Budapest — Trained by life in surmounting grief, Marika Weinberger focuses
on the silver lining in the recent decision in Budapest not
to try Hungarian war criminal Laszlo Csatary in connection
with the murder of her nine uncles in 1941.
“At least now I won’t need to testify and relive the pain,” Weinberger, 84, told
JTA in a phone interview from her home in Sydney, Australia.
She says she is nonetheless prepared to do “everything necessary
to bring Csatary to justice.”
Weinberger claims that Csatary, a
former police officer who was arrested last month in Budapest,
was responsible for deporting her uncles to a killing site
in Ukraine. Yet prosecutors in Budapest last week dismissed
her claims without ever speaking to her, raising concerns
by Weinberger and others about the seriousness of the investigation.
The Federation of Jewish Communities in Slovakia has called publicly for Csatary’s
extradition to that country based on information it claims
to have that points to Csatary taking property from Jews
in Kosice, a city in eastern Slovakia. Those charges also
are being investigated, says Martin Kornfeld, the federation’s
CEO.
Kornfeld adds that he has no indication that alleged acts of cruelty by Csatary
to Jewish prisoners were being investigated. He notes that
the acts were addressed in Csatary’s 1948 conviction in absentia
by a Czechoslovakian court for torturing prisoners at Kosice.
The office of Budapest’s chief prosecutor,
Dr. Zsolt Grim, did not respond to interview requests for
this article.
According to Weinberger, her father
told her that Csatary had organized the deportation of her
mother’s nine brothers from Kosice on Aug. 19, 1941.
Her testimony was part of the file
that the Simon Wiesenthal Center had prepared on Csatary
that led to his arrest last month. The center’s research
implicates Csatary in the deportation of 300 people from
Kosice in 1941 and another 15,700 in 1944.
Csatary was arrested after London’s
The Sun newspaper published an expose about him. Csatary
had fled to Canada in 1949 after the Czech court sentenced
him in absentia to death for war crimes. He returned to Hungary
in the 1990s after Ottawa revoked his citizenship.
Last week, the Budapest Prosecutor’s
Office dismissed Weinberger’s testimony and dropped the charges
from 1941, saying Csatary was not in Kosice at the time and
lacked the rank to organize the transports. The Hungarian
prosecution team is said to be continuing to probe allegations
pertaining to the allegations from 1944.
Weinberger, a former vice president
of the Sydney Jewish Museum and a past president of the Australian
Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants,
stands by her story.
“I was young, but I remember the name
Csatary,” she said. “It surfaced when my father was trying
to find out what happened to my uncles.”
Weinberger says she even recalls the
weather on the night of the deportation, adding that “I remember
it better than I remember what happened yesterday.”
According to Weinberger, her father
found out that on Csatary’s orders, four of her uncles were
recalled from forced labor to Kosice for deportation with
her remaining five uncles and another 300 people.
“To think that Csatary went to all
that trouble to have them murdered,” she said. “No one bothered
to ask me what I know. Now he’s off the hook.”
As the conversation progresses, the
memories shake Weinberger’s determination to look at the
glass as half full.
“It’s a big disappointment,” she acknowledged.
“I was recently very ill and I thought I wouldn’t live much
longer, but I drew solace from knowing that the man who killed
my uncles would be brought to justice.”
Quickly regaining her composure, she
says, “Actually, I’m not surprised they dropped the charges.
I’m sure they would’ve found a way to ignore my testimony
even had they agreed to hear it.”
Weinberger was deported to Auschwitz
in 1944 along with other family members. Only she, her sister
and an aunt survived the Holocaust.
The dropping of charges pertaining
to 1941 “and other points” lead Kornfeld, the Slovakia Jewish
federation’s CEO, to believe that “Hungarian authorities
are trying to avoid a decision on Csatary in court and are
trying to find points that make the trial positive for Csatary.”
What is known is that in 1944, at
the age of 29, Csatary owned a large house in one of Kosice’s
most affluent neighborhoods – one that Kornfeld says was
well beyond his salary at the police force. By the end of
World War II, Kornfeld adds, Csatary also owned a foreign-made
luxury car that few Czechs could afford.
“Our opinion is that it looks like
Csatary took a lot of money and/or property from Jews from
Kosice and that this was [used as] part of his business in
Canada,” where Csatary was an art dealer, Kornfeld says.
Meawhile, Efraim Zuroff, the New York-born
Nazi hunter who tracked down Csatary in Budapest, says he
is “very perturbed to learn that no one from the prosecution
had spoken to” Weinberger. He adds, “This dismissal raises
questions about the objectivity of prosecutors.”
The dismissal has Zuroff, director
of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, facing challenges
of his own related to the case.
Citing the dismissal, a well-known
Hungarian lawyer this week called on the Budapest Prosecutor’s
Office to indict Zuroff. Futo Barnabas told the conservative
newspaper Magyar Nemzet that “There are now valid grounds
to charge Zuroff with deliberately making a false accusation.”
The charge, which is meant to discourage
libelous complaints, carries a five-year prison sentence
in Hungary.
It is not uncharted territory for
Zuroff. Last year, a Hungarian court summoned him to answer
libel accusations leveled at him by Sandor Kepiro, a suspected
war criminal whom Zuroff had exposed.
Zuroff was found not guilty; Kepiro
stood trial in Hungary and was acquitted last year. The acquittal
was appealed, but Kepiro died last September before the start
of the new proceedings.
Peter Feldmajer, president of Hungary’s
Federation of Jewish Communities, says that indicting Zuroff
for accusing Csatary “would be an act of insanity.”
“It is for a court to determine whether
accusations are justified,” he said of the charges against
Csatary. “To try someone for accusing a convicted war criminal
of deporting Jews, this is madness.”
Zuroff stands by his work, saying
that the Simon Wiesenthal Center is doing the Hungarian people
and government “a tremendous favor by giving them the opportunity
to honestly confront the bloody history of the Holocaust
in court.”
Weinberger, following the developments
from Sydney, continues to count her blessings.
“I’m glad,” she said, “that I left
Europe and went to the farthest corner on earth that I could
find.”
forward.com
|