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Holocaust survivor Manny Mandel spoke about his experience escaping Hungary aboard the Kasztner train in late 1944 at The Jewish Center in Princeton April 19. Mandel is a volunteer for the Speaker's Bureau of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Mandel was born into a religious Jewish family in the port city of Riga, Latvia, in 1936, and was 8 years old when the Nazis entered Hungary in 1944. Until that time, Budapest was a vibrant Jewish city with 200,000 Jews out of 1 million inhabitants. Hungary was the last country to be invaded by the Nazis prior to the end of the war.

Mandel began by telling the audience about his childhood trip at age 6 visiting relatives in Yugoslavia when policemen entered the residence and ordered everyone to go outside and walk toward the Danube River -- supposedly so a census could be conducted. Mandel learned later that everyone who was ordered to turn left at the river bank was shot; he and his family turned right and escaped certain death. Mandel and his family returned to Budapest where life for Jews was changing. Hungary had allied itself with Germany, and it was in this environment that the Nazis entered Hungary, commanded by Adolph Eichmann, who was determined to complete "The Final Solution."

During this time, a man named Reszo "Rudolph" Kasztner, a Hungarian Jew, made an appointment to discuss a deal with Eichmann at the St. Margaret Hotel in Budapest. Many have said that Kasztner was a hero and others felt he sold his soul by collaborating with the Nazis, since he negotiated with Eichmann whereby he traded goods for Jewish lives. Mandel stated that he viewed Kasztner as "neither a hero nor a devil." Other negotiations were also conducted at that time by Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler. Kasztner's actions saved 1,670 Jewish souls from the gas chambers but deprived thousands of their chance to possibly escape death. The Nazis were already running into trouble on the Russian front and the timing, many felt, may have given the Jews an opportunity to confront their enemy as had been done with the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

The Nazis agreed to Kasztner's deal and the train rolled out of Budapest with Mandel and his family on board, as well as 19 members of Kasztner's own family and other prominent Hungarian Jews. Mandel advised that no one knew where the train was headed but thought eventually they would enter Palestine, since they had been given the appropriate certificates of immigration needed for entry there. Kasztner stayed behind in Hungary negotiating further with the Nazis. Mandel said that after three days of travel with 80 others in the boxcar, the doors opened and they were suddenly in Bergen Belsen, a notorious slave labor camp which also housed Anne Frank.

Daily life at the camp was "extremely boring" Mandel stated, since the Jews on the Kasztner train were not sent out to work like the others. For six months Mandel and his family did nothing but stand outside, waiting for their daily count by the Nazis to occur, picked lice and other vermin off of themselves, and tried to make something edible out of the "things" they were given to eat. Mandel advised that their desire to maintain normalcy was the most important thing. Mandel and his family, as well as the remaining Jews who were on the Kasztner train, were sent by Nazi transport into Switzerland, where they were immediately fumigated. Eventually the Mandels arrived in Palestine and remained there during the War of Independence, a time which Mandel described as "invigorating and exciting." He preferred to remain in Israel but his family wanted to immigrate to the U.S., and they did so in 1949 when Mandel was only 13 years old. Mandel candidly stated that, had it not been for Kasztner, he would not be alive today.

After the war, Holocaust survivor Malchiel Greenwald, who escaped from a death camp where 52 members of his family were gassed and cremated, only cared about finding the man whom he believed betrayed his family -- Rudolph Kasztner. Greenwald himself tried to let the world know what was happening in Auschwitz after his escape from the camp, and he was certain that Kasztner knew of the fate awaiting the Jews of Hungary but chose to remain silent. He began speaking about Kasztner's silence.

Kasztner immigrated to Israel after the war and became a prominent political figure when he filed suit against Greenwald for criminal libel in 1955 to censor any gossip about his previous negotiations with the Nazis. It turned out during the court proceedings that Kasztner was "put on trial" instead of Greenwald. Attorneys for Greenwald argued that Kasztner elected not to let the Jews of Hungary know they were going to Auschwitz and allowed them to believe they were going to a labor camp. Mandel felt that Kasztner did an impressive and important job saving as many Jews as he could, and as far as the trial, Mandel stated that it was "not an issue" for him. He didn't follow any details of the proceedings.

The Israeli judge told the court that "masses were sacrificed for the sake of a few" and that Kasztner "broke his trust with Jewry." Greenwald was found guilty on one count of libel -- falsely accusing Kasztner of sharing Nazi profits -- and was sentenced to pay one Israeli shekel. Kasztner was assassinated in March, 1957, by a Holocaust survivor. When asked how he felt upon hearing the news of Kasztner's death, Mandel advised that he was "sad" and that this was "not an appropriate reward."

Mandel met his wife at a B'nai B'rith event and settled in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. They have a son and daughter, as well as three grandchildren.