Similar to Schindler

But, where Schindler has been universally praised for having rescued so many, Kasztner has been criticised for not saving more victims.

There is no doubt where Anna Porter stands on the question. Her thoroughly researched examination of the densely complex situation confronting Kasztner recognises that there were no easy options in the dangerous game being played.

Kasztner depended on the ingrained corruption of the nazi system as he traded "blood for goods."

Even his limited success was shadowed by his need to allow wealthy contributors to buy their passage in order to raise the $1,000-per-head ransom money for all.

Although eventually posthumously honoured, Kasztner, by then an Israeli Labour politician, was destroyed when he lost his 1953 libel defence against charges of having been a nazi collaborator and was shortly after assassinated by a Holocaust survivor.

Porter, though, presents Kasztner as a victim of post-war Israeli humiliation at what was felt to be European Jewry's sheep-to-the-slaughter compliance with nazi butchery.

GORDON PARSONS