BERLIN — The authorities in Hungary came under increasing pressure on Tuesday
to take action against a 97-year-old man accused of overseeing
a Jewish ghetto during World War II and helping to deport
thousands of Jews to Auschwitz.
Efraim Zuroff, who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem,
said he had informed prosecutors in Budapest last year
that the suspect, identified as Laszlo Csatary, was living
there and was believed to have played a role in the deportation
of 15,700 Jews in the spring of 1944.
Mr. Csatary, who the center says remains
fit enough to drive, is also suspected of having served in
1941 as the chief of police and commander of a Jewish ghetto
in the city of Kosice, now in eastern Slovakia.
Prosecutors in Budapest said that
they had opened an investigation for war crimes against Mr.
Csatary in September 2011 but that the shifting of international
boundaries and passage of time had slowed the process.
News about Mr. Csatary comes amid
international concern over moves by the government of Prime
Minister Viktor Orban to introduce laws that have been viewed
by its European partners as compromising the independence
of democratic institutions, including the judiciary and the
news media.
While the government, led by Mr. Orban’s
center-right party, Fidesz, has taken steps to meet international
demands to revise some of the changes after demands from
European Union leaders, there are still concerns over a shift
to the right.
At the same time Hungary’s president,
Janos Ader, was in Israel on Tuesday for a ceremony at the
Knesset to honor Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who
saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from perishing
in the Holocaust by issuing them with Swedish “protective
passports.”
An invitation to the speaker of Hungary’s
National Assembly was rescinded after it was learned that
he attended a memorial service for an anti-Semitic writer.
In an open letter to the Hungarian
president, Mr. Zuroff wrote that the detention of Mr. Csatary
could send a strong signal that Hungary remains committed
to Europe’s democratic principles.
“One of the most effective ways to
combat the rising wave of anti-Semitism, racism and right-wing
extremism in Hungary is to bring to justice those who were
inspired to commit Holocaust crimes by the same ultranationalism
that is once again rearing its ugly head in your country,”
he said.
Mr. Ader’s office in Budapest refused
to comment on the letter. But Hungary’s opposition Socialist
Party has called on the country’s head prosecutor to charge
Mr. Csatary “immediately,” and students this week have held
demonstrations outside of the building where he is believed
to be living.
Also Tuesday, Mr. Orban’s government
opened talks with the International Monetary Fund over an
agreement for a loan of €15 billion, or $18 billion. Negotiations
had been put on hold amid concerns about the independence
of the country’s central bank. nytimes.com
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