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 , 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.