Hansi Brand

Hansi Brand was born in 1912 in Budapest

Hansi Brand, born Hartmann, was born in Budapest in 1912 to a middle-class Zionist family. Her father was a textile merchant. As a teenager she joined the Hashomer Hatzair and later the Noar Haoved youth movements.

After finishing a commercial high school, she worked in her family's knitting workshop and joined a training group preparing young Jews to move to the Land of Israel. There she met Joel Brand, and they married in 1935. They had two sons and ran a textile business together.

From 1938 the couple helped Jewish refugees who had fled to Hungary. In 1941 she freed her sister and brother-in-law from deportation by paying a Hungarian intelligence officer. In 1942 the couple helped found the Aid and Rescue Committee.

She took part in negotiations with Adolf Eichmann and other Nazi officers to save Hungarian Jews. With Rudolf Kastner she helped 1,685 Jews leave for Switzerland on the Kastner train, and the committee had 15,000 Jews sent to Strasshof instead of Auschwitz.

She moved to Switzerland in 1946 and to Palestine in 1947. She testified at the Kastner trial in 1954 and the Eichmann trial in 1961. Later she worked at Michlelet Tel Aviv and helped orphans and Ethiopian immigrants, and she died in Tel Aviv in 2000.