The Simon Wiesenthal Center has filed a complaint to European football federation UEFA in connection with Hungarian fans commemorating a recently died WWII war-crimes suspect at a football match on August 17.

During the match between Budapest’s FTC and MTK, fans of the former team held up a sign “In memoriam Laszlo Csatary”.

The Center’s director for foreign relations Shimon Samuels noted in the letter that FTC fans have repeatedly hailed people associated with Nazi crimes, especially at matches with MTK, a team believed to have Jewish affiliations before WWII.

According to the letter, anti-Semitic sentiments are being fuelled by the radical nationalist Jobbik party, and its banned but still active para-military Hungarian Guard. Hungarian football federation MLSZ, at the same time, is reluctant to eliminate neo-Nazi influences from stadiums, the document added.

The document calls on UEFA to get MLSZ apply zero tolerance against such expressions.

Csatary, who was suspected of involvement in the deportation of thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps and featured high on the Nazi-hunting Center’s wanted list of suspected war criminals, died at the age of 98 on August 10.

politics.hu