? ... We have to negotiate ... With whom can I negotiate? Do you have the power to make agreements ... Twelve thousand people are hauled away every day ... that is five hundred an hour ... Do they have to die because no one from the Executive is here? I want to telegraph tomorrow that I have secured agreement ... Do you know what is involved, comrades?" For the Jewish Agency, matters were not so simple, Hilberg writes. They could not be sure that their telegrams to Jerusalem would not be intercepted and changed, or held up. No one had the influence to obtain a plane. No one from the War Refugee Board was available. The American Ambassador was in Ankara and no plane seat could be obtained for a trip there.
They told Brand that Moshe Sharett
, head of the Jewish Agency's political department, and the Zionist movement's chief ambassador and negotiator with the British in the British Mandate of Palestine (and later the second prime minister of Israel), would be arriving in Istanbul to meet him, which gave Brand hope that the situation was being taken seriously. He passed them an accurate plan of the Auschwitz complex (possibly the Vrba-Wetzler report
) and demanded that the gas chambers and railways lines be bombed. He later said that he got the impression that the Agency officials were not quite taking it all in. "They did not, as we did in Budapest, look daily at death."
In the meantime, the Agency gave Brand a piece of paper purporting to be a written agreement that it would accept Eichmann's offer in principle. The document promised the Germans $4,000 for each 1,000 Jewish emigrants to Palestine and SFR one million for each 1,000 Jewish emigrants to Spain. In return for allowing the Allies to supply goods to the Jews in the concentration camps, the Germans would receive equivalent supplies for themselves. Brand took the document to deliver to Eichmann, hoping it might be enough to halt the deportations, at least temporarily.
On the train, Brand became even more nervous after being approached by men who said they were agents of Zeev Jabotinsky's Alliance of Zionists-Revisionists Party
and the World Agudath Israel
Orthodox
religious party. They told him that the British were going to arrest him in Aleppo."Die Engländer sind in dieser Frage nicht unsere Verbündeten", they told him. ("The British are not our allies in this matter.") If he continued on his journey, he would not be allowed to return, they said.
Brand told the court that he was terrified when he heard this, because not returning to Budapest within the timeframe specified by Eichmann meant "the failure of my mission and the extermination of my family and a million other Jews in Hungary". However, he was assured by one of his traveling companions from the Jewish Agency that nothing was going to happen to him in Aleppo, and he wanted to believe this: "I could not believe that England—this land which alone fought on while all other countries of Europe surrendered to despotism—that this England which we had admired as the inflexible fighter for freedom wanted simply to sacrifice us, the poorest and weakest of all the oppressed."
After arriving in Ankara, the men continued by train to Aleppo. According to Ben Hecht
, just before arriving, the Jewish Agency official who had assured Brand he would not be arrested told him that, should he indeed be picked up by the British, he was not to speak to them without a member of the Agency being present. Hecht argues that this was the ultimate betrayal. Not only had the Agency effectively handed Brand over to the British, Hecht says, but they then acted to ensure he remain silent unless the Agency itself gave him permission to speak. As soon as Brand arrived in Aleppo on June 7, 1944, he was arrested by two men in plain clothes who blocked his way, then pushed him into a Jeep waiting with its engine running. He discovered later they were British intelligence.
According to Raul Hilberg, details of Brand's business in Istanbul had been passed to London and Washington. The Cabinet Committee on Refugees in London, which included British Foreign Secretary (later Prime Minister) Anthony Eden
and Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley
, considered the trucks-for-blood proposal and decided against pursuing it. If the suggestion had indeed come from the SS, it was a clear case of blackmail, and in any event, supplying extra trucks would simply strengthen the enemy's hand, writes Hilberg. In addition, to leave the selection of refugees to be saved up to the Nazis, without considering the interests of Allied prisoners, would leave the British government opened to domestic criticism.
Yehuda Bauer stresses other factors in the British decision. The British were convinced they were dealing with a Himmler trick of some kind, he writes, possibly an attempt via Bandi Grosz to strike up a separate peace deal with the West in order to cause a rift between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Bauer also writes that, if the trucks-for-blood deal had gone through and large numbers of Jews had been released from Nazi-held territories, a consequence of them being transported through central Europe would have been to halt Allied airborne military operations, and possibly also land-based ones, turning the Jews, in effect, into human shields. Bauer believes the British feared this may have been Himmler's primary motive in proposing the deal, because the suspension of Allied attacks would have allowed the Germans to concentrate more of their forces against the East.
Brand's failure to return to Budapest within the two weeks expected by Eichmann was regarded as a disaster by other members of the Aid and Rescue Committee. A report written by Kastner states that Eichmann started demanding that Brand return, and wanted a "clear-cut answer" as to whether the blood-for-trucks proposal had been accepted. The report says: "We had to explain to him every day that discussions on this matter between London, Washington, and Moscow could be protracted. There were enough reasons for delay. Apparently the Allies could not easily be brought to a common denominator about such a delicate matter. The continuation of the deportations of Hungarian Jews was complicating the negotiations." On page 48 of the report, Kastner wrote "on June 9 Eichmann said, 'If I do not receive a positive reply within three days, I shall operate the mill at Auschwitz'." (Ich lasse die Muehle laufen.)
Despite his protests, Brand was taken to Cairo, where he was questioned by the British for days. On the 10th day, he went on hunger strike, writing in a letter to the Jewish Agency that: "It is apparent to me now that an enemy of our people is holding me and does not intend to release me in the near future. I have decided to go on a hunger strike again and will do my utmost to break through the bayonets guarding me." On the 17th day, he was handed a note from one of the Jewish Agency men he had traveled to Aleppo
with, urging him not to be difficult.
Brand later testified that Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East and a close friend of Prime Minister Winston Churchill
, was present during one of the interrogations and is alleged to have said: "What can I do with this million Jews? Where can I put them?" Moyne was assassinated in Cairo a few months later on November 6, 1944 by Eliyahu Bet-Zuri
and Eliyahu Hakim
of the Lehi
(Stern Gang). Ben Hecht writes that Ehud Avriel, the Jewish Agency official who had accompanied Brand to Aleppo and told him the British would not arrest him, insisted it was not Lord Moyne who had said this, and asked Brand not to repeat Moyne's name in Brand's autobiography, Advocate for the Dead, but Brand repeated the allegation under oath during Eichmann's trial. During a meeting with Moshe Sharett on July 6, 1944, Anthony Eden expressed his sympathy regarding the decision to block the negotiations with Eichmann, but said he had to act in unison with the United States and Soviet Union.
