The government of Viktor Orban, which has already raised hackles worldwide for its perceived attempts to gag the media, now stands accused of trying to brush over uncomfortable details featuring in the capital's Holocaust Memorial Centre.

That row comes just as 97-year-old Kepiro is set to appear before a Budapest court Thursday on charges of "complicity in war crimes" in what the Simon Wiesenthal Center says will probably be "one of the last if not the last great trials for Nazi war criminals".

The bone of contention in the Holocaust museum row is a picture of Miklos Horthy, Hungary's leader from 1924 to 1944, who entered into an alliance with the German Nazis in exchange for the restoration of territories lost in 1920.

A top-ranking government official, State Secretary Andras Levente Gal, said the image unjustifiably linked Hungary's reappropriation of territory with the deportation of Jews to Nazi concentration and death camps, shown in nearby pictures, and asked that the exhibit be "re-evaluated."

"The Hungarian army did not go to the occupied territories to spread the Holocaust. This kind of mixing together is offensive to Hungarians," Gal said.

The remarks prompted an outcry in the liberal press and among historians, who accused the government of censorship.

Plans to reorganise how the museum is run and replace the current director Laszlo Harsanyi with someone who shares the government's historical viewpoint only made matters worse.

While Gal has downplayed crimes against Jews as the actions of a greedy few, Harsanyi pointed out that: "Twenty-two laws and hundreds of government decrees prepared the final solution (of the extermination of Jews)."

"Let's not talk of 'just a few wicked men'." Orban's government is not the first to want to gloss over the country's murky relationship with Nazi Germany.

"No Hungarian government has really wanted or dared to face up to the past," Austrian-based Hungary expert Paul Lendvai told AFP.

Under the Treaty of Trianon signed in 1920, Hungary, on the losing side in World War One, lost two-thirds of its territories and a third of its population.

So when Adolf Hitler offered some of the lost territories, including southern Slovakia and northern Transylvania, Horthy signed up -- albeit somewhat reluctantly -- to the Nazi camp.

Successive Hungarian governments, even under the communists, have remained touchy about the issue ever since, says the Hungarian-born Lendvai.

Even nowadays, many Hungarians yearn for a reunited Greater Hungary, complete with restored territories, as is evidenced by the huge number of cars with "Greater Hungary" stickers.

Historian Krisztian Ungvary suggested ethnic tensions in the territories affected by the repeated re-drawing of the borders also made it difficult for Hungary to face up to its dark past.

Lendvai agreed.

"Right-wing governments have used the national issue for whipping up sentiment, but swept the responsibility for the Hungarian Holocaust and the 'Jewish question' under the carpet," he said.

Some 560,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust in Hungary, according to Lendvai. The Kepiro trial is likely to throw the spotlight further on Hungary's Nazi past.

The former Hungarian military officer is accused of complicity in war crimes committed in a raid by Hungarian forces on the northern Serbian town of Novi Sad in January 1942 in which more than 1,200 civilians were murdered.

Kepiro has admitted his presence during the raid, but he maintains his innocence. "I haven't regretted anything, all I did was my duty!" he told Hungarian television ATV in October.

Kepiro was already found guilty of the crimes in Novi Sad at previous court proceedings in 1944 and 1946. But the first sentence was quashed and he escaped the second by fleeing to Argentina where he remained for half a century. It is not yet clear how long the latest trial may last nor when a verdict can be expected. -AFP

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