Tonight marks the 69th anniversary of the Satmar Rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum's rescue from the Nazis, and Satmar is marking the occassion with giant banquets in Brooklyn and elsewhere as it does every year. But Teitelbaum was saved by a Zionist – a fact the virulently anti-Zionist Satmar has spent the last 69 years trying to obscure.
The Satmar Rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum
Tonight marks the 69th anniversary of the Satmar Rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum's rescue from the Nazis, and Satmar is marking the occassion with giant banquets in Brooklyn and elsewhere as it does every year.
But Teitelbaum was saved by a Zionist – a fact the virulently anti-Zionist Satmar has spent the last 69 years trying to obscure.
Teitelbaum survived imprisonment in Bergen-Belsen because he and his entourage were passengers on Kasztner's Train (more here), the Zionist-organized rescue of almost 1800 Hungarian Jews negotiated by Hungarian Zionist leader Rudolph Kasztner with Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi in charge of the Nazi's Final Solution.
Kasztner's train was diverted to Bergen-Belsen by Eichmann and its passengers were held there as Eichmann waited to see if the Jewish Agency would pay him additional ransom to save other Jews.
The Kasztner hostages – who had marginally better conditions than other prisoners – were released on Eichmann's orders, 318 after about one month and the remainder after close to five months. All were taken to safety in Switzerland.
After the War, when Kaszter was libeled and the government of Israel sued in support of Kasztner, Teitelbaum was asked to testify on Kaszter's behalf. Teitelbaum refused to acknowledge the Zionists role in his rescue and reportedly replied, "I was saved by God, not by Zionists." (Satmar would later develop a mythology to cover for Teitelbaum's lies that credited anti-Zionist haredi Jews for the rebbe's rescue, but that mythology has been clearly proved false. Kasztner saved him.)
Teitelbaum had ordered his hasidim to stay in Hungary. He blocked Zionist organizations from operating in his region (also see this) and steadfastly refused to believe the Nazis would ever harm Hungary's anti-Zionist Jews. He was, of course, horribly wrong.
So Teitelbaum fled Nazi-controlled Europe with the help of the Zionists he so vilified, leaving his followers to burn without him in Auschwitz.
It is his rescue – but not his rescuer – that Satmar celebrates tonight.
Related Posts:
The Satmar Rebbe and the Holocaust Part 1.
The Satmar Rebbe and the Holocaust Part 2.