, the German Foreign Minister, had asked to be informed. The New York Herald Tribune carried the same story, and The Times of London called it one of the "most loathsome" stories of the war. The leaks killed whatever might have remained of the initiative, although the mass deportations of Jews from Hungary had already been stopped by the Hungarian government on July 7, fearful that government ministers might be held personally responsible by the Allies.
The British released Brand in October 1944 but, according to Hecht, would not allow him to travel to Hungary, compelling him instead to travel to Palestine. Bauer disputes this, arguing that the story of Brand being forced to travel to Palestine was spread around Israel at the time of the trial of Malchiel Greenwald, a freelance writer who accused Kastner, by then a government spokesman, of having collaborated with the Nazis. In fact, writes Bauer, by that time Brand himself was terrified of returning to Budapest, convinced the Germans would murder him. In Palestine, Brand tried to contact Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization. Weizmann responded to Brand's letter, saying that his secretary would arrange an appointment for them to meet. Brand alleges that the appointment was never made. The last lines of Brand's testimony to the District Court in Jerusalem during the libel trial were: "Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry's official leaders ever since. All these things shall haunt me until my dying day. It is much more than a man can bear."
Bauer writes that we know the deal originated with Heinrich Himmler
because a cable from Edmund Veesenmayer of the SS to the German Foreign Office on July 22, 1944 stated that Brand and Grosz had been sent to Turkey on the orders of Himmler. Kurt Becher
also indicated that his orders came directly from Himmler: "So I came into contact with Joel Brand ... Trucks were a big problem. So trucks were discussed, 10,000 trucks that is. There were many discussions. Himmler said to me: 'Take whatever you can from the Jews. Promise them whatever you want. What we will keep is another matter'."
Eichmann himself later testified that the order came from Himmler, and a report from Kastner shows that Eichmann did not seem happy about having to deal with Brand. Kastner wrote that when Brand failed to return from Istanbul, Eichmann said: "Yes. I saw all of this in advance. I warned Becher countless times not to allow himself to be led by the nose. If I do not receive a positive answer within forty-eight hours, I will have all this Jewish bag of filth from Budapest laid low." (Werde ich das ganze juedische Dreckpack von Budapest umlegen lassen.)
Bauer writes that the "clumsiness of the approach has been a wonderment to all observers." He argues that it is obvious that Eichmann was Himmler's reluctant messenger, and that Eichmann's own inclination was clearly to continue murdering Jews, not to sell them. On the day Brand left for Vienna and Istanbul, Eichmann traveled to Auschwitz to make sure Rudolf Hoess, the commander of the camp, would be ready to receive the first arrivals scheduled to leave Hungary on May 14. Hoess told him there would be problems processing such large numbers, whereupon Eichmann ordered that there should be no selections but that all the new arrivals should be gassed immediately, which does not indicate that he was willing to delay the exterminations until Brand returned from Istanbul, as Brand seemed to believe.
Bauer argues that the presence of Clages at the meetings signals that Himmler had changed the emphasis from blood-for-trucks to the hidden agenda of secret talks aimed at peace. Bauer writes that there is no indication of what exactly Himmler wanted to achieve, because he did not commit his thoughts to paper, but Bauer points out that Brand and Grosz arrived in Istanbul just two months before the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler
, and that Himmler knew there was a plot, though did not know where and when it would be carried out. It is possible that Himmler wanted to open negotiations for peace in the event that Hitler did not survive, using two low-level agents, a Jew and a spy, in case he had to distance himself from their mission; and if Hitler did survive, Himmler could offer him the chance to conclude a separate peace deal with the West, excluding the Soviet Union.
Brand himself eventually adopted such a theory. Two months before his death he testified at the trial in Germany of Eichmann's deputies Hermann Krumey and Otto Hunsche. He told the court that "though the deal was suggested by Eichmann" it must have originated in the mind of Himmler as one of his desperate attempts at driving a wedge between the Allies. "I made a terrible mistake in passing this on to the British. ... It is now clear to me that Himmler sought to sow suspicion among the Allies as a preparation for his much desired Nazi-Western coalition against Moscow."
would help. On May 27, 1944, Hansi Brand was arrested and beaten by the Hungarian Arrow Cross
, though she testified at Eichmann's trial that she withstood it and gave them no information about the deal that Eichmann had told her was a "state secret" (Reichsgeheimnis). Hilberg writes that the committee did not expect the Allies actually to supply goods to Eichmann, but it hoped for some gesture that would allow protracted negotiations with the Nazis to begin while the Jews waited for the arrival of the Red Army
.
Brand's failure to return to Budapest meant the Vaada was thrown back on its own resources, bitter about the lack of help from the outside world, and in particular from Jews living in safe countries. Bauer argues that the mistake the Vaada made was to adopt the almost anti-Semitic belief in unlimited Jewish power. The committee believed that Jewish leaders could move freely during the war and could persuade the Allies to do whatever needed to be done to save the Jews of Hungary. They had similar trust in the goodwill and power of the Allied leadership, but the Allies were gearing up for the invasion of Normandy just as Brand set out on his mission, and "[a]t that crucial moment", writes Bauer, "to antagonize the Soviets because of some hare-brained Gestapo plan to ransom Jews was totally out of the question." Bauer writes: "Perhaps, in their hopeless situation, [the Aid and Rescue Committee] had to believe these things in order to survive, but when their beliefs had to be tested against the cold realities of a world war, they proved to be so many illusions." Rudolf Kastner later wrote that the Vaada had no choice but to believe in the possibility of rescue. Of Jewish communities living in countries unaffected by the Holocaust, he wrote: "They were outside, we were inside. They moralized, we feared death. They had sympathy for us and believed themselves to be powerless; we wanted to live and believed rescue had to be possible."
