Hungary apprehends Nazi war criminal Csatáry

The Hungarian Nazi war criminal László Csatáry has been apprehended in Hungary. The Associated Press reported today that the Hungarian State Prosecutor has announced the arrest. The residence of 97-year-old Csatáry, who is high on the list of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s 10 most-wanted Nazi war criminals, was discovered earlier this month by journalists with the British newspaper The Sun. Csatáry subsequently fled.

Detectives interrogated Csatáry after his detention and then placed him under house arrest. Austria Presse Agentur reports that Hungarian Radio said a motion has been filed to remand the suspect into custody during the investigation and that the state prosecutor would convene a press conference within the hour.

Csatáry’s disappearance prompted a wave of criticism that Hungary has been demonstrating inertia with respect to the prosecution of crimes committed during the Second World War. The Simon Wiesenthal Center and others, in an open letter, called on Hungarian President János Áder to help bring Csatáry to justice as soon as possible.

According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Csatáry played a key role in the deportation of about 300 Jewish people from wartime Košice to Ukraine, where they were almost all killed during the summer of 1941. In the spring of 1944 he served as a commander of the Hungarian Police in the ghetto in Košice and participated in the deportation of more than 15 000 Jewish people to Auschwitz. In 1948 he was convicted of war crimes in the former Czechoslovakia and sentenced to death.

Pavol Sitár, the head of the Jewish religious community in Košice, said the Slovak justice system could now also get involved in the case of Csatáry, who was arrested in Hungary. The 1948 death sentence was handed down against him in absentia.

“It is clear there is a need to try and convict him, because it is not possible to have the death sentence carried out. However, it is not clear how to do this,” Sitár, who is an attorney, told the Czech Press Agency.

The Slovak Justice Ministry responded by saying it is determining the circumstances of the case now. “Given the enormous lapse of time [since the verdict was handed down] we do not have the necessary information immediately available,” ministry spokesperson Jana Zlatohlávková told the Czech Press Agency.

Sitár believes Slovak courts should have the power to rule on the case. In his view, the fact that Košice was part of the Hungarian monarchy during the war should not present an obstacle. However, he did warn that many questions would have to first be addressed, including confirmation of Csatáry’s citizenship.

In the year 1997, Csatáry lost the Canadian citizenship he had acquired in 1955. Authorities there began taking an interest in him because he gave them false data about his nationality and did not give them information about his collaboration with the Nazi occupiers during the war. At the time the state prosecutor in Košice assisted the Canadian authorities by interrogating witnesses as to whether they would be willing to testify about him to a Canadian court.

The transports of Jewish people from Košice to the concentration camps took place in May and June of 1944. After the liberation, according to the available data, only several hundred Jewish people returned. Eyewitnesses have testified that Csatáry had the reputation of a cruel person. “He was cruel and merciless, he was the lord of life and death. He did everything the Germans ordered literally, down to the last detail,” a woman who survived the Košice ghetto and the deportation told the newspaper Pravda. She gave the example of people who were supposed to erect an enclosure around a brick factory; Csatáry gave them no tools, not even shovels, and told them to work with their bare hands.

Historians with the Slovak Academy of Sciences have also devoted research to the deportation of Jewish people from Košice. Historian Ján Hlavinka of the Holocaust Documentation Center told the Czech Press Agency that he does not know of any studies focusing specifically on Csatáry’s work in Košice.