Bellant: Old Nazis/Heritage Groups 1
PART ONE – SECTION 1
[The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities)Council]
“While the large majority of the organizations in the
Republican Nationalities Council are thoroughly respectable, it
is nonetheless true that the council has become fertile grounds
for political organizing by certain former Nazi collaborators
still active in immigrant communities in this country. ”
(Christopher Simpson, , Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988)
—————-
– Republicans, Authoritarians, anti-Semites and Fascists –
The emigre fascist network within the Republican Party
represents a small but significant element of the coalition which
brought Ronald Reagan into the White House. It is from this
network that the George Bush presidential campaign assembled its
ethnic outreach unit in 1988. . .a unit that saw eight
resignations by persons charged with anti-semitism, racism,
facsist leanings and even Nazi collaboration. These right-wing
emigre’s are a small but vocal element within the broader ethnic
communities they claim to represent. They frequently utilize
anti-communist sentiments, historical revisionism and lack of
knowledge about Eastern and Central Europe as a shield to deflect
inspection and criticism of their past actions and current views.
The emigre fascist network organizes support for its
ideological agenda through national and international coalitions
of like-minded constituencies which often work with other
authoritarian, anti-democratic and pro-fascist forces. This
broader coalition ranges from Axis allies and their apologists to
friends and allies of contemporary dictatorships and
authoritarian regimes.
In the case of the Republican Heritage Groups Council, the
nature of the right-wing emigre network can be illustrated by
briefly reviewing the backgrounds of some of the past and current
leadership of the Republican Heritage Groups Council:
– Axis Allies and Apologists –
*** Laszlo Pasztor: The founding chair and a key figure in
the Council, Pasztor began his political career in a Hungarian
pro-Nazi party and served in Berlin at the end of World War II.
He continues to be involved in ultra-rightist groups and fascist
networks while working with the GOP.
*** Radi Slavoff: The Republican Heritage Groups Council’s
executive director is a member of a Bulgarian fascist group and
leader of the Bulgarian GOP unit of the Council. He was able to
get the leader of his Bulgarian nationalist group a White House
invitation even though that leader was being investigated for
concealing alleged World War II war crimes. He is also active in
other emigre fascist groups.
*** Nicolas Nazarenko: A former World War II officer in the
German SS Cossack Division, Nazarenko heads a Cossack GOP unit of
the Republican Heritage Groups Council but declares that Jews are
his “ideological enemy.” He is still active with pro-Nazi
elements in the U.S.
*** Florian Galdau: A close associate and defender of
Valerian Trifa, the Romanian archbishop prosecuted for concealing
his involvement in war crimes of the pro-Nazi Romanian Iron Guard
in World War II. Charged by former Iron Guardists and others with
being the East Coast recruiter for the Iron Guard in the U.S.,
Galdau heads the Romanian Republican unit of the Republican
Heritage Groups Council.
*** Method Balco: Head of the Slovak GOP unit, which is
filled with supporters and at least one former diplomat of the
Slovak Nazi government of World War II. Balco also organizes
annual commemorations of the Slovak Nazi regime.
*** Walter Melianovich: Head of the Byelorussian GOP unit,
which has had collaborators of the Nazi World War II occupation
in leadership roles, Melianovich has worked with other fascist groups.
*** Croatian GOP: Their group wrote an apology for the
Croatian Ustashi’s World War II alliance with Hitler which
appeared in a Republican Heritage Groups Council publication
signed by GOP Chair Frank Fahrenkopf.
– Friends of Dictatorship –
*** Philip A. Guarino: An honorary American member of the
conspiratorial P-2 Masonic Lodge of Italy, which plotted in the
early 1970’s to overthrow the Italian government in order to
install a dictatorship. P-2 was exposed widely in the European
press and investigated by the Italian Parliament. Guarino, an
Italian Heritage Council member and Republican National Committee
advisor, offered aid to those being investigated.
*** Anna Chennault: The newly-elected Republican Heritage
Groups Council chairperson and funder of the Chinese Republican
affiliate, which for years has been closely linked to the
authoritarian Taiwan regime.
The names of all but one of the persons listed above
appeared on the invitational literature for the October, 1987
meeting of the National Republican Heritage Groups
(Nationalities) Council in Washington, D.C.
– The History of the Republican Heritage Groups Council –
Many of the Republican Heritage Groups Council leaders of
Central and Eastern European nationalities were part of the
post-World War II immigration from displaced persons camps. It
would be unfair to suggest that all or even a majority of Eastern
and Central Europeans were anti-Semites or fascists. . .most
displaced persons were victims of the war who played no role in
collaborating with Nazism. Yet quite a few persons in the
displaced persons camps were there as political escapees to avoid
the consequences of their collaboration with the German
occupation of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
The Displaced Persons Commission, which worked from 1948 to
1952, arranged for approximately 400,000 persons to come to the
U.S. [f-1] Initially it sought to bar members of pro-Nazi groups,
but in 1950 a dramatic reversal took place. The Commission
declared “the Baltic Legion not to be a movement hostile to the
Government of the United States. . . .” [f-2] The Baltic Legion
was also known as the Baltic Waffen (armed) SS.
