Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

On June 10, 1944: 388 Jews, out of 18,000 in the Kolozsvar Ghetto were transported to Budapest on a special train, and placed in a "privileged camp" in the courtyard of the Wechselmann Institute for the Deaf on Columbus Street.

On June 30, 1944, the Kasztner Transport, carrying 1,685 persons, left Budapest.
The train was re-routed by the Germans to Bergen-Belsen, where the passengers languished for four months. awaiting negotiations between rescue activists and the Nazis.

On August 21, 1944, the first 318 Jews were released from Bergen-Belsen, and transported to Schweiz.

On December 7, 1944, the second group of the Kasztner Transport from Bergen-Belsen, consisting of 1,368 Jews, arrived in Schweiz.

Hansi Brand cited "that the types of people chosen varied greatly but included the most endangered refugees, Zionists, Jewish intellectuals, orphans, and rich people, whose wealth helped pay the $1,000 per-person ransom demanded by the Germans."

In Judging Evil: New Departures in Israeli Legal History, Leora Bilsky, i quoted the judge in the trial of Rezső Kasznter:
"The judge . . . derived from this contract the main explanation for Kastner's subsequent betrayal of his people: The benefit that K. gained from the contract with the Nazis was the rescue of the "camp of prominent Jews" and the price that he had to pay for this was a complete surrender of any attempts at real rescue steps benefiting the "camp of the people." The price the Nazis paid for this was to waive the extermination of the "camp of prominents." With this contract to save the prominent Jews, the head of the Aid and Rescue Committee made a "concession" with the exterminator: in return for the rescue of the prominent Jews K. agreed to the extermination of the people and abandoned them to their fate."