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Joel Brand (1907 – 1964) was a Hungarian Jew who played a prominent role, during the Nazi occupation of Hungary, in an attempt by the Jewish Rescue and Relief Committee to save Jews by making a deal with Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of the deportation of Jews from Hungary to the German death camp at Auschwitz. During a meeting with Brand in April 1944, Eichmann offered to release up to one million Hungarian Jews in exchange for trucks, soap, tea, coffee, and sugar from the Allies. The deal, which failed, became known as the "blood for trucks" agreement.

Background

Brand was born in Năsăud, Transylvania, now Romania, moving in 1910 with his family to Erfurt in Germany, where he was raised and educated. He became a communist and worked for the Comintern as a sailor and odd-job man, spending time in the Philippines, Japan, China, and South America before returning to Germany, where he became a middle-ranking communist functionary. His position led to his arrest after the Reichstag fire in 1933, when the Nazis began rounding up socialists and communists. When he was released in 1934, he left Germany and settled in Budapest, Hungary, where he got a job with the Budapest Telephone Company and became a Zionist, joining the Mapai (Israel Labour Party) youth movement.

In 1935, he married another member of the Zionist movement in Budapest, Hansi Hartmann, who owned a factory that produced gloves, socks, and sweaters. When his wife's sister was deported in 1941, Brand paid Josezf Krem, a Hungarian espionage agent, to get her back, and from that point on, Brand became involved in smuggling Jewish refugees from Poland and Slovakia to the relative safety of Hungary.

Notes

1. "Yehuda Bauer: Teaching about the Holocaust (Part 2)", Online Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, Volume 18, No. 2, Winter 2005
2. >"Devil's Poker: A True Story", a screenplay by Leo Zahn
3. Bauer, Yehuda. Jews for Sale: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 152
4. Hansi Brand's testimony", The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Session 58, part 2 of 5, The Nizkor Project
5. Bauer, Yehuda. Jews for Sale: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 152. Sources differ on whether it was Brand's wife's sister or brother who was deported. Online Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies published in its Volume 18, No. 2 issue that it was Brand's wife's brother, but historian Yehuda Bauer writes that it was his wife's sister.

References

• "Yehuda Bauer: Teaching about the Holocaust (Part 2)", Online Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, Volume 18, No. 2, Winter 2005, retrieved May 7, 2006
• "Devil's Poker: A True Story", a screenplay by Leo Zahn, retrieved May 7, 2006
• Hansi Brand's testimony", The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Session 58, part 2 of 5, The Nizkor Project, retrieved May 7, 2006
• Bauer, Yehuda. Jews for Sale: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945, Yale University Press, 1994. ISBN 0300068522

Further reading

• Hecht, Ben. Perfidy, Milah Press, first published in 1961. ISBN 0964688638

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