The audience award-winner for best documentary from this year’s Boston Jewish Film Festival, Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt with Nazis, will screen on Sunday, August 15, the finale in the Summer Institute film series at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center.
The film, directed by Gaylen Ross, explores the life and legacy of Rudolf Kasztner, a leader of a Hungarian Jewish aid and rescue committee in World War II that helped Jewish refugees escape to Hungary from Nazi-occupied Europe. In 1944, Kasztner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann for the ransom of more than 1,600 Jews who were eventually transported to safety in Switzerland by a special train.
Later denounced in Israel as “the man who sold his soul to the devil,” Kasztner was assassinated in 1957. Remarkably, the filmmaker succeeds in persuading the killer (who served only seven years for his crime) to speak publicly for the first time.
The New York Times reviewer wrote: “Was Kasztner a hero? One man recalls that Kasztner thought of himself as one, and the documentary can be read as an examination of the notion of heroism. The film leaves you with a sense that Kasztner’s name is a casualty of rhetorical crossfire.”
The screening is at 7:30 p.m. at the center on Centre street in Vineyard Haven. Admission is $10.
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