Brand was a bitter man when he was finally released by the British. He joined the Lehi
(Stern Gang) who were fighting to remove the British from Palestine
prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The Istanbul mission created a rift between him and his wife, who for many years wondered what the truth was behind her husband's failure to return in time. Bauer concludes that, despite the haphazard nature of the mission and its ultimate failure, Brand was an extremely courageous man who had passionately wanted to help the Jewish people, yet whose life was thereafter plagued by the suspicion of family and friends, part of a serious misunderstanding, according to Bauer, of all the Jewish actors in the situation. In 1964, Brand died in Israel of liver disease brought on by alcoholism, reportedly a broken man.
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
.
Described by historian Yehuda Bauer
Yehuda Bauer
Yehuda Bauer is a historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.-Biography:...
as a brave adventurer who felt at home in underground conspiracies and card-playing circles, Brand teamed up with fellow Zionists in Budapest to form the Aid and Rescue Committee
Aid and Rescue Committee
The Aid and Rescue Committee, or Va'adat Ha-Ezrah ve-ha-Hatzalah be-Budapesht was a small committee of Zionists based in Budapest in 1944-5, who were dedicated to helping Jews escape the Holocaust during the German occupation of Hungary.The main personalities of the Vaada were Dr...
, a group that helped Jewish refugees in Nazi-occupied Europe escape to the relative safety of Hungary, before the Germans invaded that country too in March 1944. Shortly after the invasion, Brand was asked by SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
officer Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
to help broker a deal between the SS and the United States or Britain. Eichmann said he would release up to one million Hungarian Jews, if the Western Allies would supply Germany with 10,000 trucks and large quantities of soap, tea, and coffee.
The negotiations, described by The Times as one of the most loathsome stories of the war, became known as the "blood for goods" proposal. Nothing came of it and historians can only guess whether Eichmann's offer was genuine. There are theories that it was a trick intended to persuade the Jewish community to board the trains to Auschwitz thinking they were being resettled, or that it was a cover for high-ranking SS officials to negotiate a peace deal with the U.S. and Britain that excluded the Soviet Union and perhaps even Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
himself.
Whatever its purpose, the deal was thwarted by a suspicious British government and the Jewish Agency for Israel
Jewish Agency for Israel
The Jewish Agency for Israel , also known as the Sochnut or JAFI, served as the organization in charge of immigration and absorption of Jews from the Diaspora into the state of Israel.-History:...
, to Brand's great distress. Their reasons have been the subject of bitter debate ever since, particularly among Hungarian Holocaust survivors, some of whom say it was an unforgivable betrayal. Brand himself said: "Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry's official leaders ever since. All these things shall haunt me until my dying day. It is much more than a man can bear."
Early life
Brand was born in NăsăudNasaud
Năsăud is a town in Bistriţa-Năsăud County in Romania located in the historical region of Transylvania. The town administers two villages, Liviu Rebreanu and Luşca.The name Năsăud is possibly derived from the Slavic nas voda, meaning "near the water"...
, Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
, now Romania, moving in 1910 with his family to Erfurt
Erfurt
Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
in Germany, where he was raised and educated. He became a communist and worked for the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
as a sailor and odd-job man, spending time in the Philippines, Japan, China, and South America, before returning to Germany, where he became a middle-ranking communist functionary. His position led to his arrest after the Reichstag fire
Reichstag fire
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany....
in 1933, when the Nazis began rounding up socialists and communists. When he was released in 1934, he left Germany and settled in Budapest, Hungary, where he got a job with the Budapest Telephone Company and became a Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, joining the Mapai
Labor (Israel)
The Israeli Labor Party , commonly known as HaAvoda , is a social-democratic and labour Zionist political party in Israel. The party is an observer member of both Socialist International and the Party of European Socialists. The Israeli Labor Party was established in 1968 by a merger of Mapai,...
(Israel Labour Party) youth movement.
Aid and Rescue Committee
Kamianets-Podilskyi
Kamyanets-Podilsky or Kamienets-Podolsky is a city located on the Smotrych River in western Ukraine, to the north-east of Chernivtsi...
deportations, when the Hungarian government decided to deport 18,000 Jews to German-occupied Ukraine, because they could not prove they had Hungarian citizenship. Between 14,000 and 16,000 of the deportees were gunned down by the SS on August 27 and 28, 1941, but Brand paid Josezf Krem, a Hungarian espionage agent, to get Hansi's sister back safely.
The incident was the beginning of Brand's involvement in smuggling Jewish refugees from Poland and Slovakia to the relative safety of Hungary. Bauer writes that Brand enjoyed easy living and adventure, felt at home in cafés and bars, and that his honesty was "not always impeccable," but he was also a brave and intelligent operator who genuinely wanted to help Jews escape death. As the situation for Jewish communities in Europe worsened, Brand teamed up with Rudolf Kastner
Rudolf Kastner
Rudolf Israel Kastner was a Jewish-Hungarian journalist and lawyer who became known for facilitating the departure of Jews out of Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust...
, a Zionist lawyer and journalist from Cluj
Cluj County
Cluj ; is a county of Romania, in Transylvania, with the capital city at Cluj-Napoca.-Demographics:In 2007, it had a population of 692,316 and a population density of 104/km².*Romanians – 80%*Hungarians – 17.5%*Roma – 2.5%-Geography:...
, and Samuel Springmann, a Polish Jew and center-left Zionist who owned a jewellery store, and who began to function as treasurer of their fledgling rescue committee.
In early 1943, the group was joined by Ottó Komoly
Ottó Komoly
Otto Komoly was a Hungarian Jewish engineer, officer, zionist, and humanitarian leader in Hungary. He is credited with saving thousands of children during the German occupation of Budapest in World War II....
, a Budapest engineer, reserve officer, war veteran, and member of the Liberal Zionist Party, who was known and highly respected among the Jewish community in Budapest. Komoly's membership gave the group the credibility it needed. He became their chairman, and with that, the Va'adat Ezrah Vehatzalah (Vaada)—the Aid and Rescue Committee
Aid and Rescue Committee
The Aid and Rescue Committee, or Va'adat Ha-Ezrah ve-ha-Hatzalah be-Budapesht was a small committee of Zionists based in Budapest in 1944-5, who were dedicated to helping Jews escape the Holocaust during the German occupation of Hungary.The main personalities of the Vaada were Dr...
—was born, consisting of Komoly, Kastner, Joel and Hansi Brand, Moshe Krausz and Eugen Frankl (both Orthodox Jews and Zionists), and Ernst Szilagyi from the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair is a Socialist–Zionist youth movement founded in 1913 in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, and was also the name of the group's political party in the Yishuv in the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine...
