cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3405571

Pictured: The Axis war criminal in question.

Quoting Faris Yahya’s Zionist relations with Nazi Germany, pages 60–1:

Another interesting revelation of the Kastner libel case was that Kastner had intervened to save SS General Kurt Becher from being tried for war crimes. Becher had been one of the leading [Axis] negotiators of deals with the Zionists in 1944.

Kastner told the Nuremberg Tribunal: “There can be no doubt about it that Becher belongs to the very few SS leaders having the courage to oppose the programme of annihilation of the Jews, and trying to rescue human lives… In my opinion, when his case is judged by Allied or German authorities, Kurt Becher deserves the fullest possible consideration… I make this statement not only in my own name but also in behalf of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish World Congress. Signed, Dr. Rudolf Kastner, Official, Jewish Agency in Geneva. Former Chairman of Zionist Organisation in Hungary, 1943–1945. Representative of Joint Distribution Committee in Budapest.’’⁸⁰

As a result of Kastner’s personal intervention Becher was released from prison in Nuremberg. What sort of man was this whom Kastner, “in behalf of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish World Congress”, was so eager to save?

“Kurt Becher, tall, handsome, a good horseman, a prosperous wheat broker, joined the [NSDAP] in 1934. He served as an SS Major in Poland, was a member of the Death Corps that worked around the clock killing Jews. He wore a death’s head on his uniform cap and his boot heels were weighted with steel plates so as to clank more fearsomely when he walked among the Jewish prisoners waiting for death… Becher distinguished himself as a Jew slaughterer in Poland and Russia.”⁸¹ He was appointed by Himmler as Commissar of all [the Third Reich’s] concentration camps.

“And where is Kurt Becher now? In what place of exile, under what alias, is he hiding — as his [Axis] associate Eichmann hid? No exile, no alias, and no fears are Becher’s… [His] riches are for the most part the loot extracted and tortured out of myriads of Jews — before their slaughter. He is president of many corporations and loaded down with honours. Among the many enterprises he heads up is the sale of wheat to [Zionism’s neocolony]. Becher’s firm, the Cologne‐Handel Gesellschaft, does a fine business with [Zionism’s] government.”⁸²

[A Jewish] journalist, Moshe Keren, wrote a series of articles on the Kastner case, raising a number of embarrassing questions for the [neocolonial] authorities.

Before Kastner’s assassination, Keren wrote: “Kastner must be brought to trial as [an Axis] collaborator. And at this trial, Kastner should defend himself as a private citizen and not be defended by the [neocolonial] Government… The echoes of the Kastner trial will keep on among us for years and years to come. They will continue to poison the air above us, like those famous historical trials after which old governments fell and new governments arose. The [neocolony] will never be after this verdict what it used to be before the verdict.”⁸³

Subsequently, “Dr. Keren flew to Germany. His intention was to interview Kurt Becher. A few days after his arrival in Germany, journalist Keren was found dead in a German hotel. The diagnosis was ‘heart attack’.”⁸⁴

(Emphasis added.)