László Csatáry

László Csatáry (4 March 1915 – 10 August 2013) was a Hungarian citizen and an alleged Nazi war criminal, convicted and sentenced to death in absentia in 1948 by a Czechoslovak court. In 2012, his name was added to the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals.

Life
Csatáry was born in Mány in 1915. In 1944 he was the Royal Hungarian Police assistant to the commander in the city of Kassa in Hungary (now Košice in Slovakia). He was accused of organizing the deportation of approximately 15,700 Jews to Auschwitz. He is also accused of having inhumanely exercised his authority in a forced labour camp. He is also accused of brutalizing the inhabitants of the city. He was convicted in absentia for war crimes in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and sentenced to death. He fled to Canada in 1949 claiming to be a Yugoslav national and settled in Montreal where he became an art dealer. He became a citizen in 1955. In 1997, his Canadian citizenship was revoked by the federal Cabinet for not giving enough information on his citizenship application. He left the country two months later but was never charged with war crimes in Canada. An extensive criminal reference check was done on him with no evidence of war crimes there.

In 2012, Csatáry was located in Budapest, Hungary, based on a tip received by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in September 2011. His address was exposed by reporters from The Sun in July 2012. He was reportedly taken into custody on 18 July 2012 by the Hungarian authorities for questioning. On 30 July 2012, Slovak Justice Minister Tomáš Borec announced that Slovakia is ready to prosecute against Csatáry and asked Hungary to extradite him.

A file that the Simon Wiesenthal Center had prepared on Csatáry implicated him in the deportation of 300 people from Kassa in 1941. In August 2012 the Budapest Prosecutor’s Office dropped these charges, saying Csatáry was not in Kassa at the time and lacked the rank to organize the transports. In January 2013 it was reported that Slovak police had found a witness to corroborate other charges relating to deportations of 15,700 Jews from Kassa from May 1944.

Czechoslovakia had abolished death penalty in 1990. Accordingly, on 28 March 2013, Slovak County Court in Košice changed the 1948 verdict in Csatáry's case from death penalty to the life imprisonment in order to make it executable.

War-crimes indictment
On 18 June 2013, prosecutors in Hungary indicted Csatáry with war crimes, saying he had abused Jews and helped to deport Jews to Auschwitz in World War II. A spokesperson for the Budapest Chief Prosecutor's Office said, "He is charged with the unlawful execution and torture of people, (thus) committing war crimes partly as a perpetrator, partly as an accomplice." His trial could start within three months. The Budapest higher court suspended his case on 8 July 2013, however, because "Csatáry had already been sentenced for the crimes included in the proceedings, in former Czechoslovakia in 1948". The court also added that it is necessary to examine the 1948 death sentence how could be applied to the Hungarian legal practice. A book has been published in September 2014 titled Kassa Arnyekaban: A Csatary - ugy a documentumok tukreben (In the Shadow of Kassa: The Csatary Case in the Mirror of Documentation) by Sandor Verbovszki, an experienced investigator with international investigative credentials. In this book, Laszlo Csatary is totally exonerated of all accusations on the basis of the fact that, among other things, he was stationed elsewhere when the said crimes he is accused of took place. Furthermore, the text produces documented proof that Laszlo Csatary was not a commander at all. He was an assistant to a commander and merely passed on the orders of his superior. Hungary, at the time, was an occupied country by Germany and was under the command of the Germany armed forces. They were responsible for the said crimes not the Hungarians living or working in the area.

Reaction
Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said about his finding:

Yishayahu Schachar, Jewish survivor who encountered Csatáry, said:

László Karsai, a Hungarian Holocaust historian and the son of a Holocaust survivor, said:

Death
Csatáry died on August 10, 2013 from pneumonia at a hospital in Budapest aged 98. According to daily Bors, Csatáry had been hospitalized for a long time, where he caught pneumonia.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the The Simon Wiesenthal Center stated that he was "deeply disappointed" that Csatáry had died before facing trial.