Budapest  -  Hungary was Wednesday set to remember the victims of the Holocaust on the 64th anniversary of the day fascist forces began to imprison Hungarian Jews in ghettos.

Politicians and civil leaders are expected to take part in a torch-lit march from Budapest's downtown Dohany Synagogue - which sits at the edge of the former ghetto - to a memorial on the River Danube, where many Jews were shot and thrown into the water.

Candles will also be lit at a memorial concert outside the Terror House museum, which is dedicated to the victims of fascist and communist repression.

Over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to death camps or killed locally during the Second World War.

Much of the butchery was carried out under the direction of the Nazi-aligned Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, which came to power briefly in 1944.

Attempts are still being made to bring some of those implicated in the slaughter to justice, and on Monday Ephraim Zuroff, director of the Nazi-hunting Wiesenthal Centre, demanded Hungary act against war crimes suspect Sandor Kepiro, 94, who lives in Budapest.

Zuroff in 2006 uncovered a judgement against Kepiro for his role in the massacre of over 1,000 Jews and Serbs in Novi Sad, Serbia in January 1942.

Kepiro was sentenced to 10 years for the crime in 1944, but fled to Argentina when the Arrow Cross Party gained power and freed him. Post-war authorities sentenced him to
14 years in absentia in 1946. He finally returned to Hungary in 1996.

However, a Hungarian court has ruled the sentence cannot be carried out and prosecutors have dragged their feet on beginning new proceedings, as demanded by Zuroff.

Zuroff said that Serbian authorities had presented more than enough evidence to try Kepiro for his role in the massacre. (dpa)