BUDAPEST, Hungary - The evidence against a 97-year-old former Canadian citizen
accused of abusing Jews and helping deport thousands during
the Holocaust is much stronger than a similar case last year
that ended in a high-profile acquittal, experts say.
Hungarian Laszlo Csatary's role as a police officer and chief of an internment
camp from where 12,000 Jews were deported to their deaths
in Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps is amply documented
and there are strong witness statements about his brutality,
they said.
Authorities charged Csatary last week
with "unlawful torture of human beings," accusing him of being present in 1944 when trains bound for death camps were
loaded and sent on their way, regularly using a dog whip
to strike detainees and in one case refusing to cut holes
in a train car to allow people to breathe. He faces a maximum
sentence of life in prison.
"He ruled over life and
death," said Adam Gellert, an expert in international criminal law who has been researching
the Csatary case. "He deported people who were supposed to be spared and committed a series of sadistic
acts."
Csatary's case was brought to the
attention of Hungarian authorities in September by the Simon
Wiesenthal Center's Efraim Zuroff, whose "Operation Last Chance" was launched in 2002, offering rewards in exchange for information about suspected
Holocaust war criminals.
The program has sparked criticism
from people opposed to paying informants— and has had mixed
results.
A year ago, another elderly suspect
found in Hungary by Zuroff, Sandor Kepiro, was acquitted
of war crime charges by a Budapest court that ruled there
was insufficient evidence, a decision that drew strong condemnation
from Serbian and Jewish groups.
Prosecutors had charged that Kepiro,
a former captain in a special security force, was involved
in a 1942 raid by Hungarian forces in the northern Serbian
town of Novi Sad during which over 1,200 mostly Jewish and
Serb civilians were killed. But experts said there were significant
doubts about his guilt.
The Wiesenthal Center "bit
on a case where the evidence was not enough to determine
from a historian's perspective how much responsibility Sandor
Kepiro had in the Novi Sad massacre," said Laszlo Csosz, a historian at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest.
The prosecution of a man who sat through
court sessions in a wheelchair, had serious hearing problems
and was hospitalized during the proceedings "caused negative feelings about the proceedings in 99.5 per cent of the people," Csosz said. Kepiro died in September at age 97, while the ruling was being appealed
by both defence and prosecution.
Zuroff defended Kepiro's prosecution,
saying he was certain the case would have been won on appeal.
"There's no question that
there was enough evidence to bring Kepiro to justice," Zuroff said. "There was no problem with the legitimacy of the evidence, but the judge disqualified
the evidence in a very selective manner."
Zuroff said that in contrast with
the Kepiro case, there were witnesses to the 1944 events
and Csatary's alleged acts who are still alive and expected
to testify.
"There are several people
available and all that information was given to the prosecutors
by me," Zuroff said by telephone from Jerusalem.
Csatary's case is also different because
his role and responsibility as the commander of a ghetto
in the Slovakian city of Kosice, at the time a part of Hungary,
is well documented, Csosz said.
Gellert, the criminal law expert,
said that the prosecutors probably came under political pressure
to press charges in the Kepiro case.
"It was only during the
trial that it became clear that the charges were unfounded." Geller said. "In the Csatary case, there are many more documents available ... which increases
the likelihood of putting forth a more solid case."
"Compared to the Kepiro
trial, this is a much, much stronger case," said Gellert, who described Csatary as an "enthusiastic enforcer."
Csatary was convicted in absentia
for war crimes in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and sentenced to
death. He arrived in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia
the following year, became a Canadian citizen in 1955 and
worked as an art dealer in Montreal.
He appears to have been living quietly
in Budapest since 1997, when, Canadian authorities say, he
left the country voluntarily to avoid deportation. Csatary's
citizenship had been revoked earlier on the grounds that
he had lied about his past when he first immigrated to Canada.
Despite the strong evidence against
Csatary, there are still questions. Laszlo Karsai, a historian
at the University of Szeged in southern Hungary, called attention
to the fact that while Csatary was condemned to death in
Czechoslovakia, two of his superiors, the Kosice mayor and
the police chief, were only sentenced to prison in Hungary.
"What can be proven in
court and what is a historical truth ... are two completely
different things," said Karsai, the son of a Holocaust survivor.
Karsai, who has been very critical
of Zuroff's methods, stressed the importance of keeping a
historical perspective, saying that though there is testimony
about his sadistic treatment of people there is no proof
he knew they were heading to their deaths unless he testifies
so himself.
"To know in 2012 that the
trains were going to Auschwitz is one thing, but for a police
officer in 1944 to know that the trains were going to Auschwitz
is another — and even if he knew, how can we prove that he
knew what Auschwitz was?," Karsai asked. westmanjournal.com
|