The Zionist “Rescue Committee” in Budapest, known by its Hebrew name “Va'ada,” came into being in 1943 following the initiative of local Zionists. This effort was coordinated, with typical difficulty, by the Istanbul Rescue Mission, which reported about it to the Jewish Agency and its subsidiaries dealing with rescue in Jerusalem. The Va'ada also entertained direct ties to the Rescue Committee in Bratislava and maintained contact, by various means with the Zionist emissaries and the AJDC's representative in Switzerland.

The Budapest situation was no different from the others in that the Committee had to coordinate the efforts of independent and autonomous Zionist bodies, which hardly accepted central authority. Rather, partisan interests dictated the distribution of available emigration certificates issued by the Palestine government.

Rezsö Kasztner, the local Mapai representative, finally intervened in this and other matters pertaining to rescue in order to impose such an authority – and himself – upon the Budapest Palestine Office, the official Zionist immigration outfit, as best he could when he actively joined the Rescue Committee later in 1943, thereby creating long-lasting enmities.

Rezsö-Rudolf Israel Kasztner was a rather well-known Labor Zionist operative in Rumania, where he enjoyed public recognition and respect, but much less so later in Hungary, when Germany transferred his native Transylvania to its rival neighbor. In Hungary, Kasztner belonged to the small Zionist minority and made a living as a salaried functionary of a Zionist fund, a position that hardly earned him any respect in the eyes of the high-minded Hungarian Jewish leadership.