BEN HECHT'S "PERFIDY": AN ANALYSIS OF HIS REWRITING OF HISTORY

New York: No Publisher [WZO?], 1962. Item #39933

First edition. Original paper wrappers, 16 pages ; 23 cm. Named Persons: Kasztner, Rezso Rudolf, 1906-1957. Grunwald, Malkiel. Hecht, Ben, 1893-1964. Perfidy. Grünwald, Malkiel. Grinvald, Malkiel. Kasztner, Rezso Rudolf, 1906-1957. A refutation of Ben Hecht's account, in his book Perfidy, of the trial of M. Grunwald before an Israeli court on the charge of criminal libel of R. Kastner. “Once in a very great while you read a book that forever changes your perspective. For me that book was Ben Hecht's Perfidy, which I devoured sometime in 1974 or '75 after it appeared on a recommended reading list issued by the Jewish Defense League, of which I was a member. Perfidy means treachery; the deliberate breaking of faith. In 1961, when Hecht published his aptly titled expose about events in the Holocaust, Hitler's war against the Jews was a repressed memory in the American Jewish consciousness. Perfidy sold well enough to go into a second edition, though by the time I procured a copy it had gone out of print and was rumored to have been blacklisted. PERFIDY IS a devastating account of how, toward the end of the Shoah, the Jews of Hungary were betrayed by Rudolf Kastner, deputy head of the Relief and Rescue Committee, an ideological affiliate of Mapai (precursor of today's Labor Party) . Hecht tells how after the Nazi invasion of Hungary in March 1944, Kastner brazenly collaborated with Dieter Wisliceny, a top aide to Gestapo Jewish Section chief Adolf Eichmann, to save the lives of cronies and family. Eichmann allowed Kastner to organize a rescue train which brought 1, 685 of these people to safety in Switzerland, in return - so goes Hecht's damning accusation - for keeping the rest of Hungarian Jewry in the dark about the fate that awaited them. He thus facilitated the Nazi genocide. Hecht charges that Kastner, despite his connections with the SS, didn't lift a finger to help Hanna Szenes, the Palestinian Jewish heroine who had parachuted into Nazi-occupied Hungary on a rescue mission. Perhaps most damning of all: After the war, Kastner testified on behalf of SS officer Kurt Becher (a Nazi he'd been dealing with) , though Becher had taken part in the genocide of Hungarian Jewry. With all this under his belt, Hecht wrote, Kastner eventually wound up in Israel vying for a spot on the Mapai Party's Knesset list. “ (Jager, 2007) . Ben Hecht (1894 – 1964) “was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist… He became an active Zionist shortly before the Holocaust began in Germany, and wrote articles and plays about the plight of European Jews” (Wikipedia 2018) . OCLC lists 13 copies worldwide. OCLC: 16637712. Good Condition, yellowing along edges and minor staining on front cover. (Zion-16-7).

Price: $125.00