Zoltan Papp, an alleged escaped Nazi war criminal, has been suspended from his job as an employee of The Netherlands State Railways pending an investigation of charges made against him by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. The Amsterdam Public Prosecutor ordered the investigation after Wiesenthal sent Dutch authorities documents indicating that Papp, who escaped from Hungary during the 1956 revolt, took refuge in Holland and is applying for Dutch citizenship.
Wiesenthal has not demanded Papp’s extradition. He said he wanted to draw police attention to his past which was apparently unknown to the authorities since Papp took refuge in Holland in 1957. According to Wiesenthal, Papp, now 62, headed the Hungarian gendarmerie in the town of Papa from 1943-45 and in that capacity ordered the construction of a ghetto for the town’s 3000 Jewish inhabitants. All were subsequently deported to Auschwitz. Eye witnesses were said to have testified that Papp personally tortured Jews.
A military court in Budapest sentenced him to eight years’ imprisonment in 1951. But he was freed during the 1956 uprising and managed to escape to Austria and was admitted to Holland as a refugee the following year. Since 1960 he has been employed as a checker in the State Railway purchasing department.
Papp, who lives in Utrecht, admitted in Dutch newspaper and television interviews that he commanded the local police during the Nazi occupation but said he was not involved in the deportation of Jews. He said he believed that Wiesenthal got his information from a personal enemy who is an agent of the present Hungarian government.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