The final report of the Commission noted that the decision
“was the subject of considerable controversy.”[f-3] As well it
should have been. The Waffen SS participated in the liquidation
of Jews in the Baltic region because the SS units were comprised
of Hitler’s loyal henchmen, recruited from fascist political
groups long tied to the German Nazi Party. Anyone opposed to the
German occupation of the Baltic region (Latvia, Lithuania and
Estonia) was likely to meet a cruel death at their hands. They
were now considered qualified to come to the United States, to
become American citizens. Further, pro-Nazi elements from other
parts of Europe came to the U.S. through nominally private groups
associated with the Commission.
In 1952, the Commission completed its work. The
Eisenhower-Nixon presidential campaign was on. The Republicans
were charging the Democrats with being “soft on Communism,” and
talk of “liberating” eastern Europe became part of the GOP
message. That year, the Republican National Committee formed an
Ethnic Division. Displaced fascists, hoping to be returned to
power by a Eisenhower-Nixon “liberation” policy, were among those
who signed on. This would become the embryo for the formation of
the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 1969.
In a sense, however, the foundation of the Republican
Heritage Groups Council lay in Hitler’s networks into East Europe
before World War II. In each of those Eastern European countries,
the German SS set up or funded political action organizations
that helped form SS militias during the war.
In Hungary, for example, the Arrow Cross was the Hungarian
SS affiliate; in Romania, the Iron Guard. The Bulgarian Legion,
the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Latvian
Legion, and the Byelorussian (White Russian) Belarus Brigade were
all SS-linked. In each of their respective countries, they were
expected to serve the interests of the German Nazi Party before
and during the war.
Many of these groups formed SS divisions: the Ukrainian
Nationalists formed the 14th Galician Division, Waffen SS; the
Latvians formed the 15th and 19th Divisions, Waffen SS; etc.
[f-4] These units and related German-controlled police units had
several functions. The Ukrainian division unsuccessfully tried to
impede the advance of the Soviet army against the Nazi army.
Others hunted down those fellow countrymen who opposed the German
occupation of Eastern Europe during World War II.
More sadistically, many units rounded up hundreds of
thousands of Jews, Poles and others and conducted mass murders on
the spot, sometimes decimating whole villages. They perfected
“mobile killing teams” as efficient means of mass executions.
Little is known about these units compared to the concentration
camps, gas chambers and ovens, but they were an integrated
component of the “Final Solution.” Approximately one-third of the
victims of the Holocaust, perhaps as many as 2 million, died at
the hands of these units.
This should not be taken to suggest that all Eastern and
Central Europeans were Nazi collaborators who participated in
atrocities, but it is a historical fact that some right-wing
elements from virtually every Eastern European nationality tied
their nationalistic goals to the rising star of fascism and
Hitler’s racialist Nazism.
– The Council’s Leadership –
The founding chair of the Republican Heritage Groups
Council was Laszlo Pasztor, an activist in various Hungarian
rightist and Nazi-linked groups. In World War II Pasztor was a
member of the youth group of the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian
equivalent of the German Nazi Party. [f-5] As the Germans
retreated from the USSR back to Germany in 1944, their allied
Hungarian government collapsed. The Arrow Cross took power in
Hungary, with Hitler’s aid, to help defend Germany. Pasztor was
sent to Berlin as part of the new diplomatic mission to Hitler,
until the war’s end.
When Pasztor came to the U.S. in the 1950’s, he joined the
GOP’s Ethnic Division. One of the leaders of the 1968 Nixon-Agnew
campaign’s ethnic unit, Pasztor says that Nixon promised him that
if he won the election, he would form a permanent ethnic council
within the GOP, as the Ethnic Division was only active during
presidential campaigns. [f-6]
Pasztor was made the organizer of the Council after Nixon’s
victory. Says Pasztor, “It was my job to identify about 25 ethnic
groups” to bring into the Republican Heritage Groups Council. “In
1972 we used the Council as the skeleton to build the Heritage
Groups for the re-election of the President.”
Pasztor’s choices for filling emigre slots as the Council
was being formed included various Nazi-collaborationist
organizations mentioned above. Each formed a Republican
federation, with local clubs around the country. The local clubs
of the various federations then formed state multi-ethnic
councils. Today there are 34 nationality federations and 25 state
councils that constitute the National Republican Heritage Groups Council.
To discover the names of the leaders of these federations
is not an easy task. “That information is private. I have to get
their permission before I can give you their names,” responded
Radi Slavoff, Republican Heritage Groups Council executive
director, when asked for a list of the federation leaders. [f-7]
He agreed that federation heads were bona fide Republican Party
posts which are not secret, “but the leaders prefer it that way.”
Although some names were gleaned from signature ads supporting
funding for the contras, CIA-backed forces fighting to overthrow
the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, [f-8] it required
attendance at the Republican Heritage Groups Council convention
in May of 1985 to learn the names of federation leaders. It was
this convention that Reagan was addressing at the Shoreham Hotel.
