Simon Wiesenthal Center says 95-year-old Laszlo Csatary oversaw deportation of Jews to Auschwitz, is alive in Budapest.
By GIL STERN STERN SHEFLEREfraim Zuroff 311(photo credit: Reuters)
The world’s most wanted living Nazi collaborator is Laszlo Csatary, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said in its annual report on Thursday.Csatary was the police chief of Kosice during the deportation of 15,700 local Jews to Auschwitz in spring 1944, the Jewish group said.After the war he emigrated to Canada but was stripped of his citizenship in 1995 when his wartime role was discovered and he subsequently left the country.Efraim Zuroff, the SWC’s Israel director, said Csatary resurfaced in Hungary earlier this year and that he hoped local authorities would prosecute him promptly.“He is 95 years old and is still driving his car,” Zuroff said.“He lives in Budapest.”Jewish groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Center have been pressing European governments to try Nazis and their collaborators – the youngest of which are now in their late eighties – for decades with mixed results.“In the past 11 years, at least 90 convictions against Nazi war criminals have been obtained, at least 79 new indictments have been filed, and well over 3,000 new investigations have been initiated,” said Zuroff. “Despite the somewhat prevalent assumption that it is too late to bring Nazi murderers to justice, the figures clearly prove otherwise, and we are trying to ensure that at least several of these criminals will to be brought to trial.”Zuroff said he received a letter from the Hungarian prosecution saying it opened an investigation against the said collaborator.
