Nazi War Criminal Laszlo Csatary Dies Before Trial

Last year we reported on the discovery of and subsequent arrest of Nazi war criminal Laszlo Csatary in Budapest Hungary. Regrettably, the now 98 year old Csatary escaped justice when he died in Budapest last weekend while awaiting trial for his crimes.

Csatary is best known for being responsible for/participating in the deportation of an estimated 15,700 Jews while serving as a senior Hungarian police officer in the Hungarian ruled Slovakian city of Kosice. In June he had been charged with a number of counts related to his spring 1944 role in deporting Jews from the Kosice (Kassa at the time) ghetto to their death at Auschwitz.

Csatary, who died of pneumonia, was 98. There are some who say what is the point of bringing such an old man to trial, at such an advanced age does it really matter. I completely disagree. Far too many of those former Nazi's responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma, disabled, Catholics, etc... have gotten away, quite literally, with murder. They should be hunted. They should know that they are being hunted. And they should feel that pressure their entire lives which not incidentally have been lived mostly in relative freedom. Their ability to largely run out the clock of justice stands in direct contrast to untold numbers of these criminal's victims; many of whom never even survived long enough to know what it was to ride a bike, go to school, play sports, learn to read, fall in love, get married, have families of their own, or perhaps just as bad - had all of that taken away in the prime of their lives (see picture with this post of Hungarian Jewish children at Birkenau in May of 1944 - for all we know these boys could have been two of Csatary's victims).

I applaud those that hunt these criminals, that find them, and that bring a small measure of justice for the families of those whom they so callously and indifferently murdered so many years ago.