. Operating outside the structure of the formal Jewish institutions, the committee embodied a "daring and activist ethos", according to historian Ronald Zweig
Ronald W. Zweig
Ronald W. Zweig is an Israeli historian specializing in Hebrew and Judaic studies, with particular reference to the British Mandate in Palestine...
, that the Judenrat
Judenrat
Judenräte were administrative bodies during the Second World War that the Germans required Jews to form in the German occupied territory of Poland, and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union It is the overall term for the enforcement bodies established by the Nazi occupiers to...
, the official Jewish Council set up at the instruction of the Nazis, lacked entirely.
March 1944
On Sunday, March 19, 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary with relatively weak forces which met no resistance. Brand was abducted and hidden in a safehouse by Josef Winninger, a courier for the German AbwehrAbwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
(military intelligence), who had been taking money from Brand in exchange for information about Jewish refugees, and whom Brand paid between $8,000 and $20,000 for a place to hide. According to testimony Brand gave in 1954 to the District Court in Jerusalem during a libel case—and which he repeated during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961—on April 16 or 25, 1944, he was told by one of the German agents in Budapest, probably Winninger, that he was to wait at a certain street corner at an appointed time, and would be taken to meet Eichmann.
Brand was taken to a luxury hotel that Eichmann was using as his headquarters. He told the court in German that "[t]he words which then passed between us have imprinted themselves on my memory till I die." He said Untersturmbannführer Kurt A. Becher
Kurt Becher
Kurt Andreas Ernst Becher was an SS Untersturmführer and later a Standartenführer who was Commissar of all German concentration camps, and Chief of the Economic Department of the SS Command in Hungary during the German occupation in 1944.- SS Background :Becher was born to a wealthy family...
, an SS officer and emissary of Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, was standing behind Eichmann during the meeting. If this is correct, it means the meeting was of extraordinary importance, according to Bauer, because Brand also testified that Gerhard Clages, the chief of Himmler's Security Service in Budapest, and a rival of Eichmann's, was present at a later meeting, again with Becher and Eichmann. This means that Himmler had involved three of his men of the same rank to negotiate with Brand: Eichmann, whose job it was to kill Jews; Clages, whose task for Himmler was to reach out to forge a positive relationship with the West, because Germany knew it was losing the war; and Becher, who Bauer writes was meant to ensure the SS did not lose any money or goods. Brand said that Eichmann asked him "Do you know who I am?" and continued:
I have carried out the Aktionen in the Reich—in Poland—in Czechoslovakia. Now it is Hungary's turn. I let you come here to talk business with you. Before that I investigated you—and your people. Those from the JointAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution CommitteeThe American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is a worldwide Jewish relief organization headquartered in New York. It was established in 1914 and is active in more than 70 countries....
and those from the Agency. And I have come to the conclusion that you still have resources. So I am ready to sell you—a million Jews. All of them I wouldn't sell you. That much money and goods you don't have. But a million—that will go. Goods for blood—blood for goods. You can gather up this million in countries which still have Jews. You can take it from Hungary. From Poland. From Austria. From Theresienstadt. From Auschwitz. From wherever you want. What do you want to save. Virile men? Grown women? Old people? Children? Sit down—and talk.
Brand told Eichmann that he was not empowered to make that decision and asked where they were supposed to obtain the cargo from, given that the Germans had confiscated Jewish property. Eichmann suggested he go abroad and negotiate directly with the Allies
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
. Eichmann told him they wanted any kind of cargo, but particularly trucks. "Ten thousand trucks are worth a million Jews to me", Brand quoted him as saying. Eichmann also asked for one thousand tons of tea and coffee, and soap. According to Bauer, Hermann Krumey, an assistant of Eichmann's, also asked for machine tools, leather and other goods, but the proposal soon settled into 10,000 trucks and various consumer items. Figures that were mentioned according to later testimony from Rudolf Kastner were 200 tons of tea, 200 tons of coffee, 2,000,000 cases of soap, 10,000 trucks for the Waffen-SS
Waffen-SS
The Waffen-SS was a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of the Third Reich. It constituted the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel or SS, an organ of the Nazi Party. The Waffen-SS saw action throughout World War II and grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions, and served alongside...
to be used on the eastern front, and unspecified quantities of tungsten
Tungsten
Tungsten , also known as wolfram , is a chemical element with the chemical symbol W and atomic number 74.A hard, rare metal under standard conditions when uncombined, tungsten is found naturally on Earth only in chemical compounds. It was identified as a new element in 1781, and first isolated as...
and other war materials.
Eichmann said he was willing to offer one thousand Jews in advance, and on receiving the first payment, a further ten per cent. He told Brand: "Pick them anywhere you want. Hungary, Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
, Slovakia—anywhere you want and anyone you want." Brand was asked where he wanted to go to make the offer to the Jews and the Allies. He chose Istanbul."The Jews, in the meantime, would be sent to Auschwitz to be gassed until such time as a favorable reply was received", according to historian Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
. Brand asked what assurance Eichmann could offer the Allies that the Jews really would be released. Eichmann responded:
You think we are all crooks. You hold us for what you are. Now I am going to prove to you that I trust you more than you trust me. When you come back from Istanbul and tell me that the offer has been accepted, I will dissolve Auschwitz and move 10 percent of the promised million to the border. You take over the 100,000 Jews and deliver for them afterwards one thousand trucks. And then the deal will proceed step by step. For every hundred thousand Jews, a thousand trucks. You are getting away cheap.
Brand told the court: "On leaving the building, I felt like a stark madman." It was the first time anyone from the Aid and Rescue Committee
Aid and Rescue Committee
The Aid and Rescue Committee, or Va'adat Ha-Ezrah ve-ha-Hatzalah be-Budapesht was a small committee of Zionists based in Budapest in 1944-5, who were dedicated to helping Jews escape the Holocaust during the German occupation of Hungary.The main personalities of the Vaada were Dr...
had met Eichmann. Brand testified: "What were we to do with this monster's offer? ... I had gotten to know the Germans and their cruel lies exceedingly well. But the thought of 100,000 Jews 'in advance' tortured my mind and gave me no respite. I had no right to think of anything but this advance payment." He believed that if he could only return from Istanbul with a promise, at least those 100,000 lives might be saved.
