Israel Kasztner is one of the more controversial and mysterious figures in modern Jewish history. An in-depth documentary is long overdue about the man who negotiated (or bought, if you prefer) the lives of 1,685 Hungarian Jews from the Nazis, and was gunned down as a traitor on the streets of Tel Aviv in 1957.
Gaylen Ross’ “Killing Kasztner” aspires to be that film, comprehensive and probing — but to a fault. Enthralled by her access to Kasztner’s family and his murderer, the filmmaker was overly lenient in the editing room, emerging with a bloated two-hour movie that diffuses and squanders the power of its numerous gripping sequences.
“Killing Kasztner,” which received a New York theatrical run last fall, screens Feb. 21 in the East Bay International Jewish Film Festival.
The Nazis didn’t occupy Hungary until 1944, but displayed extraordinary alacrity in deporting and exterminating the country’s Jewish population. American Jews were well aware of the Final Solution by this time, and Adolf Eichmann schemed to extract some of their dollars in ransom.
He approached Kasztner, who for years had worked with Jewish refugees. Though not a particularly powerful fellow, he apparently did not lack for confidence. The Hungarian lawyer succeeded in bartering money, gold and diamonds for a trainload of Jews — and he also compiled the list of lucky passengers, including his own family, which contributed to the enmity that built toward him. The passengers were sent to Bergen-Belsen until Kasztner delivered enough money for Eichmann to let the group proceed to Switzerland.
Kasztner never got enough credit for engineering the largest rescue of Jews during the war, say the survivors from the train as well as his daughter and granddaughters. His opponents portray him as a Nazi collaborator who benefited personally and, even worse, made a separate secret deal with the Nazis to write letters on their behalf.
After Kasztner and his family moved to the new state of Israel, he found opportunities as well as enemies. In 1954, tired of one crackpot’s unrelenting attacks accusing him of collaboration, Kasztner sued for libel. The turning point in the lengthy, high-profile trial occurred when he falsely denied writing letters to war-crimes investigators vouching for some of the Nazi officers he had dealt with in Hungary.
The film informs us that the case marked the first real discussion of the Holocaust in Israel — seven years before the testimony of survivors in Eichmann’s trial galvanized the nation. Kasztner was later exonerated, but not until after he was killed.
This is important, yet messy (and largely forgotten) history, laced with prickly moral questions. For example, Yad Vashem has long made a point of honoring Righteous Gentiles who hid and saved Jews, but did not (until recently) acknowledge Kasztner’s efforts.
“Killing Kasztner” dilutes these pithy issues with lengthy interviews with Ze’ev Eckstein, who was recruited by the Shin Bet to infiltrate a right-wing group in the mid-1950s and instead became so enamored of its beliefs that he shot Kasztner in 1957. He received a life sentence (as did his two accomplices), though he only served seven years for the murder.
The filmmaker likewise devotes an inordinate amount of screen time to Kasztner’s family, to inconsistent effect. As it becomes evident that filmmaker Ross empathizes too much with Kasztner’s daughter, the film feels less like an investigation of a man’s life and more like a legal brief for the rehabilitation of his reputation.
Her case would have been stronger, even Kasztner’s staunchest supporters would agree, had Ross made a more focused, more succinct documentary.
“Killing Kasztner” screens at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 21 at the CineArts, 2314 Monument Blvd., Pleasant Hill. For tickets, call (510) 318-6456 or visit www.eastbayjewishfilm.org.