I very much doubt whether
A.M. had the slightest idea that his good deed would ultimately
enable the exposure of one of the most important unpunished Nazi
war criminals in the world, but that is often the nature of good
deeds. In his case it was the sheer chutzpa of a social acquaintance
in Scotland, an elderly Hungarian who bragged about his role as
a master-sergeant of the Hungarian gendarmerie in the deportation
of Jews to Auschwitz, that prompted his email in February 2005
to the general information address of the Wiesenthal Center in
Los Angeles.
“Hi, I have been watching closely all the recent horrifying
publicity surrounding Auschwitz, in particular to the excellent
BBC programme broadcast last night concerning the Hungarian Jews… It
is well known that a Hungarian citizen Istvan Bujdoso… was
a member of the Csendor (gendarmerie) during the war… He
is not slow to tell tales of how involved he was in the mass Jewish
deportations, with vivid descriptions of the trains, etc….
“It seems to me that this man has escaped any form of justice… and
it saddens me that he has been able to settle in Scotland and boast
about his involvement. Perhaps you could pass this information
on to an interested person who may be able to investigate further.” And
in an ending which ultimately proved to be incredibly ironic, our
Scottish informant expressed two wishes, the first of which luckily
did not come true: “I would dearly like to see this man close
his mouth and perhaps even show a measure of regret for the part
he played in the Holocaust.”
As it turned out, Mr. Bujdoso has yet to express any regret for
his own role in the crimes of the Holocaust, but it was his apparently
irrepressible urge to talk about that “heroic” period
of his life, which ultimately paved the way for the discovery of
a far senior colleague.
As welcome as the information from Scotland was, (it’s not
every day that we get a full original name and a specific allegation
which in theory could be investigated,) it was missing three major
components, which initially hindered our efforts to verify the
suspicions.
We lacked a date of birth, a current address, and most important,
the place in Hungary where he had participated in the deportations.
During the next few weeks, I corresponded with AM in the hope that
he could provide us with the missing information. He ultimately
sent me Bujdoso’s new name, a recent photo, and current address,
but was unfortunately unable to determine the site of his crimes,
which basically stymied our investigation. We scoured rosters of
Hungarian gendarmerie and examined various research avenues but
were unable to find out where he was stationed in the spring of
1944.
Thwarted by the lack of this information, the investigation was
virtually dormant for months until a Scottish journalist named
Michael Tierney came to Israel to write a cover story for the Glasgow
Herald on Nazi-hunters. In the course of my interview, I told him
about our “Scottish” suspect and inquired whether he
might be willing to attempt to elicit the missing information from
him. Michael did not need much convincing. Obviously sympathetic
to our efforts, he immediately agreed and I suppose that the prospect
of a hot “local” scoop also worked in our favor.
Months passed, however, before any progress was made. He originally
hoped to obtain the missing biographical data from a detective
friend, but the search for the missing date of birth proved much
more difficult than originally anticipated. In early summer 2006,
however, there finally was a breakthrough. He had contacted Bujdoso
directly and was going to Selkirk to interview him, ostensibly
for a feature about Hungarians in Scotland. I did not get my hopes
up too high, having been disappointed numerous times by the results
of such missions, and thus waited impatiently for the results,
hoping for the best but very aware that the results might well
prove disappointing.
This time, however, there was very good news. Not only had the
journalist determined where Bujdoso served, the latter also bragged
to him-in response to a question regarding the identity of a young
Hungarian gendarmerie officer whose photograph was on Bujdoso's
wall- that he was in contact with that person, a much higher-ranked
gendarmerie officer named Sandor Kepiro. In fact, Kepiro had visited
him in Scotland two years ago and the two comrades were still in
regular phone contact.
It did not take me long to determine just how serious that information
ultimately proved to be. I did not recognize the name Sandor Kepiro,
but when I went to Yad Vashem to consult with Dr. Gavriel Bar-Shaked,
the resident expert on Hungary, he could not believe his ears.
