Hungarian confronted with evidence of his role in WWII atrocity
Sept. 30, 2006, 10:31PM
Hungarian confronted with evidence of his role in WWII atrocity
Court document shows he took part in Serbia massacre of 1,000 people
By NICHOLAS WOOD and IVANA SEKULARAC
New York Times
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY - The past caught up with Sandor Kepiro, 92, on
Thursday, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center identified him as a junior
police officer who was twice found guilty of participating in one of
the worst atrocities committed by Hungarian forces during World War II.
At a news conference at a synagogue opposite Kepiro's apartment here,
members of the Simon Wiesenthal Center ended what for him had been 60
years of relative anonymity as they issued copies of a recently
rediscovered wartime court verdict. It shows Kepiro was charged and
found guilty along with 14 other Hungarian army and paramilitary police
officers of taking part in the Novi Sad massacre in northern Serbia in
January 1942, in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Jews, were
killed.
In an extraordinary scene, Kepiro returned home shortly after the news
conference and discovered reporters outside his apartment building.
Over the next hour, he took questions from reporters at his front door,
acknowledging that he had helped round up people before the massacre
but denying that he had killed anyone.
The massacre, which is known in Serbian history books as the Racija,
based on the Serbian word for raid, took place over three days.
Hungarian forces, who occupied Novi Sad after their German allies
conquered Yugoslavia in 1941, rounded up hundreds of families and
eventually mowed them down with machine-gun fire on the shores of the
Danube. The bodies were then dumped into the icy waters, which had to
be broken up by artillery fire.
Although found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison, Kepiro never
served his sentence - he was freed by Hungary's fascist leadership
shortly after his trial by a previous government in Budapest in 1944
and fled to Argentina after the war. He was convicted again, in
absentia, in 1946 by the new communist government in Hungary. He
returned to Budapest in 1996, after the communists fell, after
consulting with Hungarian Embassy officials in Argentina who said he
could come back, he said.
Kepiro has not been arrested, and it is not clear whether he will face
prosecution.
Speaking to reporters in Budapest, Efraim Zuroff, director of the
Wiesenthal Center's Jerusalem office, listed Kepiro, a former lawyer,
as one of four leading suspects he said he hoped would be tried with
Nazi-era crimes.
The other three suspects are Milovoj Aser, a former Croatian police
commander, accused of persecuting Jews; Charles Zentai, a Hungarian
accused of killing an 18-year-old Jew in Budapest, and Aribert Heim, a
doctor accused of conducting medical experiments on inmates at the
Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
All of the suspects are in their early 90s. According to the Wiesenthal
Center, Zentai lives in Australia, where he is fighting an extradition
request by Hungary, and Aser lives in Austria. Heim's location is
unknown.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4227259.html
