Garami Erika et al.: Budapest–Bergen-Belsen–Svájc. A Kasztner-vonat fővárosi utasai (Budapest, 2020)
Annie Szamosi: Utazásom a múltba
“Inside the camp they started separating, men to one side, women and children to the other, and our group dwindled until my brother and I were alone in the middle of the camp. Just before dark, we saw the silhouette of a girl coming and she said words in a foreign language. She spoke Hungarian, and we understood only Polish. But she gave us a warm hug, and we knew we were wanted, and she took us arm in arm to her barracks.” This woman was Naomi Meyer, my mother's best friend. (I will never forget the look on my mother’s face when I told her this story that I had come across.) Naomi Meyer, a beautiful girl of twenty took care of the two children as if she were their mother. For the first time in months the two little boys could sleep for three consecutive nights in the same place, in a relatively “normal” building. This time spent in a concentration camp had been the quietest and happiest time in their lives until then. After all that they had gone through, Bergen-Belsen seemed like some summer camp to them. Everything depends on context. And that fact, of course, is true of Kasztner and his co-rescuers as well. I once told the story of Kasztner and his train to a friend of mine, saying, that for many people the problem with Kasztner was that he had “played cards with the devil.” “Yes", my friend replied, “but God wasn’t at the table.” And if any certainty has come out of my investigation, it is the sad truth that in Budapest in 1944, God was not present anywhere at all. I wrote my thesis, I defended it, it can be located as Rudolf Kasztner in History, in Testimony and in Memory. I gave a number of talks on Kasztner, participated in a number of debates about him; I even wrote, in conjunction with my writing partner Ronalda Jones, a feature screenplay on the story. Although there were a number of people interested in making the film, ten years ago many others felt that we should drop this subject. There had been so many Holocaust-related stories on film, people were weary of the topic. Unfortunately however, political circumstances around the world have evolved in such a way that this story has once again become current and relevant. And with the help of an American producer, Dan Wigutow and an English director, Roger Spottiswoode (who even has a James Bond film to his credit), the feature film will hopefully, sooner or later, become a reality. And if that happens, perhaps then I will finally be able to leave behind me this “obsession" that compels me to continually revisit this story that I have just related to you. (Talk given at the opening of the exhibition 'Stories hidden behind the waif on 21 June 2019 at Budapest City Archives.) Annie Szamosi: Rudolf Kasztner in History, in Testimony and in Memory. MA Thesis, Toronto, 2006. York University https://www.worldcat.org/title/rudolf-kasztner-in-history-intestimony-and-in-memory/oclc/228115386 15
