ABSTRACT
When the Nazis occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, the Jewish public was caught by surprise. Many ordinary Jews did not know what to expect. From 1941, many Jewish men were drafted to the Hungarian army's labor units on the Soviet front. As a result, tens of thousands of Jews died from starvation, typhus, shooting, and other brutalities. The Zionist rescue committee quickly compiled an impressive record of humanitarian achievements. It saved Jews from the Holocaust in most of the countries around Hungary. The Jewish rescue committee's achievements before 1944 were the work of a small group of activists. The most important of them was Rezso Kasztner. In the context of wartime underground operations that required self-confidence and unconventional thinking, such traits were sometimes an asset. As the rescue operations expanded, Kasztner became the committee's dominant figure. Joel Brand described how the committee set up an intelligence center in Budapest to interview the survivors and send reports to world Jewry.
