Some would say it could only happen in Eastern Europe. A ninety-six year old convicted war criminal is the plaintiff in a case concerning his Holocaust era crimes. The unlikely libel suit filed by a Hungarian Nazi collaborator, Sandor Kepiro, 96, against the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Dr Efraim Zuroff, opened in Budapest on Friday, 8 October 2010, to a packed courtroom.
Kepiro last year admitted on BBC Television that he had rounded up residents but denied he knew they would be killed. He was convicted of involvement in the infamous 1942 Novi Sad massacre of Jews, Roma and Serbs, first by a 1944 Budapest tribunal, then again in 1946. This second conviction was in absentia; Kepiro had fled to Austria where he lived from 1945 to 1948, when he made his way to Argentina, where he lived until 1996.
Hungary’s pro-Jewish Christian evangelical Faith Church came out in force to support Dr Zuroff, who earlier this year was honored by the president of Croatia.
The irony of the situation was that his seemingly preposterous legal action for the first time ever enabled Dr Zuroff to directly question a suspected Holocaust perpetrator in a court of law. It also highlighted what seemed to many an absurd black comedy: a legal system that isn’t prosecuting a Nazi war criminal allows him to sue for libel. The proceedings were adjourned until 16 December.
Photo: The man in the brown coat is Sandor Kepiro. Signs read: ‘War crimes never expire’. Courtesy ATV Hungary / Andras Patkai. Coverage on Hungary’s ATV (here, here, here). Jerusalem Post report here. Video of ATV interview with Efraim Zuroff here. TV news report here. Makor Rishon report (Hebrew) here. 13 Oct JTA report here.
Dr Shimon Alperovich (Simonas Alperavičius), chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, turned 82. Notwithstanding his age and various health issues, he continues to provide proud, courageous, vigorous and independent leadership for the Jewish community at a time when various government agencies continue to pursue painfully disingenuous policies on a range of Jewish issues, including Holocaust history, antisemitism and restitution. His series of public statements (some produced in translation on the 
Švenčioneliai, interwar Poland’s Nowo-Święciany). Such is the custom every year on the first Sunday in October, to remember the eight thousand Jewish civilians murdered there after a gruesome ten days of imprisonment, deprivation of basic human needs, and torture, in makeshift barracks here at the site, in October 1941. The eight thousand Jews were marched (with the lame and the old transported on wagons) from their hometowns in the area to the site on September 27th. They were all shot over a two-day period on the 7th and 8th of October 1941.
Frankly, there is unease in the Jewish community as to whether this title and text leave open the possibility that the LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front) and PG (Provisional Government), both massively complicit in the early stages of the Lithuanian Holocaust, are going to be celebrated as ‘defenders of freedom’ (or anti-Soviet patriots) during the 2011 seventieth anniversary of events unleashed by Hitler’s invasion of 22 June 1941.
of Vilna and its environs ― were murdered by Nazi henchmen between 1941 and 1944. In 2005, Yale University Press brought out Kazimierz Sakowicz’s eyewitness account, Ponary Diary, where it is reconfirmed that most of the killing was done by volunteer local killers.
Attorney Joseph Melamed, chairman of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel (at right) delivered the keynote speech today at an event held at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to mark the September 23rd anniversary of the 1943 liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto. Because of the Jewish holidays, the event was moved up to the 20th this year.
The Jewish Community of Lithuania issued an eloquent public statement on 7 Sept 2010 (
