The world’s most wanted living Nazi collaborator is Laszlo Csatary, the Simon
Wiesenthal Center said in its annual report on Thursday.
Csatary was the
police chief of Kosice during the deportation of 15,700 local Jews to Auschwitz
in spring 1944, the Jewish group said.
After the war he emigrated to
Canada but was stripped of his citizenship in 1995 when his wartime role was
discovered and he subsequently left the country.
Efraim Zuroff, the SWC’s
Israel director, said Csatary resurfaced in Hungary earlier this year and that
he hoped local authorities would prosecute him promptly.
“He is 95 years
old and is still driving his car,” Zuroff said.
“He lives in
Budapest.”
Jewish groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Center have been
pressing European governments to try Nazis and their collaborators – the
youngest of which are now in their late eighties – for decades with mixed
results.
“In the past 11 years, at least 90 convictions against Nazi war
criminals have been obtained, at least 79 new indictments have been filed, and
well over 3,000 new investigations have been initiated,” said Zuroff. “Despite
the somewhat prevalent assumption that it is too late to bring Nazi murderers to
justice, the figures clearly prove otherwise, and we are trying to ensure that
at least several of these criminals will to be brought to trial.”
Zuroff
said he received a letter from the Hungarian prosecution saying it opened an
investigation against the said collaborator.