Trapped by Evil and Deceit: The Story of Hansi and Joel Brand

When the Holocaust broke out in Europe, Hansi and Joel Brand were joined by Israel (Rezs) Kasztner to launch an organized effort to save thousands of human lives. Their efforts, which involved playing a dangerous bluffing game against the Nazi regime, helped to end the Auschwitz extermination. Their success put them at odds with the political machine of the young state of Israel. Politicians wanted the public to believe that there was nothing they could do, a sentiment which many still believe to this day. This cover-up led to Israel's first politically-motivated homicide.

• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• 1. Background
• Hungary
• The Jews in Hungary
• 2. The Brands
• The Beginning of the Holocaust and the First Rescue Operation
• Joel
• Hansi
• The Wedding, 1934–1935
• The "Golden Age": The Calm before the Storm
• Part I. Towards Holocaust
• 3. Early Rescue Operations
• Evasion of Labor Service
• The Rescue from the Deportation of "Alien" Jews
• 4. The Refugees
• The Refugees who Arrived in Hungary
• The Hungarian Jews and the Refugees
• The Brands and the Refugees
• The Smuggling Operations (Tiyul)
• 5. The Budapest Relief and Rescue Committee
• The Members of the Committee
• 6. The Gap between Data and Knowledge
• Warning Signs of the Holocaust in Hungary
• What did the Hungarian Jews Know?
• Part II. Holocaust
• 7. The Occupation
• 8. Early Rescue Attempts in Budapest
• Background
• The Front Line
• The Bratislava Working Group
• The Auschwitz Protocols
• Five Different Ways for Rescue
• The Jewish Council: Judenrat
• The Palestinian Office
• The JPU (Jewish Pioneer Underground)
• The Rescue Committee
• 9. The Negotiations with Eichmann: The "Blood For Goods" Deal
• 10. The Destruction of the Hungarian Jewry
• The Preparations
• Liquidation of the Periphery Jews
• The Fate of Budapest Jewry
• 11. Rescue Activities in Budapest after Joel Left for His Mission
• Continued Negotiations with Eichmann
• Strasshof or "Jews on Ice"
• "The Train of the Privileged"
• The Forged Documents and Hansi's Arrest
• Rescuing the Budapest Jews at the End of August 1944
• Krausz's Rescue Attempts
• The Jewish Pioneer Underground in Hungary
• Additional Achievements of the Negotiations with the Nazis
• Ottó Komoly and the International Red Cross (IRC)
• The Budapest Ghetto
• 12. The Paratroopers' Affair
• The Paratroopers' Mission
• The Paratroopers
• The Paratroopers' Activities in Hungary
• The Reasons for the Paratroopers' Failure in Hungary
• 13. Hansi: "The Heart of the Consortium"
• Part III. Indifference
• 14. Istanbul
• Indifference and Negligence
• What Could Have Possibly been Done?
• 15. Pre-State Israel, the Jewish People, and the Holocaust
• The Jews over the World: What They Knew and How They Reacted
• Jewish Rescue Policy
• Part IV. Deception
• 16. The Struggle for the Narrative
• The Jewish Public in Palestine/Israel and Its Post-War Leadership
• The Attitude toward Jewish Rescuers of Jews
• 17. The Kasztner Affair
• Kasztner's Report
• Kasztner's Mission to Nuremberg
• Kasztner's Trial
• 18. Rewriting the History
• The Early Years: The Holocaust and Its Victims are Not on the Public Agenda
• Joel's Mission Exposure and Its Implications
• 19. Deception Techniques
• Real-Time Documents
• Non-German Documents
• German Documents
• Downplaying the Importance of the Rescue Attempts
• Eliminating the Brands from the History
• Kasztner's Unborn Children
• Damaging Joel's Reputation and Trustworthiness
• Who is Misleading?
• 20. The Brands Affair
• Epilogue
• Appendices
• Appendix 1: Sharet's Report
• Appendix 2: The Jewish Agency Rescue Policy
• Timetable
• Bibliography

Daniel Brand, Hansi and Joel's one surviving son, has been researching the Hungarian holocaust for the last 20 years. Previously, he was a Scientific Attache for the State of Israel, a senior advisor for Israel's Department of Defense, and a researcher at Israel's Atomic Energy Commission. Earlier in his career, he served as lieutenant colonel in the Israeli Defense Force.

“In 1944 the Hungarian Jewish activist Joel Brand was sent from Budapest to neutral Turkey to broker a deal on behalf of the Nazis – represented by Eichmann – with the Zionists and the Allies regarding the exchange of thousands of Jews for necessary war materials, the notorious “Blood for Goods”... Daniel Brand, the youngest son of Joel and his wife Hansi, has written a meticulously researched and detailed narrative, based on a huge range of historical documents, attempting to unravel the complexities of the controversial deal, its context, its aftermath and his parents’ part in both. … Each part is divided into short clearly written sections, which make this complicated material fairly easy reading. It is a uniquely personal contribution to the accounts of this murky chapter in Holocaust history.”

“The last chapter of the Holocaust—the extermination of half a million Hungarian Jews in 1944—remains shrouded in mystery. How could so many people be lured to their deaths, in such a short time frame, and at this eleventh hour of the war? One of the key controversies concerns Adolf Eichmann’s infamous proposal to release up to one million Jews in exchange for strategic goods. In May 1944, the Nazis dispatched the author’s father, the rescue worker Joel Brand, to neutral Turkey, to submit this bizarre bid to the Zionists and the Allies. In this important book, Joel’s son Daniel rehabilitates the memory of his parents, which has been the object of multiple misinterpretations. In the process, he challenges the idea that Blood-for-Goods was a mere Nazi deception, and the Brands the unwitting dupes who, supposedly, facilitated this endeavor. Instead he argues that the leaders of the free world failed to realize the potential for saving large numbers of victims that was inherent to the proposal.”

—Paul Sanders, Associate Professor, NEOMA Business School

“Dani Brand’s analysis of the situation in Hungary in the early 1940s is much deeper than most. His is the first I have read to do justice to the frame of mind and confused attitudes of the Jewish population, highlighting their impossible situation at this desperate time. He helps to dispel the image suggested by some, that Jews were ‘like sheep to the slaughter.’ He pays long overdue tribute to the truly heroic activities of the Jewish Refugees Committee. He tells how the JRC leadership (including his own parents) and many young Zionists, without weapons, knowingly risked their lives in the cause of saving others from the death camps. Some, like the JRC leader Otto Komoly, were murdered by the Arrow Cross fascists.”

—Tomi Komoly, Hungarian Holocaust survivor