Some Republican Heritage Groups Council delegates were
reluctant to talk; others were unstoppable. A pattern began to
emerge from these conversations–that in setting up the Council,
Pasztor went to various collaborationist and fascist-minded
emigre groups and asked them to form GOP federations. It
eventually became clear that it wasn’t an accident or a fluke
that people with Nazi associations were in the Republican
Heritage Groups Council. In some cases more mainstream ethnic
organizations were passed over in favor of smaller but more
extremist groups. And it seems clear that the Republican National
Committee knows with whom they are dealing. Reviewing the
federations illustrates this point.
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PART ONE – SECTION 2
[The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities)Council]
Axis Allies and Apologists
-{Bulgarians}: –
One of the organizations Pasztor approached to help form
the Council was the Bulgarian National Front, headed by Ivan
Docheff. As early as 1971, the GOP was warned that the National
Front was beyond the pale. A Jack Anderson column quoted another
Bulgarian-American organization, the conservative Bulgarian
National Committee, which labeled Docheff’s National Front as
“fascist.” [f-9] Neither the GOP nor the Nixon campaign took
action. Professor Spas T. Raikin, a former official of the
National Front, says the group grew out of an organization in
Bulgaria that in the 1930’s and 40’s was “pro-Nazi and
pro-fascist.” [f-10]
Although Docheff, 82, is semi-retired from GOP activity,
the National Front is still represented in the person of Radi
Slavoff, Republican Heritage Groups Council executive director
and head of the Bulgarian GOP federation. Slavoff also represents
the National Front in several other Washington, D.C. area
coalitions, including one that is Nazi-linked. [f-11]
While Docheff was representing the National Front, however,
the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations was
investigating him for possible war crimes he was suspected of
committing while the mayor of a German-occupied city in Bulgaria.
Docheff denies he ever committed war crimes, and OSI never
brought charges.
Docheff’s political history, however, is not in dispute.
Founder of a Bulgarian youth group in the early 1930’s, Docheff
met with Adolph Hitler and the Nazi movement’s leading
philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg, in 1934 shortly after the Nazis
came to power. [f-12] Docheff then established the Bulgarian
Legion, a pro-Hitler group that agitated for government action
against Bulgarian Jews.
Docheff later began publishing a newspaper, , which
carried a swastika as part of the design at the top of the front
page. One of its headlines reads “>Long live the sacred struggle
against the Jews.” with a “Dear George” message in what
appears to be Reagan’s handwriting. Docheff wrote an endorsement
of Reagan in the same issue of . [f-16]
When interviewed on the BNF’s role in the Reagan-Bush
campaign, Docheff said that the 25 U.S. chapters of the Front
were active in the re-election effort: “If you want to know who
the local chapter leaders of the Bulgarian National Front are,
find out who heads the local Bulgarian unit of the Reagan-Bush
campaign. They are the same persons.” [f-17]
Although the warning by the Bulgarian National Committee
and the subsequent investigation of Docheff have provided
adequate levels of warning to the GOP, it has continued to
maintain ties to the Bulgarian National Front. Even while the
U.S. government was investigating Docheff on war crimes charges,
he was a pre-election guest of the White House in September,
1984, [f-18] arranged through Republican Heritage Groups Council
executive director Radi Slavoff.
-{Cossacks}: –
Attending the Reagan speech at the Shoreham was another
Pasztor choice, “Major General” Nicholas Nazarenko. Slightly over
six feet and a lean 200 pounds with dark hair and a pencil
mustache, Nazarenko is still consumed with his wartime hatred of
Russians and Jews. He organizes annual “Captive Nations” marches
in New York City every summer, in which he appears in Cossack
military dress.
Nazarenko is a spry 76 years old, but could pass for 60;
his energy seems boundless. The evening after Reagan’s speech at
the Shoreham Hotel, he insisted on showing this writer a huge
suitcase of materials he carries with him as part of his
political activity. It was filled with literature on the “Jewish
problem,” Cossack publications, and memorabilia from his service
in World War II–on the German side.
Nazarenko chain smoked and drank vodka throughout our
seven-hour interview. He described his involvement with the
German army as an officer in special Cossack units, battle by
battle. His final military action was in an SS Cossack unit under
German General von Panwitz. In order to prove his sincerity, he
showed me his German officer’s ID, and photographs of him and his
unit. There were swastikas on the uniforms.
Toward the end of the war, Nazarenko headed intelligence
operations in Berlin for a Cossack “government-in-exile.” After
working with the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, he came
to the U.S. in 1949. He became head of a Cossack War Veterans
group–a group of veterans allied with Germany during WWII which
was later renamed the World Federation of Cossacks for the
Liberation of Cossackia. Nazarenko was active in Richard Nixon’s
1968 and 1972 campaigns, and his Cossack veterans group is one of
two Cossackian components of the Republican Heritage Groups
Council.
