Jakarta Globe, July 23, 2012
 |
Hungarian Laszlo Csatary, suspected of war crimes against Jews during
Word War Two, leaves the prosecution building in Budapest on Wednesday.
Hungarian prosecutors have detained 97-year-old Csatary on suspicion of war
crimes committed in World War Two, the Budapest prosecutor's office said on
Wednesday. Nazi-hunters from the Simon Wiesenthal Center say they have
provided Hungary with evidence that Csatary helped to organize the deportation of
around 16,000 Jews to the Auschwitz death camp from the Nazi-occupied town of
Kosice in 1944. (Reuters Photo/Laszlo Balogh)
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Budapest,
Hungary. The evidence against a 97-year-old Hungarian man accused of abusing
Jews and helping deport thousands during the Holocaust is much stronger than a
similar case last year that ended in a high-profile acquittal, experts say.
Laszlo
Csatary’s role as a police officer and chief of an internment camp from where
12,000 Jews were deported to their deaths in Auschwitz and other Nazi death
camps is amply documented and there are strong witness statements about his
brutality, they said.
Authorities
charged Csatary last week with “unlawful torture of human beings,” accusing him
of being present in 1944 when trains bound for death camps were loaded and sent
on their way, regularly using a dog whip to strike detainees and in one case
refusing to cut holes in a train car to allow people to breathe. He faces a
maximum sentence of life in prison.
“He ruled
over life and death,” said Adam Gellert, an expert in international criminal
law who has been researching the Csatary case. “He deported people who were
supposed to be spared and committed a series of sadistic acts.”
Csatary’s
case was brought to the attention of Hungarian authorities in September by the
Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Efraim Zuroff, whose “Operation Last Chance” was
launched in 2002, offering rewards in exchange for information about suspected
Holocaust war criminals.
The program
has sparked criticism from people opposed to paying informants — and has had
mixed results.
A year ago,
another elderly suspect found in Hungary by Zuroff, Sandor Kepiro, was
acquitted of war crime charges by a Budapest court that ruled there was
insufficient evidence, a decision that drew strong condemnation from Serbian
and Jewish groups.
Prosecutors
had charged that Kepiro, a former captain in a special security force, was
involved in a 1942 raid by Hungarian forces in the northern Serbian town of
Novi Sad during which over 1,200 mostly Jewish and Serb civilians were killed.
But experts said there were significant doubts about his guilt.
The
Wiesenthal Center “bit on a case where the evidence was not enough to determine
from a historian’s perspective how much responsibility Sandor Kepiro had in the
Novi Sad massacre,” said Laszlo Csosz, a historian at the Holocaust Memorial
Center in Budapest.
The
prosecution of a man who sat through court sessions in a wheelchair, had
serious hearing problems and was hospitalized during the proceedings “caused
negative feelings about the proceedings in 99.5 percent of the people,” Csosz
said. Kepiro died in September at age 97, while the ruling was being appealed
by both defense and prosecution.
Zuroff
defended Kepiro’s prosecution, saying he was certain the case would have been
won on appeal.
“There’s no
question that there was enough evidence to bring Kepiro to justice,” Zuroff
said. “There was no problem with the legitimacy of the evidence, but the judge
disqualified the evidence in a very selective manner.”
Zuroff said
that in contrast with the Kepiro case, there were witnesses to the 1944 events
and Csatary’s alleged acts who are still alive and expected to testify.
“There are
several people available and all that information was given to the prosecutors
by me,” Zuroff said by telephone from Jerusalem.
Csatary’s
case is also different because his role and responsibility as the commander of
a ghetto in the Slovakian city of Kosice, at the time a part of Hungary, is
well documented, Csosz said.
Gellert,
the criminal law expert, said that the prosecutors probably came under
political pressure to press charges in the Kepiro case.
“It was
only during the trial that it became clear that the charges were unfounded.”
Geller said. “In the Csatary case, there are many more documents available . .
. which increases the likelihood of putting forth a more solid case.”
“Compared
to the Kepiro trial, this is a much, much stronger case,” said Gellert, who
described Csatary as an “enthusiastic enforcer.”
Csatary was
convicted in absentia for war crimes in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and sentenced to
death. He arrived in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia the following year,
became a Canadian citizen in 1955 and worked as an art dealer in Montreal.
He appears
to have been living quietly in Budapest since 1997, when, Canadian authorities
say, he left the country before they had the chance to decide his fate in a
deportation hearing alleging he had failed to provide information about his
Nazi ties.
Still,
there are questions. Laszlo Karsai, a historian at the University of Szeged in
southern Hungary, called attention to the fact that while Csatary was condemned
to death in Czechoslovakia, two of his superiors, the Kosice mayor and the
police chief, were only sentenced to prison in Hungary.
“What can
be proven in court and what is a historical truth . . . are two completely
different things,” said Karsai, the son of a Holocaust survivor.
Karsai, who
has been very critical of Zuroff’s methods, stressed the importance of keeping
a historical perspective, saying that though there is testimony about his
sadistic treatment of people there is no proof he knew they were heading to
their deaths unless he testifies so himself.
“To know in
2012 that the trains were going to Auschwitz is one thing, but for a police
officer in 1944 to know that the trains were going to Auschwitz is another
— and even if he knew, how can we prove
that he knew what Auschwitz was?” Karsai asked.
Associated Press
