Every democracy claims its judiciary is independent, but there is no doubt that
the courts also reflect local political opinions and prejudices.
Three months ago, Hungary made history when the first trial of a local Nazi war
criminal since the country’s transition from communism to democracy,
opened in Budapest. The man was charged with responsibility for the
murder of 36 people in a January 23, 1942 massacre carried out by
Hungarian military and gendarmerie in the city of Novi Sad – in Hungarian-occupied
former Yugoslavia – under the guise of a search for local “terrorists.”
The suspect in question, Dr. (of law) Sandor Kepiro, was among the officers who
organized the mass murder and was personally responsible for the
roundups and arrests of hundreds of Jewish, Serb and Roma residents
of a section in the city’s center. They were initially taken to a
large theater in the center of Novi Sad, where a committee of Hungarian
officers determined whether any had been arrested by mistake. All
the others were marched to the banks of the Danube, where they were
shot. Those not killed by the bullets, drowned in the river.
The shooting went on for several hours, until a light
plane landed on the river (which was frozen; the Hungarians had brought
a cannon to make a hole where the victims were shot, so the bodies
would fall in) and high-ranking Hungarian officers emerged and stopped
the murders, which had never been authorized by the high command
in Budapest. Up to that point, at least 1,246 individuals, among
them many women, infants, and children, had been murdered, the majority
Jews, the others Serbs and Roma.
THE CASE against Kepiro looked especially strong.
Although he personally denied any wrongdoing, he admitted having
been in Novi Sad with the Hungarian forces on that day, and in fact
was initially prosecuted in independent Hungary, along with the 14
other officers involved, for insubordination. In the course of that
trial, which concluded on January 22, 1944 with the conviction of
all the defendants, Kepiro’s role and activities were fully clarified,
and the fact that at least six people were murdered in the area under
his control during the roundups was no doubt a factor in his lengthy
prison sentence.
In addition, there was testimony by a Hungarian officer
in a trial conducted in 1948, that Kepiro had sent a truckload of
30 persons directly to the banks of the river to be shot, rather
than to the collection point, and two days before his current trial
opened, I was acquitted by a Hungarian court of libel charges that
Kepiro had levelled against me for exposing his crimes.
In short, Kepiro’s conviction appeared almost certain,
but in fact, the opposite occurred. This past July 18, Judge Bela
Varga announced that although Kepiro may not have been innocent,
the prosecution had failed to prove his guilt. In this respect, the
key element was Varga’s highly questionable decision to totally disqualify
all the evidence gathered in conjunction with Kepiro’s 1944 conviction
as well as the incriminating testimony from 1948.
What is particularly telling in this regard was the
judge’s basis for doing so, which was scandalously selective. He
disqualified the 1944 verdict, for example, because it had been subsequently
canceled by a Hungarian court, but neglected to mention the obvious
reason for the cancellation, which only took place after Hungary
was occupied by Nazi Germany. As far as the 1948 testimony was concerned,
he claimed that the witness must have either been tortured or testified
under duress since Hungary was then under communist rule – without
presenting any evidence whatsoever to prove his claim. In other words,
when it suited him, he took into account the political circumstances
at the time, and when it didn’t serve his purposes, he neglected
to do so.
EVERY DEMOCRACY claims its judiciary is independent,
but there is no doubt that the courts also, to a large extent, reflect
local political opinions and prejudices. The jubilant response in
the courtroom by dozens of fascists who had come to support Kepiro
is only the tip of the iceberg of a nasty wave of historical revisionism
that threatens to engulf Hungary – a country that, like its post-communist
counterparts, is having severe difficulties in acknowledging the
role of local Nazi collaborators in Holocaust crimes and imparting
that painful fact to the younger generation.
While significant progress has been made, especially following the opening of
Budapest’s excellent Holocaust museum – a beacon of historical truth
in an increasingly dreary landscape – the landslide victory of the
right-wing FIDESZ party and the strong showing by the extremists
of Jobbik in last year’s election have significantly altered political
realities, all of which make the verdict in the Kepiro case of far
greater significance than his personal fate.
The good news is that the prosecution has appealed the decision. The bad news
is that this step is no guarantee that justice will indeed be achieved
and historical truth adequately defended.
jpost.com
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