Ross first learned of Kasztner while working on another documentary, Blood Money: Switzerland's Nazi Gold. Ross interviewed a Hungarian woman who asserted that Kasztner had saved her life. Ross spent the next eight years researching and filming the documentary on Kasztner. She interviewed survivors who had been rescued by Kasztner, Kasztner's living relatives, the son of the opposing lawyer in Kasztner's case, historians, journalists, and Kasztner's assassin, Ze'ev Eckstein.
In June 2001, Ross was invited to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City to film the first conference on Kasztner in the United States.[4] The event was intended as an academic forum, but Kasztner survivors became outraged when accusations of Kasztner's collaboration with the Nazis were brought up. Also in attendance was Kasztner's granddaughter, who asked why her grandfather was still being blamed for the deaths of Jews he could not save.[5]
Rudolf Kasztner
Synopsis
Kasztner's daughter and his three granddaughters seek redemption for their family name. Survivors of Kasztner's transport want the shame erased from their rescue. Their lives, they have been told, were delivered at the expense of others. On the other side of this issue is a young lawyer, whose father was responsible for Kasztner's legal defeat. He wants to fulfill his father's wish, and prevent Kasztner's name from joining the legion of Holocaust heroes.[6]
Ross details Kasztner's rescue efforts as well as the accusations against Kasztner and the trial that followed. In the film, Ross interviews Ze'ev Eckstein, who was convicted for Kasztner's death. Eckstein and the other conspirators served only 7 years of their life sentences, after being commuted on recommendation from Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion.
Eckstein was 20 years old when he was first employed by Israel's fledgling secret service. Hoping to make a name for himself, he turned double agent by right-wing extremists. Eckstein's goal was to avenge the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews whose deaths were blamed on Kasztner. On the night of the murder, Eckstein explains that the first bullet fired at Kasztner was a dud, prompting Kasztner to run into bushes in a dark Tel Aviv garden. Eckstein said he fired two additional bullets before another conspirator fired a fourth bullet that would ultimately kill Kasztner. As the film unfolds, Eckstein and Ross eventually revisit the scene of the crime. Zsuzsa accompanied by Michal and Merav later visited the graves of her parents, Kasztner and his wife to pay their respects.[7]
Most notably, the film sets up a meeting between Kasztner's daughter and her father's assassin.[8]
Production
Ross commented in an interview with Aviva Berlin:
The film is very personal, very emotional in the portrayal of the families and survivors, and they were terribly candid and open in their view of what had happened to them over the years, and the effects of the trial and murder on their lives. Especially Kasztner's daughter Zsuzsi. And because the film shows the other side, significantly the murderer's revelations and personal history, and other detractors of Kasztner, I understood how sensitive and potentially upsetting the film could be. What was gratifying was to see how the audience respected the balance and understood, I believe, that I tried to show everyone in the film, pro or con Kasztner, with dignity and to allow their voices to be heard. I didn't always agree with some of the positions taken, but I tried to have their opinions represented.[9]
When asked why it is still so difficult to talk about Kasztner even half a century later, Ross commented in her interview with FF2 Media's Jan Huttner:
I'm trying to separate the truth about Kasztner (and what Kasztner tried to do) from the rumors, falsehoods, misinformation, and politics. I was not there, but I've certainly read and looked at the newest research that has evolved over five decades. Archives have been opened, and new interpretations are now being given to the Hungarian Holocaust. This information was not available to Judge Benjamin Halevi during the original trial in Israel; not available to Ben Hecht; not available to the world then.[10]
Reception
The film was well received by critics. Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle said, "Killing Kastzner...digs deep and scores big".[11] Martin Perez of The New Republic called Kasztner, "a movie so philosophically contentious, also in the abstract, that anyone who ponders well will want to ponder here".[12] Alison Gang of the San Diego tribute wrote, "It’s one thing when a documentary tells a story that has already unfolded. But when it provides a new window onto the past and even creates new chapters, that’s when documentary filmmaking reaches its pinnacle."[13]
Killing Kasztner received the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2009 Boston Jewish Film Festival.[14]
This is a selected bibliography and other resources for The Holocaust, including prominent primary sources, historical studies, notable survivor accounts and autobiographies, as well as other documentation and further hypotheses.
Gaylen Ross is an American director, writer, producer and actress, best known for playing Francine Parker in the 1978 horror film Dawn of the Dead and also noted for directing the 2008 documentary Killing Kasztner.
Rezső Kasztner, also known as Rudolf Israel Kastner, was a Hungarian-Israeli journalist and lawyer who became known for having helped a small group of Jews escape from occupied Europe during the Holocaust but not informing the majority about the reality of what awaited them in Auschwitz, leading to thousands of deaths. He was assassinated in 1957 after an Israeli court accused him of having collaborated with the Nazis.
