The arrangement of Dr. Rudolf Kastner, former government employee, on charges of perjury opened here yesterday before Chief Magistrate Moshe Peretz. The current hearing will determine whether the state will prosecute Dr. Kastner, one-time leader of Hungarian Jewry and now editor of a Hungarian language paper in Tel Aviv.
Last year, Dr. Kastner was severely castigated by a Jerusalem district judge, Benjamin Halevy who, among other things, said that he had saved L.t Col. Kurt Becher a Nazi leader in Budapest, from punishment as a war criminal. Judge Halevy’s statements were made at the conclusion of a libel trial brought by the government against Malkiel-Greenwaid, a pamphleteer, who had attacked Dr. Kastner in a privately circulated pamphlet. At that trial, Dr. Kastner said he had given a denazification court in Germany a statement concerning Becher’s activities in Budapest but insisted he had not testified in the Nazi’s behalf at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. The present perjury charges sterm from this testimony.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
