War crime suspect admits to his leading fascist role

From The Melbourne Age, By Chris Johnston, February 16, 2006 ...

A MELBOURNE man accused of atrocities against Jews in World War II has admitted for the first time that he was a high-ranking official in the notorious Nazi-linked Arrow Cross party.

Lajos Polgar, 89, of Ferntree Gully, has been placed under "suspicion of genocide" by the Hungarian Government over war crimes against Jews. He is also being investigated by the world's foremost Nazi hunter, the Simon Wiesenthal centre's Efraim Zuroff, who arrived in Melbourne last night.

... last night (Lajos Polgar) told The Age: "Oh yes, I was a leader (of the party). Only for two months, in Budapest." His wife since 1951, Elizabeth, said she met Mr Polgar at the Arrow Cross headquarters in Budapest, known as the "House of Loyalty" or the "House of Fidelity." "He was the chief and I was his secretary," she said.

Dr Zuroff yesterday met Justice Minister Chris Ellison and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock in Canberra to discuss the possible extradition of Polgar and fellow alleged Nazi war criminal Charles Zentai, of Perth.

...Mr Polgar yesterday admitted that Arrow Cross members rounded up and killed Jews in
Budapest in 1944 and 1945. But he said he had nothing to do with it. ".... I never touched a Jew or anybody else. ..... The Jews were not wanted in Hungary. They were taking over. When they come into power and money they are terrible...you can't help but want to get rid of them....but the biggest problem actually was that the Jews have no real home to send them to. The idea was to put them into ghettoes … where they would be protected. Then after the war they would be sent back to settle peacefully in Palestine. So in a noble sense, I am a Zionist. Zionism wants a home for the Jews."

Dr Zuroff said he found it "interesting" Mr Polgar had a seemingly clean conscience. "But it's not hard to have a clean conscience if you have no conscience. He can vigorously deny anything he wants."

Mark Aarons, author of War Criminals Welcome: Australia, a Sanctuary for Fugitive War Criminals Since 1945, said Mr Polgar's denials of involvement in atrocities were hard to believe. "It's impossible for someone to hold a command position in Arrow Cross and not know what the policies were. It's like someone visiting Auschwitz at the height of the gas chamber operations and saying they saw no evidence of it."

With NASSIM KHADEM