The Sun finds Nazi who sent 15,700 to die
Most wanted war criminal tracked down
Andrew Styczynski Pictures
THE world’s most wanted Nazi war criminal — who helped send 15,700 Jews to their deaths at Auschwitz — has been tracked down by The Sun.
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Sadist Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary, 97, was a police commander in charge of a Jewish ghetto in Kassa, Hungary, during World War Two.
He took pleasure in beating women with a whip he carried on his belt, according to devastating documents uncovered by the Nazi-hunters at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem.
Csizsik-Csatary also forced them to dig ditches in frozen ground with their bare hands, made dissenting Jews take up stress positions for hours, hit them with a dog lead and oversaw a shoot-on-sight policy if they tried to escape.
He fled Kassa — now renamed Kosice in Slovakia — after the Allied victory and was sentenced to death for war crimes in his absence in Czechoslovakia in 1948.
But Csizsik-Csatary created a new identity, turning up as an art dealer in Canada.
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When his cover was blown there — in 1997 — his citizenship was revoked and the government began to build a case against him. He fled before deportation papers could be served.
For 15 years his whereabouts have been a mystery.
But a Sun team tracked him down to a two-bedroom apartment in a smart district of Budapest, Hungary.
Our investigators were given details of where he might be by the Holocaust campaigners at the Wiesenthal Centre.
The human rights organisation had been given a tip-off after launching Operation Last Chance, aimed at bringing World War Two Nazis to justice before they die.
Once our team found Csizsik-Csatary they were able to establish he was the Nazi collaborator — Number One on the Wiesenthal Centre’s most wanted list. We confronted him at the flat where he had been living quietly among families unaware of his chilling past.
Csizsik-Csatary, who speaks English with a Canadian accent after decades living in Montreal and Toronto, answered the door in just socks and underpants.
When we asked if he could justify his past, he looked shocked and stammered “No, no. Go away.” Questioned about his deportation case in Canada he answered angrily in English: “No, no. I don’t want to discuss it.” Our reporter asked: “Do you deny doing it? A lot of people died as a result of your actions.”
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He replied: “No I didn’t do it, go away from here,” before slamming the door.
The atrocities that made him the most hunted Nazi war criminal still alive were detailed by the Canadian government when it stripped him of citizenship.
The Justice Department’s war crimes unit said he was a “commander” in the Royal Hungarian Police in Kassa in charge of officers who guarded the ghetto.
He supervised the drawing-up of lists of its inhabitants, conducted personal searches of Jews and confiscated valuables.
The police transferred the Jews from the ghetto to a brickyard at the end of April 1944 and loaded them on to freight trains to Auschwitz and other camps.
In a summary of its case against Csizsik-Csatary the Canadian Government stated: “For at least two transports, he was present for the embarkation, checking the Jews’ names on a list.” Of the approximately 12,000 Jews gathered in the brickyard and deported, just 450 survived.
During the case, Csizsik-Csatary admitted to some involvement in the “ghettoisation” of Jews and said he had played a “limited role” in the movement of Jews to the brickyard.
He also admitted handing over at least two Jews to the Germans and to attending the last mass deportation of Jews out of Kassa.
But his lawyers claimed he “did not know where the Jews were to be deported”.
Before confronting him we had watched as he took a leisurely four-hour stroll through town, savouring the long life thousands exterminated in Auschwitz had been denied.
Nazi war criminal
Csizsik-Csatary left his apartment dressed smartly in khaki trousers, a shirt, a grey and white checked jacket and flat cap and took a tram to a nearby shopping mall.
He browsed shops and bought a right-wing paper from a kiosk. He sat in a public seating area and casually browsed through it before a red-haired lady friend arrived to meet him.
They sat chatting and spent almost two hours in deep conversation before he left to shop for groceries.
The pensioner left the store carrying two shopping bags before returning home. He moved into his apartment just weeks ago from another flat a mile away where neighbours called him “Papa Csatary”.
At the apartment his door buzzer was labelled “Smith”. But behind a security door, his old mailbox had the hand-written name “Smith L Csatary”.
Holocaust campaigners last night hailed our investigation and called on Hungarian prosecutors to arrest him so he can finally face justice.
Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Centre, said time should never diminish the crimes committed in the Holocaust — or excuse those responsible from facing punishment.
He said: “Now that The Sun has found this war criminal he must be put on trial in Hungary.
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“Csatary was a police commander in the ghetto of Kassa and was responsible for sending 15,700 people to death camps. He was known to be a sadist, he had a determination to round all Jews up and forcibly deport them to Poland. To achieve justice against this man will bring a degree of closure for families of the victims, for the Jewish communities of Hungary and Slovakia.”
Peter Feldmajer, President of the Hungarian Jewish Community, said: “Several thousand Jewish families have felt sorrow and hurt because of this man and it would be a disgrace, for the entire Hungarian nation, if Csatary were to escape justice.”
Prosecutors in Hungary were last night studying dossiers of evidence handed over by The Sun. Our investigation team met with senior prosecutor Gabor Hetenyi, who thanked us.
Deputy Chief Prosecutor Dr Jeno Varga, said: “There is an ongoing investigation. Prosecutors are studying the information submitted.”
Fiends still
being hunted
THESE are seven Nazis still at liberty and on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s list of Most Wanted.
GERHARD SOMMER, 93, served in the Panzergrenadiers. VLADIMIR KATRIUK, 90, served in a Nazi police battalion. KAROLY ZENTAI, 90, helped hunt Jews in Budapest. SOEREN KAM, 90, served with a Panzer division. IVAN KALYMON, 91, served in the Nazi auxiliary police in the Ukraine. ALGIMANTAS DAILIDE, in the Lithuanian security police. HELMUT OBERLANDER, 88, served with a Nazi killing squad.
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By Dr Efraim Zuroff, Nazi-hunting author
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THE passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of war criminals — and old age should not protect people who committed mass murder.
If Csizsik-Csatary is healthy, there is no reason to ignore his dark past simply because he was born in 1915.
People like him have had a long time to think about their crimes and accept they made a mistake.
But tragically, in the 32 years I have been involved in this field, I have never had a single case of a Nazi war criminal who has expressed any regret or any remorse, if anything the opposite.
Hunting people like Csizsik-Csatary has not only been a personal mission of mine, but a mission which has wider significance. This is a mission against forgetfulness.
This is the obligation of our generation, the generation after the Holocaust, who must see to it that those who can be brought to justice be held accountable.
– Dr Zuroff is author of Operation Last Chance: One Man’s Quest To Bring Nazi Criminals To Justice.
