Nazi-hunting Wiesenthal Centre’s ‘most-wanted’ faces trial for role in Second World War atrocity

Former Hungarian gendarmerie officer Sándor Képíró has been indicted for alleged war crimes committed almost 70 years ago, the Budapest prosecutor’s office announced last Monday. Képíró, who turned 97 last Friday, has been top of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center’s most-wanted list since 2006.

Novi Sad massacre

The charges relate to events in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina in January 1942 that became known as the Novi Sad massacre. Hundreds of civilians were forced to walk onto the frozen Danube river, where they were either shot or allowed to fall through the ice. Hungarian estimates suggest that over 3,000 mostly Serbian and Jewish victims were killed during six days of reprisals against the activity of Yugoslav partisans.
Hungary was allied to Nazi Germany and the axis powers during the Second World War, and Képíró was a captain in the Hungarian gendarmerie.

Convicted twice before

He is charged with taking part in the murder of four civilians on 23 January 1942 while serving in northern Serbia. “In January 1942 the defendant, as an officer of the gendarmerie, participated in the illegal massacre of unarmed and innocent people in Vojvodina,” a spokeswoman for the prosecutors’ office, Gabriella Skoda, said.
Képíró was sentenced to ten years in prison by a Hungarian court in 1944 for his role in the atrocity that remains one of the blackest marks on Hungary’s wartime record.
However, he was released the same year after the Nazi-backed fascist Hungarian Arrow Cross party took control of the country in October 1944. The Arrow Cross and the gendarmerie were instrumental in the deportation of some 450,000 Jews to the Nazi death camps that had begun in earnest after the German occupation of Hungary the previous March. In 1946 Képíró was retried in absentia following the communist takeover of Hungary and once again found guilty of war crimes. Having moved to Austria, he fled Europe for Argentina in 1947, where he lived in obscurity until returning to Hungary in 1996.
Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi-hunter at the Wiesenthal Center, produced documents in 2006 relating to the Hungarian trials of Képíró. Zuroff announced that the suspect was living quietly in Budapest’s District II and called for him to be held to account.
Képíró, who has vehemently denied the war crimes allegations, sued Zuroff for libel in Hungary last year. However, the case was dropped when the plaintiff failed to appear at a December court hearing. If convicted, he could spend the remainder of his life behind bars.

budapesttimes.hu