Nazi War Crimes Attributed To 98-Year-Old Suspect In Hungary

Nazi war crimes are charged to a 98-year-old man who was arrested last year in Hungary after topping Nazi-hunters’ most wanted lists.

Laszlo Csatary, also known as Ladislaus Csizsick-Csatary, denies accusations that he was involved in the murder of 15,700 Jews as part of Germany’s ethnic cleansing programs in World War II. He maintains that he was merely an intermediary between Hungarian and German leadership.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization whose purpose is to root out Nazis in hiding, say their most wanted suspect, Csatary, worked as a policeman for the Nazis during the occupation of what is today Slovakia, in 1944.

Csatary, the Nazi-hunting group says, managed and directed the round up and transport of Jews to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Nazi war crimes the 98-year-old also participated in, directly and indirectly, included the torture and murder of thousands of Jews as well.

Csatary was described as preferring simple sadism, usually beating individuals under his watch in the Kosice internment camp — Kassa during the war —  with his bare hands. Sometimes he would use a whip as his knuckles grew tired.

After the war Csatary fled Europe, arriving in Canada. There he successfully lead a new life as an art dealer in Montreal and Toronto until 1997 when Canadian authorities learned of Csatary’s true identity.

They revoked his citizenship and the war criminal fled.

Incredibly, the Nazi war criminal was again tracked down in Budapest in 2012 by British reporters and Nazi-hunters.

Laszlo Csatary had previously been convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death, in absentia, by a Czechoslovakian court in 1948. The elderly Nazi’s death sentence was recently nullified by Slovak courts and given a life sentence.

This was done in hopes that Hungary would allow Csatary to be tried for his Nazi war crimes in Slovakia, where he served as head of the Kosice camps.

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