May 1944
Brand met Eichmann once more, on May 14, 1944. Eichmann told him the deportations to Auschwitz were about to begin at a rate of 12,000 Jews a day, but that they would not be exterminated while negotiations were ongoing. According to Brand's testimony, Gerhard Clages, chief of Himmler's Security Service in Budapest, and Eichmann's rival, was present, and handed Brand $50,000 and SFRSwiss franc
The franc is the currency and legal tender of Switzerland and Liechtenstein; it is also legal tender in the Italian exclave Campione d'Italia. Although not formally legal tender in the German exclave Büsingen , it is in wide daily use there...
270,000. Brand told U.S. emissary Ira Hirschmann during an interview on June 22, 1944 that Eichmann had offered to blow up Auschwitz—"dann sprenge ich Auschwitz in die Luft"—and free the first "ten, twenty, fifty thousand Jews" as soon as he received word from Istanbul that an agreement had been reached in principle.
Eichmann told Brand he was free to travel but that he should return to Budapest soon. According to Yehuda Bauer, Brand was not consistent in his testimony regarding how long Eichmann had given him, but said at various points that it was within one or two weeks, within two or three weeks, and that he could "take [his] time". A report prepared by Kastner and entered as evidence during Eichmann's trial states that Eichmann expected Brand to return within two weeks.
Hansi Brand testified during Eichmann's trial that she and her husband met with Eichmann on the day before Joel left for Istanbul, and that she was given to understand that she and her children would effectively be held hostage in Budapest until Joel returned. "It was very obvious, although it was not actually said in so many words, 'you will remain behind as hostages.' I cannot recall that precisely. But I was told that I was not allowed to leave Budapest with the children, and that I had to report every day. By then we had had so much experience with our illegal work that it was not necessary to give any further explanations. What it means is obvious, if someone is told that he may not leave Budapest, and I have to report every day."
"Blood for goods" mission
The day after his last meeting with Eichmann, Brand secured "full powers" from the Zentralrat der Ungarischen Juden (the main Hungarian Jewish councilJudenrat
Judenräte were administrative bodies during the Second World War that the Germans required Jews to form in the German occupied territory of Poland, and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union It is the overall term for the enforcement bodies established by the Nazi occupiers to...
) and was told he had a traveling companion, Bandi Grosz, a Hungarian Jew alleged by various sources to have been a spy for the Germans, Hungarians, British, and Americans, who was traveling undercover as the director of a Hungarian transport company engaged in talks with the Turkish state transport corporation.
The men left Budapest on May 17, 1944 and were driven by the SS to Vienna, where they stayed the night in a hotel reserved for SS personnel. In fact, Brand's trip is now believed by many historians to have been a cover for Grosz's mission. Grosz, who was low level enough to provide plausible deniability for the Germans in case anything went wrong, later testified that he had been told by Clages, on behalf of Himmler, to arrange a meeting in a neutral country between two or three senior German security officers and two or three American officers of equal rank, or British officers as a last resort, to negotiate a separate peace between the German Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
(SD) (part of the SS) and the Allies. Slovak historian Miroslav Karny
Miroslav Kárný
Miroslav Kárný was a historian and writer from Prague, Czechoslovakia.- Biography :He was born into an assimilated Jewish family, his mother ran a shop selling candy and haberdashery. His father, a tradesman, left the Jewish community during the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy...
writes that:
From British documents published in the seventies as well as from the memoirs of Joel Brand, it is obvious that Grosz carried not only an offer that Hungary would change over to the side of the Allies on condition the Soviet offensive stopped at the Hungarian border, but in particular a proposal from the chief of Himmler's Security Service in Budapest, Gerhard Clages, that two or three higher German intelligence officers should meet with their American counterparts to discuss a separate peace. In case of failure, Grosz was to organize a meeting with British officers via officials of the Jewish Agency in Istanbul. Grosz stressed to Brand that the intelligence service mission was the main thing and Brand's mission was intended just as a cover. Referring to his talks with Clages, Grosz explained: "The Nazis know that they have lost the war. They know that peace cannot be reached with Hitler. Himmler wants to use all possible contacts to get down to negotiations with the Allies." He added: "Your Jewish affair was only an auxiliary question."
Meeting with the Jewish Agency
In Vienna, Brand was given a German passport in the name of Eugen Band. Brand cabled ahead to the Jewish AgencyJewish Agency for Israel
The Jewish Agency for Israel , also known as the Sochnut or JAFI, served as the organization in charge of immigration and absorption of Jews from the Diaspora into the state of Israel.-History:...
in Istanbul (then Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
) to say he was about to arrive, then flew first to Sofia, then on to Istanbul, by German diplomatic plane, arriving on May 19. He had been told by the Jewish Agency by return cable that "Chaim" would be in Istanbul to meet him. Excited by his mission, and believing that others would understand its importance, he believed "Chaim" referred to Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952....
, then president of the World Zionist Organization
World Zionist Organization
The World Zionist Organization , or WZO, was founded as the Zionist Organization , or ZO, in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress, held from August 29 to August 31 in Basel, Switzerland...
who later became the first president of Israel. But in fact the man who intended to meet him was Chaim Barlas, head of the Istanbul group of Zionist emissaries.
Brand was further confused when, arriving in Istanbul, he found that, not only was no one waiting to meet him at the airport and no entry visa had been arranged, but that he was threatened with arrest and deportation, which he later took as the first sign of what he came to see as his betrayal by the Jewish Agency. In fact, when he landed, Chaim Barlas was at that very moment driving around the city trying to obtain Brand's visa. Yehuda Bauer argues that Brand, then and later, never understood the actual powerlessness of the Jewish Agency. The fact that his passport was in the name of Eugen Band, and not Joel Brand, would in itself have been enough to cause the confusion. The visa situation was eventually sorted out by Bandi Grosz, who had intelligence connections in Istanbul and who made a few calls, and the men were taken to a hotel, where the Jewish Agency emissaries were waiting.
Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
writes that Brand was angry and excited. He quotes Brand as saying: "Comrades, do you realize what is involved? ... We have to negotiate ... With whom can I negotiate? Do you have the power to make agreements ... Twelve thousand people are hauled away every day ... that is five hundred an hour ... Do they have to die because no one from the Executive is here? I want to telegraph tomorrow that I have secured agreement ... Do you know what is involved, comrades?" For the Jewish Agency, matters were not so simple, Hilberg writes. They could not be sure that their telegrams to Jerusalem would not be intercepted and changed, or held up. No one had the influence to obtain a plane. No one from the War Refugee Board was available. The American Ambassador was in Ankara and no plane seat could be obtained for a trip there.
They told Brand that Moshe Sharett
Moshe Sharett
Moshe Sharett on 15 October 1894, died 7 July 1965) was the second Prime Minister of Israel , serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurion's two terms.-Early life:...
, head of the Jewish Agency's political department, and the Zionist movement's chief ambassador and negotiator with the British in the British Mandate of Palestine (and later the second prime minister of Israel), would be arriving in Istanbul to meet him, which gave Brand hope that the situation was being taken seriously. He passed them an accurate plan of the Auschwitz complex (possibly the Vrba-Wetzler report
Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba, born Walter Rosenberg was a Slovak-Canadian professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia, who came to public attention during the Second World War when, in April 1944, he escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland with the first...
) and demanded that the gas chambers and railways lines be bombed. He later said that he got the impression that the Agency officials were not quite taking it all in. "They did not, as we did in Budapest, look daily at death."
In the meantime, the Agency gave Brand a piece of paper purporting to be a written agreement that it would accept Eichmann's offer in principle. The document promised the Germans $4,000 for each 1,000 Jewish emigrants to Palestine and SFR one million for each 1,000 Jewish emigrants to Spain. In return for allowing the Allies to supply goods to the Jews in the concentration camps, the Germans would receive equivalent supplies for themselves. Brand took the document to deliver to Eichmann, hoping it might be enough to halt the deportations, at least temporarily.
Arrested by British intelligence
After a few days in Istanbul, it became clear that Sharett was not going to arrive, and Brand was told he had been refused a visa and that the British were actively preventing him from traveling to Turkey. Brand was asked instead to travel to Aleppo on the Syrian-Turkish border to meet Sharett there. He was reluctant to do this because the area was under British control and he was afraid that the British would interfere with his travel plans and would want to question him. However, he was persuaded to go, and left by train, accompanied by two members of the Jewish Agency.On the train, Brand became even more nervous after being approached by men who said they were agents of Zeev Jabotinsky's Alliance of Zionists-Revisionists Party
Hatzohar
Hatzohar , officially Brit HaTzionim HaRevizionistim was a Revisionist Zionist organisation and political party in Mandate Palestine and newly-independent Israel.-Background:...
and the World Agudath Israel
World Agudath Israel
World Agudath Israel , usually known as the Aguda, was established in the early twentieth century as the political arm of Ashkenazi Torah Judaism, in succession to Agudas Shlumei Emunei Yisroel...
Orthodox
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
religious party. They told him that the British were going to arrest him in Aleppo."Die Engländer sind in dieser Frage nicht unsere Verbündeten", they told him. ("The British are not our allies in this matter.") If he continued on his journey, he would not be allowed to return, they said.
Brand told the court that he was terrified when he heard this, because not returning to Budapest within the timeframe specified by Eichmann meant "the failure of my mission and the extermination of my family and a million other Jews in Hungary". However, he was assured by one of his traveling companions from the Jewish Agency that nothing was going to happen to him in Aleppo, and he wanted to believe this: "I could not believe that England—this land which alone fought on while all other countries of Europe surrendered to despotism—that this England which we had admired as the inflexible fighter for freedom wanted simply to sacrifice us, the poorest and weakest of all the oppressed."
After arriving in Ankara, the men continued by train to Aleppo. According to Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...
, just before arriving, the Jewish Agency official who had assured Brand he would not be arrested told him that, should he indeed be picked up by the British, he was not to speak to them without a member of the Agency being present. Hecht argues that this was the ultimate betrayal. Not only had the Agency effectively handed Brand over to the British, Hecht says, but they then acted to ensure he remain silent unless the Agency itself gave him permission to speak. As soon as Brand arrived in Aleppo on June 7, 1944, he was arrested by two men in plain clothes who blocked his way, then pushed him into a Jeep waiting with its engine running. He discovered later they were British intelligence.
According to Raul Hilberg, details of Brand's business in Istanbul had been passed to London and Washington. The Cabinet Committee on Refugees in London, which included British Foreign Secretary (later Prime Minister) Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
and Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley
Oliver Stanley
Oliver Frederick George Stanley MC, PC was a prominent British Conservative politician who held many ministerial posts before his early death when it was expected he would soon assume higher office....
, considered the trucks-for-blood proposal and decided against pursuing it. If the suggestion had indeed come from the SS, it was a clear case of blackmail, and in any event, supplying extra trucks would simply strengthen the enemy's hand, writes Hilberg. In addition, to leave the selection of refugees to be saved up to the Nazis, without considering the interests of Allied prisoners, would leave the British government opened to domestic criticism.
Yehuda Bauer stresses other factors in the British decision. The British were convinced they were dealing with a Himmler trick of some kind, he writes, possibly an attempt via Bandi Grosz to strike up a separate peace deal with the West in order to cause a rift between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Bauer also writes that, if the trucks-for-blood deal had gone through and large numbers of Jews had been released from Nazi-held territories, a consequence of them being transported through central Europe would have been to halt Allied airborne military operations, and possibly also land-based ones, turning the Jews, in effect, into human shields. Bauer believes the British feared this may have been Himmler's primary motive in proposing the deal, because the suspension of Allied attacks would have allowed the Germans to concentrate more of their forces against the East.
Brand's failure to return to Budapest within the two weeks expected by Eichmann was regarded as a disaster by other members of the Aid and Rescue Committee. A report written by Kastner states that Eichmann started demanding that Brand return, and wanted a "clear-cut answer" as to whether the blood-for-trucks proposal had been accepted. The report says: "We had to explain to him every day that discussions on this matter between London, Washington, and Moscow could be protracted. There were enough reasons for delay. Apparently the Allies could not easily be brought to a common denominator about such a delicate matter. The continuation of the deportations of Hungarian Jews was complicating the negotiations." On page 48 of the report, Kastner wrote "on June 9 Eichmann said, 'If I do not receive a positive reply within three days, I shall operate the mill at Auschwitz'." (Ich lasse die Muehle laufen.)
