In 1944, Rudolf Kastner, a prominent Hungarian Zionist, bribed the Nazis into allowing 1,686 Jews safe passage to Switzerland. After the war, he came under fierce criticism from survivors for cooperating with the Nazis and failing to warn the rest of Hungarian Jewry of the fate that awaited them at Auschwitz. A libel suit launched against one of his detractors led to one of the first major discussions of the Holocaust in Israel’s public sphere. In 1957, Kastner was assassinated. Recalling his motivations at the time, his now-elderly assailant expresses regret for what he did:
Today, at eighty-one, and with the publication of his book, Quilt Blanket, Ze’ev Eckstein takes stock of his life for the last time and says: “I wouldn’t do it today. I wouldn’t shoot. There’s no doubt about it. . . . In what way did I pay a price? I murdered someone. I did something that takes me back to the entire Bible, back to Cain and Abel.”
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