Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld said on Monday he doubted Hungarian authorities would prosecute Laszlo Csatary, a 97-year-old accused of complicity in the killings of 15 700 Jews and tracked down in Budapest.
“I am not sure there will be legal action taken with this conservative government” of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Klarsfeld, a French lawyer and Nazi hunter, told AFP.
The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre confirmed on Sunday that Csatary, who in 1948 was condemned to death by a Czech court after a trial held in his absence, had been tracked to the Hungarian capital.
Hungarian authorities said they were conducting an investigation.
The centre identified Csatary as its “No 1 Most Wanted suspect”, but Klarsfeld said he had “never heard” of him.
“In my opinion he did not have major responsibilities, he must have been a stooge,” Klarsfeld said, adding that the only reason he would be at the top of the list is because so few Nazi war criminals remain.
“Thirty years ago, he would have been 3 500th on the list,” he said.
The Wiesenthal Centre has urged Hungarian prosecutors to put Csatary on trial, saying he served during World War II as a senior Hungarian police officer in the Slovakian city of Kosice, then under Hungarian rule.
He is accused of being complicit in the deportations of thousands of Jews from Kosice and its environs to the Auschwitz death camp in the spring of 1944.
He had earlier fled to Canada and had worked as an art dealer using a false identity, before being unmasked in 1995 and forced to flee. - AFP