Scoop del tabloid britannico “The Sun”: scovato il criminale di guerra ungherese László Csizsik-Csatáry

 

Un autentico scoop è stato realizzato da due giornalisti del tabloid britannico “The Sun”, Brian Flynn e Ryan Parry, che – nell’edizione di ieri – hanno firmato un articolo esclusivo davvero molto interessante dal titolo estremamente eloquente: “The Sun finds Nazi who sent 15,700 to die”, pubblicando la foto di László Csizsik-Csatáry, un ex residente di Toronto, che all’inizio di quest’anno è stato inserito dal Centro Simon Wiesenthal nella lista dei dieci criminali di guerra nazisti più ricercati al mondo. I due reporter britannici si sono messi sulle tracce dell’ex comandante della Polizia ungherese e alla fine sono riusciti a scovarlo qualche giorno fa a Budapest, dove è ritornato dopo il provvedimento di espulsione comminato nei suoi confronti nel 1997 dal governo canadese.
Nel 1944 Csizsik-Csatáry era il comandante della Polizia Reale ungherese e responsabile di un ghetto ebraico nella città  di Kassa, dove in seguito fu accusato di aver esercitato la sua autorità con estrema crudeltà proprio nel campo di lavoro forzato, contribuendo ad organizzare – nella primavera di quello stesso anno – la deportazione di circa 15.700 ebrei di Kosice ad Auschwitz.

Fu condannato a morte in contumacia per crimini di guerra nel 1948, ma riuscì a far perdere rapidamente le sue tracce fuggendo in Canada l’anno successivo affermando di essere un cittadino jugoslavo. Giunto a Montreal Csizsik-Csatáry divenne poi un mercante d’arte stabilendo la sua residenza a Toronto dove nel 1955 riuscì perfino ad ottenere la cittadinanza canadese che, tuttavia, nel 1997 il governo federale gli ha revocato dopo aver rilevato che aveva mentito sulla sua domanda di cittadinanza, fornendo false generalità. L’ex gerarca, di conseguenza, fu costretto a lasciare il paese e far ritorno in Ungheria.

La sua vera identità era sconosciuta fino a qualche mese fa quando è stato scoperto nel quadro dell’operazione “Last Chance” (“ultima speranza”) coordinata dal Centro Simon Wiesenthal Israel (SWC) e dalla Fondazione Targum Shlishi di Miami (Florida) a partire dal 2002, per agevolare la cattura dei criminali di guerra nazisti, soprattutto nell’Europa post comunista. Il dott. Efraim Zuroff, storico della Shoah, nonché direttore del Centro Simon Wiesenthal in Israele (SWC), conosciuto come l’ultimo “cacciatore di nazisti”, ha dichiarato che:

L’operazione “Last Chance” si è trovata persino di fronte a una sfida in Ungheria, dove vi sono leggi che proteggono la pubblicazione all’estero di notizie concernenti cittadini ungheresi. E’ rimasta una minaccia che però non ha lasciato traccia nei processi. Di fatto, operazione “Last Chance” ha avuto più risultati in termini pratici in Ungheria, malgrado i dubbi iniziali sulle possibilità di successo, dovute alla natura dei crimini commessi dai criminali di guerra nazisti ungheresi e dai loro collaboratori. Riguardo a quelli commessi nei paesi baltici, per esempio, risulta che il numero di coloro che hanno partecipato agli stermini di massa era molto più alto”.

 

Secondo The Sun, Csizsik-Csatáry avrebbe adesso la veneranda età di 97 anni e vive in un appartamento di due stanze sulla cui cassetta postale compare, inequivocabilmente, stampata l’etichetta a nome di “Smith L. Csatáry”. I reporter del tabloid britannico che hanno realizzato questo scoop, Brian Flynn e Ryan Parry, hanno riferito inoltre che il soggetto in questione parla con “un accento canadese”.
Alla domanda che gli hanno rivolto in merito alla vexata quaestio relativa alla deportazione degli ebrei ha risposto con un tono alquanto infastidito: “No, no non voglio discuterne”. Poi, di fronte all’insistenza dei giornalisti ha concluso negando recisamente ogni addebito rivolto nei suoi confronti, affermando: “Io non l’ho fatto. andatevene da qui”.

 

 

© Giovanni Preziosi, 2012

La riproduzione degli articoli pubblicati in questo Blog richiede il permesso espresso dell’Autore.

 

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Ecco qui di seguito riportato l’articolo pubblicato nell’edizione del 15 luglio 2012 dal quotidiano britannico “The Sun”.

 

 

Domenica, 15 luglio 2012

 

The Sun finds Nazi who sent 15,700 to die

Most wanted war criminal tracked down

 

Exclusive

By BRIAN FLYNN and RYAN PARRY in Budapest

 

 

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.

 

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.

Brutal … police in Kassa during the war

 

 

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.”

Tracked down … Csizsik-Csatary shopping, peeping round door and after being quizzed by Sun

 

 

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.

Police HQ … during war 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.

Confronted … Sun’s Parry and half-dressed Csizsik-Csatary

 

 

“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.”