Alex Aksenov, another Cossack delegate to the Republican
Heritage Groups Council convention, spoke briefly about his past,
volunteering that he was “in Berlin from 1939-45.” He went to
South America after the war, he said, but in the 1950’s was
brought to the U.S. to work on the first nuclear submarine
program. [f-19]
Nazarenko says he has been charged by other Cossack emigres
as having hung Jews in Odessa and executed Soviet soldiers. He
claimed that these were lies intended to discredit him. He does
say, however, that Jews are our “ideological enemies.”
In that spirit, Nazarenko said that he was in touch with
“patriotic” publications such as the neo-Nazi , the
anti-Semitic> , and , a racialist and
>anti-Semitic monthly. A well-publicized controversy erupted when
was praised by Joseph Sobran> in> , May 1986, as “an often brilliant magazine,
covering a
beat nobody else will touch. . . .” writers and
editors are all anonymous.
Nazarenko says he’s also in touch with various “Nazi”
organizations. “They respect me because [I was a] former German
army officer. Sometimes when I meet these guys, they say `Heil Hitler’.”
A recipient of a pension from the West German government
for his wartime service, Nazarenko claims that Germany didn’t
commit atrocities in World War II. “Jews didn’t die from gas
chambers,” says Nazarenko. “Those mountains of bones are from
people who starved to death or died from disease.”
-{Romanians}: –
Romanian-American Republicanism is led by a retired priest
who claimed in 1984 that the most important issue for Romanian
Republicans is “the deportation of our beloved spiritual leader,
Archbishop Valerian Trifa.” [f-20] Faced with charges by the
Office of Special Investigations (OSI) that he participated in
the murder of Jews as part of a coup plot in Bucharest, Romania
in 1941, Trifa left the U.S. in 1984. But his political network
stayed behind. The Romanian Republican priest, Florian Galdau, is
part of that network.
Valerian Trifa was a leader of the Iron Guard in Bucharest
in 1941. The Guard was a pro-Nazi Romanian group linked to the SS
by liaison officers such as Otto von Bolschwing of the German
SS.[f-21] In January, 1941 the Guard, with SS backing, attempted
a coup. Trifa was one of the leaders who instigated crowds on a
rampage that sought out Jews for gruesome deaths. Three days of
chaos ensued. When order was restored, Trifa fled. During those
three days, witnesses charged, Trifa personally went into a jail
and killed Jews who had been put into a cell there.
After the war, Trifa was able to come to the U.S. and take
over the Romanian Orthodox church by means of physical coercion
and with some help from the U.S. government. In 1952, Trifa
became an Archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church. [f-22]
FBI documents from the years 1954 and 1955 (which were used
in the prosecution of Trifa) report claims that Trifa “is
bringing Iron Guard members into the U.S. and installing them as
priests.” One of those priests, according to a report of Oct. 5,
1955, was Florian Galdau, whom an FBI source described as “a
Romanian Iron Guard member and who at Trifa’s instructions was
elected Pastor of St. Dumitru,” a Manhattan parish. [f-23]
Galdau had escaped Romania after the war, eventually
settling in London. He began broadcasting over the BBC in
programs aimed at Romanian citizens, a project comparable to the
Radio Free Europe programs being established at the time under
the covert control of the CIA. In 1955 Trifa brought Galdau to
the U.S. According to an former Iron Guardist, the late George
Roman, Galdau was brought in to head a New York City Iron Guard
unit. His task was to recruit new Romanian immigrants into the
Guard. [f-24]
Galdau says he has brought 20,000 immigrants into the U.S.
“I have files on 15,000 people I helped settle,” he claims. He is
aided by the Tolstoy Foundation and the International Rescue
Committee, [f-25] two resettlement groups with links to the CIA. [f-26]
Over the years, Galdau has performed priestly functions at
events that commemorated Iron Guard founder Corneliu Codreanu.
Trifa himself once concurred in an interview that the Galdau
church was “a center of Fascists.” [f-27]
In 1974, the of New York City
headlined a story “Florian Galdau, A Priest, Heads New York Iron
Guard Cell.” [f-28] The charge has also been repeated in
recent interviews with other Romanians, including a priest, all
of whom, fearing reprisals, requested anonymity.
Galdau himself denies any association with the Iron Guard.
Further, he denies any knowledge of the existence of the Iron
Guard in the U.S.
Dennis Debbaudt, who has researched the Iron Guard for ten
years, finds such denials “incredible.” Debbaudt, who has
assisted a Canadian government investigation of the Iron Guard
presence there, estimates that at least 25% of the priests of
Trifa’s church were Guardists. “It’s impossible for Galdau to be
unaware of the Guard presence in the Romanian Orthodox Church.”[f-29]
Interviewed at the Republican Heritage Groups Council
convention, Galdau criticized Jews for the debate over Bitburg,
saying “Jews have harmed themselves in this country over this
controversy.” He says his protest of Trifa’s prosecution was “as
a Republican,” and did not have anything to do with Iron Guard politics.
