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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 to save Jewish lives by making a deal in April 1944 with Adolf Eichmann — who was in charge of the deportation of Jews from Hungary to the German death camp at Auschwitz — to exchange up to one million Hungarian Jews 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 was raised and educated. He became a communist and worked for the Comintern as a sailor and odd-job man, later becoming a middle-ranking communist functionary in Germany, which led to his arrest when the Nazis came to power. When he was released in 1934, he left Germany and settled in Budapest, Hungary, where he became a Zionist, and joined the Mapai (Israel Labour Party) youth movement.

He married Hansi Hartmann in 1935 and opened a glove factory. 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. Bauer, Yehuda. Jews for Sale: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 152
3. 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
• 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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