(CNN) -- A worldwide Jewish rights organization is pushing Hungarian authorities
to prosecute a man it claims is a Nazi war criminal, recently
discovered in Budapest, Hungary, who allegedly sent more
than 15,000 Jews to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center found Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary as part of its "Last Chance" project, said Efraim Zuroff, director of the center's Israel office.
The center cooperated with British
tabloid The Sun to photograph Csizsik-Csatary, who reportedly
is 97, and ask him questions, Zuroff said. "We're the ones who found him; they're the ones who photographed him."
Csizsik-Csatary served as a senior
Hungarian police officer in the city of Kosice, which is
now in Slovakia but was under Hungarian rule in the 1940s,
the center said. He topped the Wiesenthal Center's 2012 list
of most wanted Nazi war criminals.
"He was a commander of
a ghetto," Zuroff told CNN.
Report: Hitler ordered reprieve for
Jewish man
Csizsik-Csatary participated in the
deportation of 15,700 Jews to the Auschwitz concentration
camp in 1944, witnesses have told the center. He also played
a role in "deportations to the Ukraine to be killed -- 300 Jews," Zuroff said.
"We found eyewitnesses
on three different continents," Zuroff said. Those witnesses told the center about Csizsik-Csatary's cruelty
to Jewish detainees and his role in the deportations to Auschwitz
and Ukraine.
Confronted by a Sun reporter, Csizsik-Csatary
denied the allegations, the tabloid reported Sunday.
A witness to the August 1941 Ukraine
deportations had nine family members who were deported, he
told CNN. Csizsik-Csatary made sure four of them were brought
back from forced labor with the Hungarian army so they would
be deported and killed, according to Zuroff.
During the Auschwitz deportations,
Csizsik-Csatary "forced these girls to dig a ditch with their hands -- young Jewish girls." Two of the center's witnesses were survivors of that deportation, he said.
According to The Sun, which cited
documents released by the Wiesenthal Center, Csizsik-Csatary
beat Jewish women with a whip he carried on his belt.
"A variety of factors" led
to the center's locating Csizsik-Csatary in Budapest, Zuroff
said. "He wasn't hiding under a false name. ... He had no reason to fear."
Using the last name Csizsik, Csizsik-Csatary
arrived in Canada in 1949, telling immigration officials
he was Yugoslavian, according to The Toronto Star newspaper.
A spokeswoman for Canada's Department
of Justice, Carole Saindon, said Monday that "It was alleged that when applying to immigrate to Canada, (Csizsik-Csatary) provided
false information about his nationality, and failed to provide
information concerning his collaboration with Nazi occupation
forces while serving with the Royal Hungarian Police. It
was further alleged that he participated in the internment
and deportation of thousands of Hungarian Jews to concentration
camps. As a result, the government of Canada revoked his
citizenship on August 28, 1997.
As deportation proceedings were under
way, Csizsik-Csatary voluntarily left the country, Saindon
said in an e-mail to CNN.
In October 1997, Paul Vickery, head
of the Canadian Justice Department's war crimes unit, told
Radio Free Europe that when officials went to Csizsik-Csatary's
Toronto home, his daughter told them he was living in Europe.
Vickery told the network Csizsik-Csatary's name would be
placed on a watch list and he would be barred from re-entering
Canada.
Csizsik-Csatary initially denied the
allegations and asked the Canadian government to put the
case on trial, but later withdrew that request, The Toronto
Star reported in August 1997.
"In his statement of defense,
Csizsik-Csatary admitted to some involvement in the ghettoization
of Jews, to handing over at least two Jews to the Germans
and to attending the last mass deportation of Jews out of
Kassa (Hungary)," the Star said.
The Sun said in its Sunday report
that Csizsik-Csatary's attorneys claimed he did not know
where the Jews were being sent. Of the 12,000 Jews transferred
from a ghetto to a brickyard and deported, only 450 survived,
the Sun reported.
Csizsik-Csatary returned to Hungary
upon leaving Canada, Zuroff said. "Hungarian authorities knew that he was back," he said. Authorities in Hungary launched an investigation in September 2011
after receiving information from Zuroff regarding Csizsik-Csatary's
residence in Budapest and his role in the Auschwitz deportations,
the center said.
The Sun reported Sunday that when
a reporter knocked on the door of Csizsik-Csatary's two-bedroom
Budapest apartment and asked him if he could justify his
past, "He looked shocked and stammered, 'No, no. Go away.'"
Asked about the deportation case in
Canada, the Sun said he replied, "No, no, I don't want to discuss it."
The Sun reporter asked, "Do
you deny doing it? A lot of people died as a result of your
actions," according to the report.
Csizsik-Csatary replied, "No,
I didn't do it. Go away from here," and slammed the door, according to the newspaper.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center said in
a statement Sunday that Zuroff last week submitted new evidence
to a Budapest prosecutor regarding Csizsik-Csatary and his "key role in the deportation of approximately 300 Jews from Kosice to Kamenetz-Podolsk,
Ukraine, where almost all were murdered in the summer of
1941."
"This new evidence strengthens
the already very strong case against Csatary and reinforces
our insistence that he be held accountable for his crimes," Zuroff said in the statement. "The passage of time in no way diminishes his guilt and old age should not afford
protection for Holocaust perpetrators."
Csizsik-Csatary reportedly was convicted
of war crimes in absentia and sentenced to death in 1948
in the Czech Republic, Zuroff said, but the center has not
obtained documentation on the case. edition.cnn.com
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