A founder of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in
1969, Galdau and his wife were the sole representatives of the
Romanian-American Republican Clubs to the 1985 and 1986 Council
conventions. In 1985, a third delegate “got sick” and the three
alternates “just didn’t show.” Galdau’s wife is vice-chair of the
Romanian-American Republican Clubs. His principle contributions
at the conventions were to charge that the “Democratic Party is
controlled by the KGB,” and to argue successfully for a
resolution passed by the convention condemning the Justice
Department’s OSI investigation into the presence of Nazi-era war
criminals in the United States.
Galdau claims his Romanian-American Republican Clubs
include ten local units. He says that they “recruited 600
volunteers for the 1984 Reagan-Bush campaign.” But getting
details to substantiate these assertions is difficult. Although
he holds a party post, he won’t discuss his role within the
party. When I asked Republican Heritage Groups Council leaders
for information on the Romanian Clubs, they said Galdau doesn’t
share details with them either. Galdau was listed as a member of
the Host Committee for a reception honoring Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
and Frank J. Fahrenkopf during the Council’s 1987 meeting in
Washington, D.C. In 1988 he was named National Chair of Romanians
for Bush.
-{Byelorussians}: –
Another federation leader who makes the charge that the
Democratic Party aids communism is Walter Melianovich, head of
the Byelorussian-American Republican Federation. “The Democratic
Party is doing the dirty work of Communism. They don’t call
themselves Communists, they just parrot the Communist line. . .
.” Melianovich is unhappy. At fifty years of age, he is too young
to have worked with the Nazis. But some of his friends weren’t.
“The damn OSI is hounding my friends,” he complains. This is some
of the “dirty work of Communism” that Democrats do. They hunt
Nazis, and the Byelorussian GOP wants to put a stop to it. [f-30]
Melianovich’s federation is closely associated with the
Byelorussian-American Association (BAA), an emigre group made up,
in part, of former collaborators of the Nazi occupation and its
extermination campaign. An early BAA leader was Franz Kushel, an
SS major general and commander of the Belarus Brigade, a Waffen
SS unit. According to , a book about
>Byelorussian Nazi collaboration, Kushel’s “men carried over
40,000 Jews to an execution ground in 1941.” [f-32]
Another BAA leader, Stanislaw Stankievich, one-time editor of a
Nazi-funded newspaper, came from an upper-class family of Nazi
collaborators. He became a mayor of Borissow in 1941. After
having a wall built around the Jewish section of the city,
Stankievich conducted a series of financial extortions on the
contained ghetto. His police then sadistically exterminated the
7,000 Jews of Borissow on October 20, 1941. [f-33]
As the Soviets advanced on German-occupied Byelorussia, a
puppet government was formed to help mobilize support for the
defense of Germany. The 1,039 delegates to this “All-Byelorussian
Second Congress” were screened and approved by Germany. Some of
these delegates, many of them leaders of police units and a
Byelorussian Waffen SS division, came to dominate BAA. [f-34]
Cheslav Nadjuik of Los Angeles was a delegate to the
German-sponsored 1944 puppet government. [f-35] He was also a
delegate to the 1986 Republican Heritage Groups Council
convention in Los Angeles. Now in his seventies, Nadjuik said
that he was involved in nationalist politics all his life. “I
joined a nationalist group in high school, in the 1920’s, and was
active in Poland when I was in school there.” He said he was a
judge during the German occupation, and “I attended the Second
(All-Byelorussian) Congress.” After the war, the Congress
reassembled in Germany and then in the U.S., holding annual
meetings to direct their various front activities. Nadjuik
attended at least one of those meetings, in 1954. His co-delegate
at the 1986 Republican Heritage Groups Council meeting, Joe
Arciuch, head of the technical services division of Hughes
Aircraft, “escaped Byelorussia in 1951 just ahead of Communist
bayonets,” according to a friend of his who joined our interview.
Arciuch declined to discuss the details of his activities in Byelorussia.
The 1985 Republican Heritage Groups Council convention
delegation, led by Melianovich, also included Raisa Stankievich,
wife of Stanislaw Stankievich and herself a former head of the
BAA. Melianovich says the 1944 puppet government was “not a
legitimate government,” but in three hours of interviews he was
uncritical of any Nazi collaborators or of the BAA, of which he
is a member. Critical of those exposing criminal collaborators,
he strongly supported Republican Heritage Groups Council
convention efforts to oppose the OSI.
The Byelorussian GOP leader said that his federation’s
biggest concern was increasing the amount of Byelorussian
broadcasting into the USSR by the U.S. government-run Radio
Liberty. He has met with various agencies, including National
Security Council staff, lobbying for more programming. Access to
administration policymakers, says Melianovich, is enhanced by
being part of the Republican Heritage Groups Council. By lobbying
for increased Radio Liberty propaganda, they hope to destabilize
the USSR, returning the Byelorussian fascists to power.
Melianovich even provided what appears to be their future map of
of Byelorussia, complete with new “ethnogenetical borders.”
Melianovich claims that the Republican Heritage Groups
Council has “changed the image of the Republican Party under our
pressure.” Charging the Democrats with only caring about “the
Black and Jewish vote,” he says that “if anyone should be called
nationalist, it is the GOP.” Melianovich was named National
Chairman of Byelorussians for Bush in 1988.
