Hungary demands return of $8 million for Holocaust survivors

Hungary is demanding that a United States organization return roughly $8 million in payments for Holocaust survivors, claiming it has failed to properly account for the money. The American organization, in turn, says it provided reams of information and accuses Hungary of stonewalling.

More than half a million Hungarian Jews perished during the Holocaust. Five years ago, the country agreed to provide $21 million over a five-year period to help impoverished survivors of Hungarian descent, working with a Hungarian organization and the Claims Conference, based in New York, which handles compensation programs for people who suffered Nazi persecution. 

The money was supposed to be a down payment to help aging victims while Hungary worked with the organization on the longer, painstaking process of property and asset restitution tied to the Holocaust. The funding ranges from $800 to $2,000 per person annually to provide medicine, hearing aids and other necessities to the poorest of Hungarian survivors, Claims Conference said.

Two years ago, after a new government came to power in Hungary, commissioner Andras Levente Gal began challenging how the money had been spent, asking for more details about the funds. The Hungarian government halted its payments to the organization, holding on to $5.6 million.

“It is impossible to identify the individuals eligible for compensation or the grounds for their eligibility” based on the documents it provided, the Hungarian Ministry of Public Administration and Justice said on its website  this week, arguing the organization had shown that the funds were distributed “on a far-from-equal footing.”

Gal is now seeking to reclaim roughly $8 million from the group, along with interest and added charges. The U.S. organization counters that it has repeatedly provided detailed reports to the Hungarian government on how the money was distributed, including one exceeding 400 pages in length that included the names of all of the beneficiaries, what they got and when.

“Since this government commissioner has taken over they have not released one penny and have used all kinds of excuses why they can’t release the money and why they won’t,” said Greg Schneider, executive vice president of Claims Conference.

Hungary arrests alleged Nazi-era torturer after tabloid finds him

Nearly seven decades after the alleged  crimes, a 97-year-old man was arrested by Hungarian prosecutors and charged with torturing Jewish detainees before they were sent to Nazi death camps.

The arrests came days after Laszlo Csatary was confronted by a British tabloid, which used a tip passed on by a Jewish organization to find the elderly man at a Budapest apartment. The former Hungarian police official, who had eluded authorities decades earlier in Europe and Canada, came to the door in his socks and underpants, the Sun reported Sunday, and stammered at questions about his past, “No, no. Go away.”

Jewish groups were galled that British reporters got to Csatary before the Hungarian authorities, some complaining that Hungary had not taken the case seriously until they were shamed into doing so.

“They want to sweep it under the table, to have you believe that the only people who were guilty of those crimes were German Nazis,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, headquartered in Los Angeles, which tracks Nazi-era crimes. “We made a public outcry and they were embarrassed. The pressure was on.

“If there was no pressure, would he have been arrested? He would not have,” Hier said.

Hungarian officials have defended their actions and said they were already pursuing the case before it hit headlines. Prosecutor Tibor Ibolya argued the hunt spurred by the Wiesenthal Center may have put Csatary on alert, “greatly endangering the success of the investigation,” the Associated Press reported.

Csatary was charged with torture, accused of using a dog whip on Jewish detainees while heading an internment camp at a Kosice brick factory. Thousands of Jews were deported to Auschwitz from the camp in Hungary, penned into crowded wagons. Ibolya told reporters Wednesday that the elderly Hungarian denied being guilty of war crimes and said he had only followed orders.

A judge ordered Csatary to be put under house arrest for a maximum of 30 days and his passport could be confiscated, his attorney told the Associated Press, a reflection of widespread worry that Csatary would slip away again.

In Hungary, it's time for the 'watering of the girls'

Every day on World Now, we choose a striking photo from around the globe. Today we were drawn to this shot from northeastern Hungary, where residents celebrate Easter with the "watering of the girls."

Which, as you can see, is just what it sounds like: Men throw buckets of water at women. It's a fertility ritual that reportedly goes back to the pre-Christianity tribal roots of Hungary.