The Holocaust has been a prominent subject of art and literature throughout the second half of the twentieth century. There is a wide range of ways–including dance, film, literature, music, and television–in which the Holocaust has been represented in the arts and popular culture.
The Kastner train consisted of 35 cattle wagons that left Budapest on 30 June 1944, during the German occupation of Hungary, carrying over 1,600 Jews temporarily to Bergen-Belsen and safety in Switzerland after large ransom paid by Swiss Orthodox Jew Yitzchak Sternbuch, Recha Sternbuch's husband. The train was named after Rudolf Kastner, a Hungarian-Jewish lawyer and journalist, who was a founding member of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, a group that smuggled Jews out of occupied Europe during the Holocaust. Kastner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, the German SS officer in charge of deporting Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland, to allow over 1,600 Jews to escape in exchange for gold, diamonds, and cash.
Ivy Meeropol is a director and producer of documentaries for film and television, known for Indian Point and Heir to an Execution. She is the daughter of Michael Meeropol and Ann Karus Meeropol and granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and adoptive granddaughter of Abel Meeropol, author of "Strange Fruit" and "The House I Live In". A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she served as a legislative aide to Congressman Harry Johnston (D-Florida).
Ehud Yaari is an Israeli journalist, author, television personality and political commentator.
Joel Brand was a member of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, an underground Zionist group in Budapest, Hungary, that smuggled Jews out of German-occupied Europe to the relative safety of Hungary, during the Holocaust. When Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, Brand became known for his efforts to save the Jewish community from deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland and the gas chambers there.
Paradise Camp is a 1986 documentary film about Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, written and directed by Australians Paul Rea and Frank Heimans, respectively. Czechoslovakian Jews were first told that Theresienstadt was a community established for their safety. They quickly recognized it as a ghetto and concentration camp.
Aviva Kempner is a German-born American filmmaker. Her documentaries investigate non-stereotypical images of Jews in history and focus on the untold stories of Jewish people. She is most well known for The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.
Lynn Shelton was an American filmmaker, known for writing, directing, and producing such films as Humpday and Your Sister's Sister. She was associated with the mumblecore genre.
In 1960, the major Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina by Israeli agents and brought to Israel to stand trial. His trial, which opened on 11 April 1961, was televised and broadcast internationally, intended to educate about the crimes committed against Jews, which had been secondary to the Nuremberg trials. Prosecutor and Attorney General Gideon Hausner also tried to challenge the portrayal of Jewish functionaries that had emerged in the earlier trials, showing them at worst as victims forced to carry out Nazi decrees while minimizing the "gray zone" of morally questionable behavior. Hausner later wrote that available archival documents "would have sufficed to get Eichmann sentenced ten times over"; nevertheless, he summoned more than 100 witnesses, most of whom had never met the defendant, for didactic purposes. Defense attorney Robert Servatius refused the offers of twelve survivors who agreed to testify for the defense, exposing what they considered immoral behavior by other Jews. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt reported on the trial in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The book had enormous impact in popular culture, but its ideas have become increasingly controversial.
Amon Leopold Göth was an Austrian SS functionary and war criminal. He served as the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Płaszów in German-occupied Poland for most of the camp's existence during World War II.
Larysa Kondracki is a Canadian producer, director and screenwriter. Her debut feature film, The Whistleblower, was released in 2011 and received nominations for six Genies at the 32nd Genie Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. She has received international accolades for reporting true stories of victims of trafficking in the former Yugoslavia.
Pamela Katz is an American screenwriter and novelist best known for her collaborations with director Margarethe von Trotta, including Rosenstrasse and Hannah Arendt.
Pamela Gray is an American screenwriter.
Andrew "Andy" Cohen is a three-time Emmy nominated independent filmmaker and journalist. The founder of AC Films Inc, Cohen has directed, written, and produced feature-length and short-form films. He produced and co-wrote his first film in 1996, Gaylen Ross' Dealers Among Dealers, about the New York City diamond business. Cohen would later co-write and produce Ross' 2008 documentary Killing Kasztner on the life and assassination of Rezso Kasztner.
Susan E. Cernyak-Spatz was an Austrian-born professor of German language and literature at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She was a Holocaust survivor. Her memoir, Protective Custody: Prisoner 34042, was published in 2005.
Vanessa Lapa is an Israeli documentary filmmaker known for two films that deal with Nazi war criminals Heinrich Himmler and his colleague Albert Speer. In addition, she has produced more than a hundred reports and documentaries for the television channels in Israel.
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