A FEW months ago, Holocaust survivor Osi Sladek and his wife Selma were in Toronto visiting his sister when a news report surfaced about Laszlo Csatary, accused of deporting thousands of Jews from Kassa, Hungary, to Auschwitz in 1944.
Sladek, 78, who was smuggled out of his native Slovakia at age eight, lived in Kassa with relatives from 1943 to 1944.
Was this the police official that interrogated him for an entire day when he arrived in town in March of 1943?
”My brother-in-law Peter Miller says to me, ’Let me see if I can get this guys picture on the computer’,” says Sladek, a Denver musician. “Sure enough, about 10 minutes later Peter calls out, ‘Yosel, come here, you won’t believe it.'”
Sladek stared at the photograph, taken almost 50 years earlier.
The resemblance was unmistakable.
“I said, ’Oh my gosh, this is a familiar face!'” he exclaims to the IJN. I didnt exactly remember his name. But whenever I speak to students, I always tell the story of the pudgy little police officer.
”Now I know his name. Its Laszlo Csatary.”
Seventy years ago, Sladek had a prolonged and terrifying encounter with the chunky man with a big revolver and an arrogant swagger.
“I thought I had put it all behind me, and then suddenly it rushes back,” says Sladek, who called two older cousins from Kassa now residing in Toronto to double-check his memory.
“They said, ’Sure, he’s the one.'”
Appointed police commander of the Kassa interment camp, Csatary allegedly had a key role in the deportation of 15,700 Jews to Auschwitz.
He fled to Canada after the war but his crimes remained behind in bloodstained deeds and memories.
The rest of this article is available in the IJN’s print edition only. Contact Carol to order your copy at (303) 861-2234 or email [email protected].
