Who is Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary, and what is his connection to Canada?

Csatary is an purported Nazi war criminal. During the war, he was a police Chief in the Slovakian town of Kosice, where it is alleged that in 1941 he was a key player in sending more than 300 Jews to their deaths. Further allegations suggest that in 1944 Csatary helped to organize the deportation of over 15,000 Jewish men, women and children to Auschwitz, where many were gassed to death.

Laszio Karsai, an eminent Hungarian Holocaust historian, has documented testimony from two Nazi officers stationed in Kosice at the time. They tell of Csatary raping Jewish women and then forcing them to dig holes in the frozen ground with their bare hands. Peter Feldmajer, president of the Jewish community in Hungary, reports that “Csatary was particularly sadistic. He created a camp for torturing the rich so they would confess where they have hidden their money.”

Ephraim Zuroff, the leading Nazi War criminal investigator for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, has reportedly uncovered new evidence to suggest that Csatary took delight in whipping Jewish women, and ordering Jewish men and other prisoners to assume stress positions for hours at end. Evidence suggests that he would beat these men them with a dog lead and that he oversaw a shoot-on-sight policy if they tried to escape.

Earlier this week, Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary’s whereabouts were exposed—thanks to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and a British newspaper. He has been living in Budapest quite comfortably in recent years. Today, at 97 years of age and in surprisingly good health, Csatary resides in a rather tony area of the city in a two bedroom apartment.

But where was Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary prior to his arrival in Hungary? It appears that Csatary lived in Canada for almost 30 years, before his supposed role in the above-described activities was first revealed in the late 1990s. Following the war, like many other alleged Nazi war criminals, Csatary manipulated his way into Canada by concealing his brutal wartime activities from Canadian immigration officials. Seven years later, in 1955, as a then rather successful art dealer in Montreal, Csatary applied for and received Canadian citizenship.

And here he lived as a result of the lethargy and inaction by successive Canadian governments when it came to hunting down some of the world’s most infamous and vicious murderers, some of who had settled in Canada.

Things changed in 1985. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, carrying through on a pledge to finally root out alleged Nazi war criminals and enablers, called a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the allegations. Quebec Superior Court Justice Jules Deschenes oversaw this two-year process…report[ing] in December of 1986 that there was significant evidence in regard to 20 individuals. (Another 169 cases were not acted upon as a result of inaccessible documents from Eastern Europe). Amongst those 20 names, it appears, was one Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary.

Sadly, it took the authorities almost 10 more years to act on the findings of the Deschenes Commission; plenty of time for the wily Csatary (who’d been named as a suspect for denaturalization and deportation) to leave Canada in 1997 for destinations unknown.…

Fifteen years ago, some said of Csatary and other alleged Nazi war criminals that they should just be left alone. After all, the argument went, so many years have gone by, and they are old men.

That yesterday’s war criminals are elderly can be no reason to shirk our duty to their victims. We ought not see them as they are today, but should remember them for the thugs and murderers they were so many years ago. To allow their crimes to go unpunished would indeed give Nazism a posthumous victory. It is time for Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary to finally face justice.