Meeting with Moshe Sharett and hunger strike
Brand testified that he was taken to an elegant Arab villa where some high-ranking British officers were staying, and on June 11 was introduced to Moshe Sharett with whom he spoke during two sessions of six hours each. Sharett wrote in his report of June 27, 1944: "I must have looked a little incredulous, for he said: 'Please believe me: they have killed six million Jews; there are only two million left alive'." After the second session, Sharett spoke to British officials and turned again to Brand, telling him: "Dear Joel, I have to tell you something bitter now." He told Brand he would have to go south, not back to Budapest, because the British had demanded it. Brand reportedly started screaming:-
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Do you know what you are doing? This is simply murder! That is mass murder. If I don't return our best people will be slaughtered! My wife! My mother! My children will be first! ... I have come here under a flag of truce. I have brought you a message. You can accept or reject, but you have no right to hold the messenger ...
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Despite his protests, Brand was taken to Cairo, where he was questioned by the British for days. On the 10th day, he went on hunger strike, writing in a letter to the Jewish Agency that: "It is apparent to me now that an enemy of our people is holding me and does not intend to release me in the near future. I have decided to go on a hunger strike again and will do my utmost to break through the bayonets guarding me." On the 17th day, he was handed a note from one of the Jewish Agency men he had traveled to Aleppo
Aleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
with, urging him not to be difficult.
Brand later testified that Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East and a close friend of Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, was present during one of the interrogations and is alleged to have said: "What can I do with this million Jews? Where can I put them?" Moyne was assassinated in Cairo a few months later on November 6, 1944 by Eliyahu Bet-Zuri
Eliyahu Bet-Zuri
Eliyahu Bet-Zuri was a member of Lehi, who was executed in Egypt for assassinating Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East....
and Eliyahu Hakim
Eliyahu Hakim
Eliyahu Hakim was a Lehi member who took part in the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East.Born in Beirut, Hakim moved to Mandatory Palestine with his family when he was seven. He grew up in the port city of Haifa. As a teenager, he joined Lehi, but...
of the Lehi
Lehi (group)
Lehi , commonly referred to in English as the Stern Group or Stern Gang, was a militant Zionist group founded by Avraham Stern in the British Mandate of Palestine...
(Stern Gang). Ben Hecht writes that Ehud Avriel, the Jewish Agency official who had accompanied Brand to Aleppo and told him the British would not arrest him, insisted it was not Lord Moyne who had said this, and asked Brand not to repeat Moyne's name in Brand's autobiography, Advocate for the Dead, but Brand repeated the allegation under oath during Eichmann's trial. During a meeting with Moshe Sharett on July 6, 1944, Anthony Eden expressed his sympathy regarding the decision to block the negotiations with Eichmann, but said he had to act in unison with the United States and Soviet Union.
The leak to the press and the end of the proposal
British intelligence leaked details of the Brand mission to the press. On July 19, 1944, BBC Radio broadcast a story that two emissaries of the Hungarian government had appeared in Turkey proposing that all Jews still in Hungary would be allowed to leave if England and America would supply a certain amount of pharmaceuticals and transport, including trucks, with a promise that the equipment would not be used on the Western front. The proposal, which the BBC called "humanitarian blackmail," was reported as a crude attempt to set the Allies against each other, and the report added that it was not clear whether the plan had the approval of the German and Hungarian authorities. Documents released during Eichmann's trial show that, after the broadcast, Joachim von RibbentropJoachim von Ribbentrop
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. He was later hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.-Early life:...
, the German Foreign Minister, had asked to be informed. The New York Herald Tribune carried the same story, and The Times of London called it one of the "most loathsome" stories of the war. The leaks killed whatever might have remained of the initiative, although the mass deportations of Jews from Hungary had already been stopped by the Hungarian government on July 7, fearful that government ministers might be held personally responsible by the Allies.
The British released Brand in October 1944 but, according to Hecht, would not allow him to travel to Hungary, compelling him instead to travel to Palestine. Bauer disputes this, arguing that the story of Brand being forced to travel to Palestine was spread around Israel at the time of the trial of Malchiel Greenwald, a freelance writer who accused Kastner, by then a government spokesman, of having collaborated with the Nazis. In fact, writes Bauer, by that time Brand himself was terrified of returning to Budapest, convinced the Germans would murder him. In Palestine, Brand tried to contact Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization. Weizmann responded to Brand's letter, saying that his secretary would arrange an appointment for them to meet. Brand alleges that the appointment was never made. The last lines of Brand's testimony to the District Court in Jerusalem during the libel trial were: "Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry's official leaders ever since. All these things shall haunt me until my dying day. It is much more than a man can bear."
Himmler's involvement in the proposal
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
because a cable from Edmund Veesenmayer of the SS to the German Foreign Office on July 22, 1944 stated that Brand and Grosz had been sent to Turkey on the orders of Himmler. Kurt Becher
Kurt Becher
Kurt Andreas Ernst Becher was an SS Untersturmführer and later a Standartenführer who was Commissar of all German concentration camps, and Chief of the Economic Department of the SS Command in Hungary during the German occupation in 1944.- SS Background :Becher was born to a wealthy family...
also indicated that his orders came directly from Himmler: "So I came into contact with Joel Brand ... Trucks were a big problem. So trucks were discussed, 10,000 trucks that is. There were many discussions. Himmler said to me: 'Take whatever you can from the Jews. Promise them whatever you want. What we will keep is another matter'."
Eichmann himself later testified that the order came from Himmler, and a report from Kastner shows that Eichmann did not seem happy about having to deal with Brand. Kastner wrote that when Brand failed to return from Istanbul, Eichmann said: "Yes. I saw all of this in advance. I warned Becher countless times not to allow himself to be led by the nose. If I do not receive a positive answer within forty-eight hours, I will have all this Jewish bag of filth from Budapest laid low." (Werde ich das ganze juedische Dreckpack von Budapest umlegen lassen.)
