The hearing of Hungarian Laszlo Csatary, scheduled for Tuesday on his alleged involvement in deportations, was cancelled due to his poor health, the National Development Ministry said in a statement.

The 98-year-old man would have been heard by the Buda District Court in connection with a lawsuit filed by the heirs of at least 300 Holocaust victims and survivors against the Hungarian state and state railways MAV in Washington, DC, in October 2010.

The plaintiffs claim that MAV had provided its carriages “fully aware” that these would be used to transport more than 400,000 Jews to Nazi death camps.

Maryland-based attorney Charles Fax, who initiated Csatary’s hearing, insisted that several reports affirm the witness’s personal involvement in organising the transports and “loading the people into the carriages.”

The judge informed him about all opportunities provided by Hungary’s civil procedural law, including the hearing of the witness in his home or current residence.

Fax said he was satisfied with the fair procedure and expressed thanks to the court for helping to collect the information required by the plaintiffs.

According to Jerusalem’s Wiesenthal Centre, Csatary, as police commander of the ghetto in Kassa (now Kosice in Slovakia), had a key role in the deportation of over 15,000 Jews to the Auschwitz death camp in the spring of 1944, and around 300 Jews to a camp in western Ukraine’s Kamyanets-Podilsky three years before.

The Budapest Prosecutor’s Investigations Office in July last year brought war crime charges against Csatary who has been under house arrest since then. He denies the charges.

politics.hu