– Croatians: –
The Croatian Republicans are the only federation who have
put their sympathies with the Axis powers into print in
Republican Party literature.
In , a 1984 Republican
Heritage Groups Council booklet, listing commemorative dates of
significance to ethnic Americans, is the following entry for
April 10th: “The Independent State of Croatia was declared by
unanimous proclamation in 1941. . . .Lack of Western support and
Axis occupation forced the new state into an unfortunate
association with the Axis powers.” The booklet preface is signed
by Frank Fahrenkopf, Jr., Chairman of the Republican National
Committee. [See graphic].
The “unfortunate association” was, in fact, a long-standing
relationship between Nazi Germany and the Croatian Ustashi
beginning years before World War II. [f-36] The Nazis conspired
with the Ustashi to create the Croatian split from Yugoslavia.
When the Vatican-backed Ustashi took power in 1941, they began
liquidating Orthodox Serbians, Jews and Gypsies. Even the Nazis
were taken aback by the barbarity of Ustashi concentration camps
and the liquidations of whole villages. Huge ovens at Jasenovac
reportedly burned people alive.
An estimated 750,000 people, mostly Serbians, were killed
by the Ustashi in the crucible which forged Croatian
independence. The “independent state of Croatia,” whose founding
the GOP suggests we commemorate, ceased to exist after the fall
of the Third Reich.
– Slovaks: –
Slovakia, another puppet state created by Hitler, has not
only apologists but also at least one former collaborationist
leader on the Republican Heritage Groups Council. When Hitler
invaded and split Czechoslovakia in 1939, he created the Slovak
state under Monsignor Josef Tiso. When the U.S. declared war on
Germany on December 12, 1941, Tiso declared Slovakia at war with
the U.S.
Complete with their own imitation SS, called the Hlinka
Guard, the Tiso leadership mimicked the Nazis. [f-37] They also
imitated the worst of German racial policies, shipping Jews to
extermination camps in Poland. Lucy Dawidowicz, in , estimated that 75,000 of
90,000 Slovak Jews
were killed. [f-38]
Today, Method Balco is the head of the Slovak-American
Republican Federation. Despite the fact that Tiso was executed in
1946 as a war criminal, Balco still organizes in New York City an
annual commemoration of the Tiso rule. The Slovak Republican
delegation to the Republican Heritage Groups Council also
included Josef Mikus, a former diplomat of the Tiso regime.
Balco, Mikus, and a third delegate, John Hvasta, all work closely
with the Toronto-based Slovak World Congress, a group set up and
greatly influenced by former aides to Tiso.
Hvasta, the key Washington liaison for the Slovak World
Congress, has also helped the 1988 Presidential Campaign of
former Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist David Duke.
Hvasta’s American Public Research Council rented its mailing list
to the Duke campaign in September of 1987 for $2,000, according
to records obtained from the Federal Election Commission. [f-39]
Joseph Kirschbaum, a top commander of the SS-like Hlinka
Guard and a principal of the Slovak World Congress, edited a
series of speeches made by Slovak nationalists, including several
former Tiso officials. [f-40] One speech calls for the
establishment of a new Slovak state along “ethnogenetical” lines.
Tiso’s former foreign minister and Josef Mikus’ former boss,
Ferdinand Durcansky, wrote:
“. . .anti-Semitism in Slovakia had no racial, but
exclusively political, economic and social roots. Racial elements
were imported into Slovakia from the Reich as manifested along
many lines in many conflicts. I hope we live to see the time when
the Jews draw from these facts the necessary objective
conclusions. . . .[f-41]”
The book of speeches was published by the Slovak World
Congress. Editor Kirschbaum and writer Durcansky were in key
positions to have been aware of Adolph Eichmann’s implementation
of the “Final Solution” against Slovak Jews. Their presence in
the Slovak World Congress, along with others such as Balco and
Mikus, may explain why the Congress does not repudiate the Slovak
puppet government, its declaration of war on the United States,
or its extermination campaign. In an interview in his northwest
Washington, D.C. home, Republican Heritage Groups Council
delegate Mikus said that the U.S. should not have allied with or
aided the USSR in World War II. He noted that “without the aid,
the USSR would have been defeated by Germany,” an outcome Mikus
said would have been preferable.
Balco said that the chief concern for Slovak Republicans is
to get the Voice of America and the State Department to recognize
Slovakia as separate from Czechoslovakia.
Friends of Dictatorship
– Italians: –
Certain Republican Heritage Groups Council members have
been close allies in recent years of those in Italy who would
overthrow the government and re-install fascism in Rome. Italy’s
problems with fascism have been much more recent than World War
II. In 1981 a conspiracy was foiled in which a group of business,
political, Mafia, military and Vatican-connected figures planned
to overthrow Italian parliamentary democracy and install a
dictatorship. The group, called the P-2 Masonic Lodge, had nearly
a thousand members. The prestige of P-2 members (heads of the
intelligence agencies, 38 generals and admirals, and 3 cabinet
officers, for example), plus revelations of financial scandals,
brought extensive European press coverage, the collapse of the
Italian government, and an extensive parliamentary inquiry. [f-42]
Although P-2 had existed for many years as an illegal
secret society, in the 1970’s it became involved in efforts to
destabilize the Italian system through economic warfare and
terrorism, including bombings of public places. The P-2 goal was
to create a demand for fascism to restore order.
