From the AJN:

Lack of political will over Polgar, says Holocaust Centre
PETER KOHN

JEWISH Holocaust Museum and Research Centre president Shmuel Rosenkranz took a swipe at authorities “who lacked the political will” to prosecute Lajos Polgar, an alleged war criminal who died on Saturday.

Polgar, 89, of Ferntree Gully, was accused of committing war crimes as a high official of the fascist Arrow Cross in Hungary in 1944.

He initially denied, then admitted to a being commander of the Arrow Cross, which worked with the Nazis to send 80,000 Jews to their deaths in the final months of the Holocaust. Arrow Cross henchmen raped and tortured Jews at its Budapest headquarters.

“Unfortunately the Australian Government and authorities have a record of trying not to find Holocaust murderers or people that were active in the killing of Jews right throughout Europe,” Rosenkranz told the AJN.

“No government, Labor or Liberal, ever really attempted to do something. There was a lack of political will to do something.”

Rosenkranz said he had been encouraged when Susanne Nozick, a guide at the museum, was able to give evidence about her horrific experience with the Arrow Cross.

Nozick, a Hungarian-born survivor who had been alerted to the Polgar case by the AJN last year, recalled how as a 19 year old, she had endured rape and beatings in the cellar of the Arrow Cross headquarters.

Her testimony was given to the Australian Federal Police but it later dropped its case against Polgar.

Rosenkranz said he had been “optimistic that either the police or government would at least bring [Polgar] to a hearing but that never eventuated.”

An article in an Australian Hungarian-language newspaper last year, shown to Melbourne Ports MP Michael Danby by a constituent, sparked a campaign by Nazi-hunter Dr Efraim Zuroff, the Israeli-based director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, to have Polgar extradited to Hungary to face charges.

Dr Zuroff this week said he was disappointed that there had been no opportunity to investigate Polgar thoroughly.

Polgar reportedly died suddenly and there were no suspicious circumstances.