46 Facts About Joel Brand

Joel Brand was a member of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, an underground Zionist group in Budapest, Hungary, that smuggled Jews out of German-occupied Europe to the relative safety of Hungary, during the Holocaust.

When Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, Brand became known for his efforts to save the Jewish community from deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland and the gas chambers there.

One of seven children, Joel Brand was born to a Jewish family in Naszod, Transylvania, Austria-Hungary.

Joel Brand's father was the founder of the Budapest telephone company, and his paternal grandfather, Joel Brand, had owned the post office in Munkacs.

Joel Brand joined the Communist Party, worked for the Comintern as a sailor, and sailed to Hawaii, the Philippines, South America, China, and Japan.

In or around 1930 Joel Brand returned to Erfurt, where he worked for another telephone company his father had founded and became a functionary with the Thuringian KPD.

Joel Brand was still living in Germany when Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, and on 27 February that year he was arrested, as a communist, just before the Reichstag fire.

Joel Brand joined the Poale Zion, a Marxist-Zionist party, became a vice-president of the Budapest Palestine Office, which organized Jewish emigration to Palestine, and sat on the governing body of the Jewish National Fund.

In 1935 Joel Brand married Haynalka "Hansi" Hartmann and together they opened a knitwear and glove factory on Rozsa Street, Budapest, which after a few years had a staff of over 100.

The couple had met as members of a hachscharah, a group of Jews preparing to move to Palestine to work on a kibbutz, but Joel Brand's plans changed when his mother and three sisters fled to Budapest from Germany and he had to support them.

Joel Brand paid a Hungarian counter-espionage officer to bring his wife's relatives back safely.

Joel Brand said there would be no deportations and no harm to the Jewish community while negotiations continued, and arranged for Aid and Rescue Committee exemptions from anti-Jewish laws to allow its members to travel and use cars and telephones.

Joel Brand was told to wait in the Opera Cafe and from there was driven by the SS to Eichmann's headquarters at the Hotel Majestic.

Eichmann said he would discuss the proposal with Berlin, and that in the meantime Joel Brand should decide what kinds of goods he was in a position to offer.

When Joel Brand asked how the committee was supposed to obtain these goods, Eichmann suggested that Joel Brand open negotiations with the Allies overseas; Eichmann said he would arrange a travel permit.

Joel Brand testified years later that on leaving the hotel he felt like a "stark madman".

Hansi Joel Brand testified during Eichmann's trial in 1961 that she and her children had to remain in Budapest, effectively as hostages.

Joel Brand secured a letter of recommendation for the Jewish Agency from the Hungarian Jewish Council.

Joel Brand was told he would be travelling with Bandi Grosz, a Hungarian who had worked for Hungarian and German military intelligence; Grosz would travel to Istanbul as the director of a Hungarian transport company.

Grosz later testified that Joel Brand's mission had been a cover for his own.

Joel Brand said he had been told by Clages to arrange a meeting in a neutral country between senior German and American officers, or British if necessary, to broker peace between the German Sicherheitsdienst and the Western Allies.

In Vienna, Joel Brand was given a German passport in the name of Eugen Band.

Joel Brand had been told by the Jewish Agency by return cable that "Chaim" would meet him in Istanbul.

Joel Brand saw this as the first betrayal by the Jewish Agency.

Joel Brand was furious that no one sufficiently senior was available to negotiate a deal.

Joel Brand passed them a plan of Auschwitz and demanded that the gas chambers, crematoria and railway lines be bombed.

The Jewish Agency and Joel Brand wanted the Allies to string the Germans along in the hope of slowing the deportations.

In Istanbul, Joel Brand was told that Moshe Sharett was unable to obtain a visa for Turkey.

The Jewish Agency asked Joel Brand to meet Sharett instead in Aleppo on the Syrian-Turkish border.

Joel Brand was reluctant; the area was under British control and he was afraid they would want to question him, but the Agency told him it would be safe and he left by train with two of its delegates.

Joel Brand was taken to Cairo, where he was questioned by the British for weeks.

Joel Brand went on hunger strike for 17 days in protest at his detention.

The British were convinced they were dealing with a Himmler trick, that Grosz was a double agent, and that Joel Brand's mission was a "smokescreen" for the Germans to broker a peace deal without the Soviet Union.

Joel Brand told the American government that the British would allow Brand to return to Budapest with a message for Eichmann suggesting that 1,500 Jewish children be given safe passage to Switzerland; 5,000 from Bulgaria and Romania be allowed to leave for Palestine; and that Germany guarantee safe conduct for ships carrying Jewish refugees.

Joel Brand did not say what he would offer in return.

Joel Brand said they would not allow him to return to Hungary and forced him to travel to Palestine.

Bauer disputes this; in his view, Joel Brand was simply afraid of returning to Budapest, convinced the Germans would murder him.

Joel Brand cabled Brigadefuhrer Edmund Veesenmayer of the SS on 20 July 1944 to ask about it, and was told on 22 July that Brand and Grosz had been sent to Turkey on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS.

Joel Brand himself came to believe that the proposal had been designed to drive a wedge between the Allies.

Joel Brand's failure to return to Budapest was a disaster for the Aid and Rescue Committee.

Joel Brand told the court that he did not have the authority to stop or start what was happening in Auschwitz, or to change the deal.

Bauer concludes that Joel Brand was a courageous man who had passionately wanted to help the Jewish people, but his life was plagued after the mission by suspicion, including from other members of the Aid and Rescue Committee, because of his failure to return to Budapest.

Joel Brand offered testimony about the blood-for-goods proposal during several trials.

Joel Brand testified for Kasztner, but instead of defending him took the opportunity to accuse the Jewish Agency, whose officials became the first Israeli government, of having helped the British scupper the blood-for-goods proposal.

Joel and Hansi Brand both testified in 1961 during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Joel Brand died of a heart attack, aged 58, during a visit to Germany in July 1964.