A 1987 article by Jerry Meldon in the
discussed the Italian neo->fascist right’s strategy of terror:
“In many ways, it [the Italian right] has been a much more
dangerous movement than the kidnappers and murderers of the
extreme left. Far more deaths can be attributed to right-wing
terrorists’ acts. More significantly, the neo-fascists have
enjoyed the protection and support of Italian intelligence
agencies and, according to a 1976 congressional report, the CIA.”
“With such offical support, the fascists have pursued a
`strategy of tension’ through their own [terrorist] acts and
those of leftist groups they penetrated. They have cultivated a
climate of fear to undermine support for the West’s most popular
communist party and justify an authoritarian takeover of the
Italian government. [f-43] ”
The calculated terror began in 1969, when the right
resolved to fight the growth of the left in Italy. On December
12, a bomb exploded in a plaza of downtown Milan, killing 16
people and injuring another 100. Within the hour several more
bombs went off in Rome. Fascist stormtrooper groups formed. In
December, 1970 a rightist coup was attempted but failed.
Police discovered further plots as violence continued
throughout the 1970’s. Reaction to and fear of assassinations,
kidnappings, knee-cappings and mob violence began seeping into
Italy’s everyday life. Lifestyles changed as Italians altered
spending habits, dress and daily routine to avoid becoming a
victim. Much of this early terrorism was blamed on the left.
In 1973, police found that terrorist activity and the
control of fascist groups was being orchestrated by a group
called the Rose of Twenty, made up of military officers and
industrialists. After their arrests, however, the violence
continued. More plots were uncovered, including lists of targets
for assassination. The police still had not uncovered P-2, the
control center of the terror. In 1980, a bomb ripped through the
Bologna train station, killing 85 people. The bombing was
eventually linked to members of P-2 and Italian neo-fascist
terrorist groups.
By the mid-70’s, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was
gaining electoral support and leaders of the ruling Christian
Democratic Party were meeting with the PCI to discuss the
possibility of a coalition government. P-2 and its friends abroad
worked to stop the coalition and PCI’s electoral success. P-2’s
immediate target: defeat the PCI in the 1976 elections. Their
long-term strategy was to defeat the system which allowed the PCI
to exist.
One American involved in this intrigue was Philip A.
Guarino, 79, an adviser to the Republican National Committee on
senior citizens’ affairs, who was long active in Italian GOP
politics. A theology student in Mussolini’s Italy in the late
20’s and much of the 1930’s, Guarino helped establish the ethnic
division of the GOP in 1952. He was vice-chair of the Republican
Heritage Groups Council from 1971-75. [f-44] He attended the 1985
Council convention to ensure that his friend Frank Stella won the
chairmanship of the Council in a tight race with former Cleveland
mayor Ralph Perk.
Guarino was also described in , a book
about activities involving P-2, as an “honorary member of P-2.”
[f-45] Foreign members of P-2 were rare. One other of the
select was Jose Lopez Riga, founder of the Latin American death
squad group known as the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance.
The exposure of P-2 and Guarino’s involvement (which
Guarino has denied) came about when Michele Sindona, head of
Vatican banking operations, was sentenced to 25 years in a New
York prison for illegal banking activities. Italian
investigations of Sindona led to Licio Gelli, grandmaster of the
secret, illegal P-2 Lodge. Sindona and Gelli were associates of Guarino.
Gelli was an ardent Blackshirt in the Fascist Party of
Mussolini’s Italy and one of his firm supporters to the end. As
the leader of P-2, he made violations of the Lodge’s oaths
punishable by death. The presence of certain Mafioso and police
officials in P-2 made the death threats credible. After Italian
police traced Sindona to Gelli, it was discovered that Guarino
had been corresponding with Gelli. The reported
that Guarino wrote Gelli that “things were going badly for
`Michele’,” the banker imprisoned in New York. Guarino had hosted
Gelli at Reagan’s 1981 inauguration, and introduced him to
“members of the entourage.” [f-46]
Guarino’s dealings with the P-2 network began no later than
1976, when the Mafia-linked Sindona financed an group
called Americans for a Democratic Italy, cochaired by Guarino
and Paul Rao, Jr. who is described in as “a
prominent member of the Italian-American community and attorney
for the head of the Gambino family.” [f-47] Sindona and
Gambino family members were indicted in 1982 for “operating a
$600 million- a-year heroin trade between Sicily and America.” [f-48]
Guarino was also involved in John Connally’s Committee for
the Defense of the Mediterranean, which propagandized on the
Italian Communist Party (PCI) threat to the West. [f-49]
Connally, Richard Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasury and member of
the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Nixon
and Gerald Ford, was a friend of Sindona. [f-50]
Another friend and guest at Connally’s Texas ranch was
Roberto Calvi, a Vatican banker and P-2 member, according to
Larry Gurwin in . Calvi was in Gelli’s inner
circle, serving as an “executioner,” one of a dozen hooded men
with axes who served Gelli in the secret initiation rites for new
members of P-2. The ceremony included the mixing of the
initiate’s blood with that of Gelli and his “executioners,” the
testing of courage with vipers, and an oath that bound the new
P-2 member to Gelli and the netherworld of fascism for life.
