A small Jewish activist group called The
Voice of Six Million Souls has
long been working to uncover the identities of the people
behind the neo-Nazi Kuruc.info website, which is known for publishing
the most revolting examples of Holocaust denial and hate speech of
any Hungarian publication. Some months ago, I had been in touch
by telephone with this group, as it is well-known that the owner
of Kuruc.info’s domain (which is registered in the United States)
is former California resident Béla Varga, who has been living in hiding in
Canada, evading American authorities, which have a warrant for his
arrest. This Jewish activist group has now uncovered the name and identity
of a man who writes many of Kuruc.info’s Holocaust denying articles.
A
high school history teacher in Budapest, László Zábori, is reportedly behind
the pseudonym Ottó Perge, which he uses whenever he writes for the Kuruc.info
website. In 2009, Mr. Zábori very publicly renounced his Catholic faith,
when the Papal Nuncio to Israel, Antonio Francon, declared that
Holocaust denial was incompatible with Roman Catholicism.
Mr. Zábori is a history and Hungarian language teacher at the
Leövey Klára Gimnázium, in Budapest’s 9th District. According to a report in the left-centre Egyenlítő blog,
he also works for Hungary’s Lutheran archives (Evangélikus Levéltár). Mr.
Zábori often bases
his Holocaust denial on
the works of Fred Leuchter, who built a truly macabre career from selling
execution equipment in the United States. Mr. Leuchter became infamous for
travelling to Auschwitz in 1988 (as part of his Honeymoon with his new wife),
and for using a chisel and hammer to chip off parts of the gas chamber’s
structures, in a totally pseudo-scientific attempt to prove that these gas
chambers had not existed, as chemical traces could not be found, when he sent
these for testing. As it turns out, however, the labs did find trace amounts of
cyanide in the crematoria. Mr. Zábori has relied heavily on thecompletely
repudiated Leuchter Report.
The
Voice of Six Million Souls reportedly shared its information on Mr. Zábori’s
activities with Hungarian authorities over a month ago, including with the
Interior Ministry. But so far there is no news as to whether Mr. Zábori will
face prosecution, even though Holocaust denial is considered a crime in
Hungary. Following an amendment passed in February 2010 by the Hungarian
parliament, under the previous Socialist government of Prime Minister
Gordon Bajnai, Holocaust denial is punishable by up to three years in prison.
Mere weeks after Fidesz came to power in June 2010, it changed the law to also
include prison sentences for those who “deny the genocides committed by
national socialist or communist systems.”
Either
way, at a minimum, I hope that Mr. Zábori will no longer be permitted to
teach history to Hungarian children.
