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.
László Zábori. Screen shot from Hungarian public television
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 the completely 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.