Bauer writes that the "clumsiness of the approach has been a wonderment to all observers." He argues that it is obvious that Eichmann was Himmler's reluctant messenger, and that Eichmann's own inclination was clearly to continue murdering Jews, not to sell them. On the day Brand left for Vienna and Istanbul, Eichmann traveled to Auschwitz to make sure Rudolf Hoess, the commander of the camp, would be ready to receive the first arrivals scheduled to leave Hungary on May 14. Hoess told him there would be problems processing such large numbers, whereupon Eichmann ordered that there should be no selections but that all the new arrivals should be gassed immediately, which does not indicate that he was willing to delay the exterminations until Brand returned from Istanbul, as Brand seemed to believe.
Bauer argues that the presence of Clages at the meetings signals that Himmler had changed the emphasis from blood-for-trucks to the hidden agenda of secret talks aimed at peace. Bauer writes that there is no indication of what exactly Himmler wanted to achieve, because he did not commit his thoughts to paper, but Bauer points out that Brand and Grosz arrived in Istanbul just two months before the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, and that Himmler knew there was a plot, though did not know where and when it would be carried out. It is possible that Himmler wanted to open negotiations for peace in the event that Hitler did not survive, using two low-level agents, a Jew and a spy, in case he had to distance himself from their mission; and if Hitler did survive, Himmler could offer him the chance to conclude a separate peace deal with the West, excluding the Soviet Union.
Brand himself eventually adopted such a theory. Two months before his death he testified at the trial in Germany of Eichmann's deputies Hermann Krumey and Otto Hunsche. He told the court that "though the deal was suggested by Eichmann" it must have originated in the mind of Himmler as one of his desperate attempts at driving a wedge between the Allies. "I made a terrible mistake in passing this on to the British. ... It is now clear to me that Himmler sought to sow suspicion among the Allies as a preparation for his much desired Nazi-Western coalition against Moscow."
Aftermath
In Budapest, the Vaada had waited anxiously for Brand's return and for some news that the AlliesAllies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
would help. On May 27, 1944, Hansi Brand was arrested and beaten by the Hungarian Arrow Cross
Arrow Cross Party
The Arrow Cross Party was a national socialist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which led in Hungary a government known as the Government of National Unity from October 15, 1944 to 28 March 1945...
, though she testified at Eichmann's trial that she withstood it and gave them no information about the deal that Eichmann had told her was a "state secret" (Reichsgeheimnis). Hilberg writes that the committee did not expect the Allies actually to supply goods to Eichmann, but it hoped for some gesture that would allow protracted negotiations with the Nazis to begin while the Jews waited for the arrival of the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
.
Brand's failure to return to Budapest meant the Vaada was thrown back on its own resources, bitter about the lack of help from the outside world, and in particular from Jews living in safe countries. Bauer argues that the mistake the Vaada made was to adopt the almost anti-Semitic belief in unlimited Jewish power. The committee believed that Jewish leaders could move freely during the war and could persuade the Allies to do whatever needed to be done to save the Jews of Hungary. They had similar trust in the goodwill and power of the Allied leadership, but the Allies were gearing up for the invasion of Normandy just as Brand set out on his mission, and "[a]t that crucial moment", writes Bauer, "to antagonize the Soviets because of some hare-brained Gestapo plan to ransom Jews was totally out of the question." Bauer writes: "Perhaps, in their hopeless situation, [the Aid and Rescue Committee] had to believe these things in order to survive, but when their beliefs had to be tested against the cold realities of a world war, they proved to be so many illusions." Rudolf Kastner later wrote that the Vaada had no choice but to believe in the possibility of rescue. Of Jewish communities living in countries unaffected by the Holocaust, he wrote: "They were outside, we were inside. They moralized, we feared death. They had sympathy for us and believed themselves to be powerless; we wanted to live and believed rescue had to be possible."
Brand was a bitter man when he was finally released by the British. He joined the Lehi
Lehi (group)
Lehi , commonly referred to in English as the Stern Group or Stern Gang, was a militant Zionist group founded by Avraham Stern in the British Mandate of Palestine...
(Stern Gang) who were fighting to remove the British from Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The Istanbul mission created a rift between him and his wife, who for many years wondered what the truth was behind her husband's failure to return in time. Bauer concludes that, despite the haphazard nature of the mission and its ultimate failure, Brand was an extremely courageous man who had passionately wanted to help the Jewish people, yet whose life was thereafter plagued by the suspicion of family and friends, part of a serious misunderstanding, according to Bauer, of all the Jewish actors in the situation. In 1964, Brand died in Israel of liver disease brought on by alcoholism, reportedly a broken man.
Further reading
- "Mass Murderer of Jews Found", The Guardian, May 24, 1960.
- "On Trial", Time Magazine, July 11, 1955.
- "Report of Jewish Aid and Rescue Committee in Budapest", 1942–1945, by Dr. Rezsoe Kasztner. T/37(237) Submitted during the course of the Adolf Eichmann trial and marked T/1113 (BO6-900, Vol. II, p. 908–910); also cited as:
- Israel Kastner, "Report of the Rescue Committee in Budapest", 1942–1945 (submitted to the Zionist Congress), 108 [Hebrew]. Cited by Judge Halevi, Cr.C. (Jm.) 124/53 Attorney General v. Gruenvald, 44 P.M. (1965) 3, at 115 [translated by Leora Bilsky].
- Biss, Andreas. Der Stopp des Endlösung, Stuttgart, 1966, pp. 40–49.
- Braham, Randolph L., entry on Joel Brand in the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust. Macmillan, 1990, vol. 1, pp. 238–240.
- Brand, Joel. Advocate for the dead: The story of Joel Brand. Four Square Books, 1959.
- Elon, AmosAmos Elon-Biography:Amos Elon was born in Vienna. He immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1933. He studied law and history in Israel and England. He was married to Beth Elon, a New York-born literary agent, with whom he had one daughter, Danae. In the 1990s, Elon began to spend much of his time in Italy...
. Timetable: The Story of Joel Brand. Arrow, 1981. - Kimmerling, BaruchBaruch KimmerlingBaruch Kimmerling was an Israeli scholar and professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Upon his death in 2007, The Times described him as "the first academic to use scholarship to reexamine the founding tenets of Zionism and the Israeli State"...
. "Israel's Culture of Martyrdom", The Nation, January 10, 2005. - Weissberg, Alexander. Die Geschichte von Joel Brand, Cologne-Berlin, 1956. Published in English as Desperate Mission, Kessinger Publishing, 1958.