ABSTRACT
The beginning of December 1944 found Rezso Kasztner in Switzerland, where he had been conducting the talks with Saly Mayer. There Kasztner stayed for a month, until the time came to decide whether to return to Budapest or to join Kurt Becher's new headquarters in Vienna. Kasztner understood that his duty as head of the rescue committee in Budapest was to return to Budapest. He later claimed that he had set out for the Hungarian capital, but was unable to complete the journey because the Red Army had encircled the city. On December 30, Kasztner arrived in Vienna. He stayed there not as a guest of the local Jewish community, as one might expect, but as a guest of the SS. On January 19, 1945, Becher produced a copy of one of Kasztner's reports on the talks with Mayer—a report that the Gestapo had managed to intercept. The report was written in code that had confused Becher's colleagues.