These young women in the town of Mezokovesd, east of Budapest, are dressed in the traditional clothes of the Matyo minority, rehearsing for Easter celebrations, Agence France-Presse reported.

Hungary could probably use a little levity right now: Prime Minister Viktor Orban is facing increasing criticism for concentrating power in the Eastern European nation, tightening control over the media, judiciary and central bank. And its president, whose position is largely ceremonial, just stepped down over a plagiarism scandal centering on a decades-old doctoral dissertation, the Associated Press reported.

Spot an amazing photo from around the world? Please tweet it to us at @latimesworld.

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Photo: Men throw water at women during a rehearsal of Easter celebrations by members of a folk dance group in Mezokovesd, Hungary. Credit: Attila Kisbenedek / AFP / Getty Images

 

Poll: 'Anti-Semitic notions' on rise among French, other Europeans

The French have grown more likely to believe that Jews hold too much power in business or world finance, as well as other "classical anti-Semitic notions," according to a new survey from the Anti-Defamation League that compares attitudes in 2009 and 2012.

The poll, released Tuesday, found nearly half of the French people surveyed said they think it is "probably true" that Jews there are more loyal to Israel than France, an increase from years past. Asked if Jews "still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust," more than a third of the respondents agreed.

Bias against Jews is in the spotlight in France after a gunman killed a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday. The French interior minister said the alleged attacker, suspected to have links to a group associated with Al Qaeda, said he shot them in revenge for the killing of Palestinian children.

Attacks on French Jews fell last year, with 389 incidents ranging from violence to vandalism reported, but the aggressiveness of the attacks rose, said the Protection Service for the Jewish Community, which provides security for synagogues and Jewish celebrations, the Associated Press reported.

The new survey covered not only France but nine other countries across Europe. Nearly one third of the Europeans surveyed held "pernicious anti-Semitic beliefs," the Anti-Defamation League said. Five thousand telephone interviews were conducted across Europe for the poll, 500 in each country surveyed.

Though the killings at the Jewish school have focused attention on attitudes against Jews in France, the new poll indicated that such beliefs are markedly more common in Hungary, Poland and Spain than in France.

Anti-Semitism "infects many Europeans at a much higher level than we see here in the United States," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the league, which is based in New York City. "In Hungary, Spain and Poland the numbers for anti-Semitic attitudes are literally off the charts.”

For instance, 14% of French people surveyed said they agreed that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ; 38% of Hungarian respondents and 46% of Polish people surveyed said the same. While 45% of French people surveyed said Jews were more loyal to Israel, 72% of Spainards interviewed said so.

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Photo: A man lights a candle as he attends a silent march in Paris on Monday to pay tribute to the victims of the Toulouse school shootings. Credit: Ian Langsdon / EPA

Hungary backs down on disputed laws

The Hungarian prime minister has backtracked on disputed laws that were criticized for threatening the independence of its banks, bowing to pressure from the European Union, according to wire reports.

The government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been criticized for undercutting democracy, curbing press freedoms and centralizing power. His Fidesz party has passed more than 350 laws in the last year and a half, including a controversial new constitution, according to the Associated Press. Hungary has become a test case for whether the European Union can make good on its promises to use its economic power to enforce democracy.

Less than a year ago, Orban declared Hungary wouldn’t be dictated to from Brussels, seat of  EU policymaking. But Hungary says it needs help to strengthen investor confidence, and it required a bailout under a previous government. Its currency, the forint, tumbled to all-time lows this month.

Orban says he will scrap a planned merger between the Hungarian national bank and its financial regulator, which some feared could threaten the bank's independence. Last year he tweaked a controversial media law after the EU raised concerns.

But Orban has gone only so far in appeasing his critics. Protesters who oppose the Hungarian media law complained this week that authorities had blocked them from rallying on an upcoming national holiday by reserving all likely locations in downtown Budapest, the Associated Press reported.

For more on what’s happening in Hungary, you can listen to this recent piece from NPR, read a business analysis from the New York Times, or get a dose of opinion from the Atlantic.

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Photo: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban holds a news conference on January 18, 2012, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. Credit: Georges Gobet/Agence France-Presse