[f-51] Calvi’s life was cut short, however, when he was
found hanging from a bridge in London in 1982.
In 1978, Guarino’s Italian Heritage Council ally, Frank
Stella, became National Chair of the Heritage National Committee
of Connally for President, when Connally sought the 1980 GOP
nomination for president. [f-52]
Later Stella got on track with Ronald Reagan. Mark Valente,
a Stella protege and suburban Detroit City Council member now
serving as a Republican National Committee Ethnic Liaison
staffer, says, “Everyone at the White House knows Frank.”
Stella’s name has gone through the White House appointment
process on several occasions. In 1981 he was nominated for the
little-known Intelligence Oversight Board, which is supposed to
monitor the legalities of covert operations of the intelligence
agencies. [f-53] He withdrew his name after it had been publicly
released. Stella was being considered for the post of Ambassador
to Italy in 1985, but withdrew his name again, according to
Valente. In 1983 he was made a White House Fellow.
Stella, a Detroit businessman, has many local civic service
activities to his credit. In February, 1988 he was named cochair
of a panel evaluating the advisability of legalized casino
gambling for the city of Detroit. He is also a top Michigan GOP
fundraiser. Stella had an seat on the Republican
National Committee by virtue of his chairmanship of the
>Republican Heritage Groups Council from 1981-83 and 1985-87. In
1988 Stella was named National Chairman of Italian-Americans for Bush.
Stella can’t quite forget about Italy. In February, 1986 he
gave an award of “honorary member” in the National Italian
American Foundation to Victor Emmanuel of Savoy. [f-54] Stella is
president of the foundation. He says it is “perceived to be the
spokesman for the Italian-American community in the United
States.”[f-55] The man he honored, Victor Emmanuel, would be the
king of Italy today, except his family, the House of Savoy, was
expelled from Italy in 1946 due to its die-hard support of
Mussolini’s fascist order. [f-56] Victor Emmanuel, a reputed
gunrunner for the Shah of Iran, is an arms trafficker and member
of P-2. He is alleged to have used his wealth and influence to
avoid a long prison sentence after he shot and killed a West
German tourist in a party brawl on a Mediterranean island several
years ago. [f-57]
The irony of the award to this erstwhile fascist by the
“spokesman” for Italian-Americans, is that Victor Emmanuel, until
recently, was one of only two Italians in the world not allowed
to set foot on Italian soil. The other person banned was his
father. [f-58
-{Chinese}: –
The Chinese-American and Asian-American Republican
federations are led by Anna Chennault, who gained fame in the
1950’s and 1960’s as an ardent advocate of Chiang Kai-Shek’s
dictatorship on Taiwan. Both federations appear to be little more
than adjuncts to Taiwan government activities in the U.S. That
was highlighted at the 1985 Republican Heritage Groups Council
convention, when an official Taiwan delegation arrived at the
Republican Heritage Groups Council meeting as part of a
nationwide tour belatedly celebrating Reagan’s second
inauguration four months earlier. While the foremost visitor from
Taiwan was the Deputy Minister for National Defense, the honorary
president of the delegation was Ben John Chen, who also chairs
the Asian-American Republican Federation. [f-59] Other Chinese
and Asian GOP federation members are part of trade groups linked
to Taiwan.
The Republican Heritage Groups Council agenda was
interrupted at the Chinese federation’s request so that the
delegation could present awards from the Taiwan government to
Michael Sotirhos, the outgoing Republican Heritage Groups Council
chair (who later became Reagan’s ambassador to Jamaica). Also
receiving an award from the Taiwan regime was Anna Chennault, who
funds the Asian American GOP federation, according to its
chairman, Ben John Chen. Chennault became chair of the Republican
Heritage Groups Council in 1987.
The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)
Archive/File: people/b/bellant.russ bellant.pt1
From: [email protected] (NLG Civil Liberties Committee)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: Bellant: Old Nazi Networks in US
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 12 Dec 92 02:27:00 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1299600110:cdp:1299600113:000:13060
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!cberlet Dec 11 18:27:00 1992
[Editor’s Note: The articles comprising this file were posted in multiple
parts, which I have concatenated here. Header information, excepting ID’s,
is removed from all but the first article (see header, above). knm. Dec 14,
1992.]
/* Written 9:10 pm Dec 8, 1992 by cberlet in igc:publiceye */
/* Written 8:30 pm Dec 6, 1992 by cberlet in igc:p.news */
/* Written 6:26 pm Mar 4, 1990 by nlgclc in igc:publiceye */
