published 10/01/2013 at 11:53 AM by Cnaan Liphshiz
(JTA) — Slovak police reportedly have found a witness to corroborate charges against the Hungarian war criminal Laszlo Csatary.
Csatary, 97, served during World War II as a Hungarian police commander in the Jewish ghetto of Kosice, then a part of Hungary and now in
Slovakia.
The investigation in Kosice focuses on Csatary’s alleged involvement in the deportation of 15,000 Jews from the
city. According to a recent report by Magyar Radio, the witness, whose identity has not been revealed, survived the deportation and has “accurate” information about Csatary’s actions as police commander of the local ghetto.
The Budapest Public Prosecutor’s Office asked the Slovak authorities to question the witness, a spokeswoman for the Budapest prosecutor’s office, Bettina Bagoly, was quoted as saying.
Csatary, who was put under house arrest in Budapest last July following research by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, denies the charge.
At the end of the war, Csatary fled Hungary and settled in Canada, where he was granted Canadian citizenship in
1955. He was sentenced to death in absentia by the Czechoslovak authorities in 1948.
In October 1997, Csatary left Canada to avoid deportation proceedings for including false data on his
citizenship application.
In August, Csatary was cleared in Hungary of a separate set of charges pertaining to the deportation of 300
Jews from Kosice to their deaths at the Kamyanets-Podilsky camp in Ukraine in 1941.
Tags: World War II, war criminal, Slovakia, Simon
Wiesenthal Center, Magyar Radio, Laszlo Csatary, Kosice, Hungary, ghetto, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Budapest,
Bettina Bagoly, Top Headlines.