N.J. man who aided Nazis allowed to remain in U.S.

NEW YORK, Jan. 22 (JTA) — The United States has won a court order of deportation against New Jersey resident Ferenc Koreh, who worked as a propagandist during World War II in Nazi-allied Hungary and publicly advocated the persecution of Jews. The U.S. government, however, agreed that it would not act to remove Koreh, 87, from the United States unless his rapidly
deteriorating health improved. Koreh has a blood disorder and requires transfusions. A number of cases have been settled this way, Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations, the U.S. Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting arm, said in an interview. He added that his office would monitor the status of Koreh’s health. The U.S. legal system has the “highest standards of morality,” Rosenbaum added. From 1941 to 1944, Koreh was an editor of Szekely Nep, the largest provincial newspaper in Axis Hungary. In an agreement with OSI, Koreh admitted that he was deportable for having assisted in persecution and for lying about his wartime activities to gain admission in 1950 to the United States. The Jan. 13 agreement states that Koreh does not contest that he was responsible for the publication of some 200 racist articles that helped create a climate in Hungary that made the Nazi persecution of the Jews acceptable. In June 1994, as a result of his activities, he was stripped of his American citizenship by a U.S. District Court in Newark. The judge said in making that decision that articles in the Hungarian newspaper for which Koreh worked advocated the “de-Jewification of Hungarian life.” That decision was upheld in February 1995 by a federal appeals court. The Nazi-hunting arm, the Office of Special Investigations, began denaturalization proceedings in 1989 against Koreh, a retired Radio Free Europe producer and broadcaster who resides in Englewood, N.J. The deportation order also cancels Koreh’s Social Security benefits, a Justice Department official said. About 435,000 Hungarian Jews were deported between May and July of 1994 to Nazi camps.