Hungary: Press finds 97-year-old war criminal responsible for deportations of Jewish people

News server iHned.cz reports that the British tabloid The Sun has succeeded in tracking down 97-year-old László Csatáry, the man who organized the deportation of thousands of Jewish people from Košice (then called Kassa) to Auschwitz during the Second World War. The surprised senior citizen rejected the reporters’ charges and angrily slammed the door in their faces when they confronted him at his home. Csatáry is said to have sent more than 15 000 Jewish people to Auschwitz.

“Now that the newspapers have discovered where Csatáry lives, he must be brought to trial,” said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israeli branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which placed the Nazi war criminal at the top of its most-wanted list. Reporters found Csatáry’s apartment in a wealthy quarter of Budapest, where he has been living under the name of Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatáry. When asked by reporters whether he denied the charges, he emotionally shouted in accented Canadian English that he had never done any such thing and slammed the door.

The staff of the British newspaper had previously followed Csatáry as he took his walks through the city, always elegantly dressed. He took the tram to a nearby shopping center, visited several shops and bought a right-wing daily. He only moved to his current address several weeks ago.

“We know where Csatáry can be found. He is enjoying good health,” Zuroff has confirmed.

Csatáry is said to have organized the transports from the town of Košice (now in Slovakia), which was part of Hungarian territory during the Second World War, when he was the commander of an internment camp there. After the war he fled to Canada. In 1997 he was stripped of his Canadian citizenship on suspicion of having committed war crimes.

The Hungarian Prosecutor is already investigating the proof of Csatáry’s identity that has been collected by the British daily. Serge Klarsfeld, a French historian and “Nazi-hunter”, expressed concern today that Hungary’s conservative government, known for its nationalist policies, may not prosecute Csatáry.