Lot 61
"To My Friends in the Mizrachi (Internal!)" – Malchiel Gruenwald's Original Publication with Allegations against Israel Kastner – Self-Published Pamphlet, Printed in Several Hundred Copies, August, 1952
Issue No. 17 of the pamphlet "Letters to My Friends in the Mizrachi (Internal!)", by Malchiel Gruenwald. Jerusalem, 1.8.1952.
Four-page pamphlet. The first page features a lengthy article, accusing Israel Kastner of cooperating with Nazi authorities in preparing the ground for the extermination of Hungarian Jewry, and helping a Nazi war criminal escape persecution (opens with the lines: "the smell of a cadaver stings my nostrils! This'll be a prime funeral! Dr. Rudolf Kastner must be eliminated!"). The pamphlet "Letters to My Friends in the Mizrachi" was self-published by Malchiel Gruenwald, and circulated in no more than a few hundred copies (a postmark and a note with the recipient's name are pasted to the margins; name of recipient erased). Issue No. 17 reached the Attorney General of Israel, Haim Cohn. Following Cohn's advice, Kastner filed a lawsuit against Gruenwald, accusing him of slander. The process that followed soon became one of the best-known trials in Israel’s history – the "Kastner trial".
[2] ff. (four printed pages), approx. 34.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Minor stains, creases and horizontal fold line. Tears along margins and fold line.
