Hungarian police arrested Lászl Csatáry this morning. The 97-year-old man, who was sentenced to death in absentia in Czechoslovakia in 1948, is now number one on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of Nazi criminals.
During the Second World War, Csatáry was head of the Hungarian police in the Košice ghetto. 15,700 Jews went through this. Some of them died here, others later in the extermination camp at Auschwitz. According to the Wiesenthal Center, he was behind the deportation of 300 Košice Jews to Ukraine, where almost all of them were killed.
After being convicted in Czechoslovakia, Csatáry fled to Canada in 1949. He pretended to be a Yugoslav and in 1955 acquired Canadian citizenship under a false name. Until the mid-1990s, he lived unnoticed by local authorities in Montreal and Toronto, making a living as an art dealer.
In 1995, immigration authorities again took an interest in Csatáry, appearing under the name Csizsik. They stripped him of his citizenship two years later for providing false information. The man did not wait until he was deported and left the country. According to his daughter, he was headed for Europe.
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Csatáry’s trail was then lost for over ten. Only last year the top Nazi hunter at the Wiesenthal Center, Efraim Zuroff, learned from informants that the fugitive was living in Budapest. In January, Efraim alerted local police, but Csatáry’s exact address became known only this month to journalists from the British newspaper The Sun. The Nazi criminals didn’t hesitate anymore and made a last-ditch effort to escape. When Hungarian police arrived at his apartment on Monday, they found it empty.
Lászl Csatáry’s apartment door the day after being tracked down by journalists
Although Csatáry was arrested today, the laxity of Hungarian police in prosecuting crimes committed during World War II has sparked international condemnation. He is now facing suspicions of war crimes, for which he faces a life sentence. Prosecutors have asked to detain him. However, at the same time, he informed Hungarian radio that because of his health, age and presumption of innocence, Csatáry could continue under house arrest.
In an open letter, the Simon Wiesenthal Center asked Hungarian President János Áder to advocate for bringing Csatáry to justice as soon as possible. However, the French historian and Nazi hunter, Serge Klarsfeld, argues that the right-wing Hungarian government did not want Csatáry’s punishment. In an interview with the AFP office, he described his arrest as only “appeasement” to the public.
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