Malchiel Gruenwald

Israeli businessman and citizen journalist

Malchiel Gruenwald (; also written Grünwald, Gruenvald, and Greenwald) (1882–1968) was an Israeli hotelier, amateur journalist, and stamp collector, who came to public attention in 1953, when he accused an Israeli government employee, Rudolf Kastner, of having collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Gruenwald was born in Hungary, and lived there and in Vienna, working in a number of trades, including as a part time journalist. In 1937, while in Vienna with his family, he was caught in a pogrom in which his teeth were smashed out, tongue slashed, arms and legs broken, and he was beaten unconscious and left for dead. a ten room hotel on Zion Square

Shlomo Aronson, in his book Hitler, the Allies, and the Jews, claims that Gruenwald's personal file, released by Israeli Home Intelligence, provides a very different picture of Gruenwald's early activities, saying Gruenwald was a criminal in Hungary and Austria who would inform on Labour Zionists, threaten Orthodox leaders and swindle refugees. The file also purportedly states that Gruenwald asked British authorities to stop a ship carrying refugees, the SS Patria, from entering Palestine.

In 1953, Cohen, who also held the position of Minister of Justice, filed criminal defamation charges against Gruenwald; according to Asher Maoz, this was "against the wishes of many public figures, including the person who later re occupied the post of minister of justice, Pinhas Rosen, and the minister in charge of Kastner, Dov Yoseph". Tamir had been the Irgun's Chief of Intelligence in Jerusalem, and Gruenwald's daughter Rina had been under his command as a nurse. The trial, which government lawyers expected to last four days, lasted for two years, and resulted in 1955 in an acquittal of Gruenwald and a statement from the judge that Kastner had "sold his soul to the devil". The basis of the allegation and the judge's statement was that Kastner had collaborated with SS officer Hermann Krumey [de], and later Adolf Eichmann, by betraying the Hungarian Jewish masses in return for the rescue of a few hundred Jewish VIPs. The judge also condemned Kastner because after the war, he had given a positive affidavit on behalf of another SS officer, Kurt Becher, which convinced the Nuremberg authorities not to prosecute Becher for war crimes. The Supreme Court overturned the collaboration finding in 1958, but by then Kastner had already been assassinated.