רוח גדולה באה

Memoirs of Palgi, a Jew born in 1918 in Transylvania as Emil Nuszbacher. He emigrated to Palestine in 1939 and enlisted in the British army. In March 1944 he and two others were dropped into Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia; their intention was to help rescue Hungarian Jews. In May 1944 Palgi and his comrades crossed the border and appeared in Budapest. There, Rudolf Kasztner used them in his efforts to make a deal with Eichmann to stop the deportations of Hungarian Jews in exchange for goods needed by Germany. Palgi was forced to pose as an emissary of the Jewish Agency, contact Eichmann's men in Budapest, and ask them to allow one train of Jews to leave the country as a gesture of good faith. Palgi and his comrades were soon arrested by Hungarian police; they were imprisoned and interrogated by the Hungarians and the Germans. Relates, also, the story of Hannah Szenes's mission and her arrest and interrogation, as told to Palgi when he met Szenes in a Hungarian prison. Palgi managed to escape from a transport in November and returned to Budapest, where he participated in rescue activities until the liberation. His parents and sister perished in the Holocaust. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)