Kepiro, he explained to me, was a major Hungarian war criminal
who was among the gendarmerie and army officers responsible for
the mass murder of over 1,200 civilians (mostly Jews) in the city
of Novi Sad on January 23, 1942.
In fact, he had already been convicted twice by Hungarian courts
for his role in this atrocity. In January 1944, he had been sentenced
to 10 years imprisonment and in 1946, he had been sentenced (in
absentia) to 14 years incarceration, but in fact he had hereto
never been punished. When the Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944,
Kepiro was pardoned, promoted and returned to his duties as a high-ranking
gendarmerie officer. After the war, he escaped and had not been
heard from since, which is why the news from Scotland was so surprising.
But one piece of information was still missing-where was Kepiro
presently living? So once again, we asked Michael Tierney to get
back to Bujdoso for the missing details on our new suspect. Within
a day, we already knew that Kepiro had returned home to Hungary,
and with the help of friends in Budapest, I was able to track him
down to a lovely brownstone on 78 Leo Frankel Street, right opposite
a local synagogue(!). It turns out that he had fled to Austria
in 1945 and three years later had escaped to Argentina, where he
lived until 1996. Kepiro claims in fact, that in that year he asked
at the Hungarian Embassy in Buenos Aires whether he could return
home without facing prosecution and was told that it was OK.
On August 1, 2006, I submitted the documentary evidence and the
information concerning Kepiro's current whereabouts to Hungarian
prosecutors and asked that his sentences be implemented as quickly
as possible. The prosecutors replied that they obviously would
have to review the two verdicts, but if either was for genocide,
war crimes, or crimes against humanity, all of which have no statute
of limitations, then rest assured, Kepiro would finally be punished.
If only it were that easy. Six months later, believe it or not,
neither verdict has yet been found in the Hungarian archives and
the case is currently pending. Luckily, with the help of Dr. Antonijevic
of the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade, I was able to obtain
a copy of the 1944 verdict from the National Archives of Yugoslavia
(Novi Sad was Yugoslav territory occupied by the Hungarians when
the murders took place and today is in Serbia), but the prosecutors
indicated that the 1944 conviction, which was for violating the
regulations of the Hungarian armed forces, was no longer applicable
and thus the case remains in limbo. The 1946 verdict was apparently
for war crimes, but it disappeared from the archives and thus the
court finds itself in a judicial quandry. Under those circumstances,
I decided to expose him publicly, which has turned the case into
a local cause celebre.
When Hungarian Foreign Minister Kinga Goncz visited Israel this
year, I demanded that the government initiate an inquiry into the
possible cover-up by Hungarian diplomats of the information regarding
Kepiro's whereabouts in Argentina and his subsequent decision to
return to Budapest. What initially appeared to be a case of an
escaped Nazi war criminal who had disappeared without a trace,
is increasingly looking like a huge cover-up by government officials,
and this too is part of the ongoing search for historical justice
and truth.
In late January, I was invited to be the main speaker at the annual
memorial sponsored by the Novi Sad municipality for the victims
of the 1942 massacre held on the banks of the Danube, not far from
the exact spot where most of those killed were shot by the Hungarians.
What made this year's ceremony particularly meaningful was its
contemporary relevance. With Kepiro exposed, there suddenly was
a practical target for the pain, trauma, and frustration of those "orphaned" by
the Hungarians.
Was my appeal for justice heard in Budapest? Less than two weeks
later, I learned that Kepiro had been invited to speak at a conference
on the history of the Hungarian gendarmerie which was scheduled
to be held in the educational center of the Ministry of Justice.
The topic of his presentation was "How I 'became' a war criminal?" While
the ministry withdrew its invitation to host the conference in
the wake of this news, a more important question is how twice-convicted
but unpunished Hungarian war criminals are free to give lectures
at respectable conferences despite the fact that their Holocaust
guilt has already been unequivocally proven in a court of law?
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