Rehabilitating Rezso Kasztner

Dealing with Satan, Rezso’s Kasztner’s Daring Rescue Mission is the story of Reszo Kasztner, the man responsible for saving Ladislaus Lob and 1670 Jewish men, women and children from Bergen-Belsen. Combining history with memoir and a remarkably honest analysis of morality and survival, Ladislaus Lob examines the life and actions of a man of extraordinary contradictions. A highly controversial figure, regarded by some as a traitor and by many others as a hero, Kasztner was eventually murdered by an extremist Jewish gang in Israel.

Here, Ladislaus Lob discusses his book with Katszner’s daughter Zsuzi and the historian David Ceserani.

David Cesarani is research professor in history at Royal Holloway, University of London. His most recent publications include Eichmann. His Life and Crimes, and The Jews and the Left/ The Left and the Jews written primarily for Members of Parliament. He is a co-editor of the journal Patterns of Prejudice. David Cesarani was a member of the British delegation to the International Task Force for Intergovernmental Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research and is currently an advisor to the Home Office on Holocaust Memorial Day as well as other UK and overseas NGOs. He served on the advisory board of the Imperial War Museum's permanent Holocaust exhibition and has made a number of radio documentaries for the BBC and acted as consultant for several historical programmes on television, including The Irving Trial (C4, 2000) and I Met Adolf Eichmann (BBC2, 2001).

Ladislaus Lob was born in Transylvania. He is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Sussex. He translated Nine Suitcases by Bela Zsolt who was also saved by Katszner..

Zsuzsi Kasztner was born in Geneva in 1946 and grew up in Tel Aviv. She was eleven when her father was assassinated. She lives in Tel Aviv where she works as a hospital nurse. She has three daughters, one of them Merav Michaeli, a well-known radio and television presenter.