From: cberlet@igc.apc.org (NLG Civil Liberties Committee)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: Bellant: Old Nazi Networks in US
Date: 12 Dec 92 02:27:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1299600110:cdp:1299600115:000:9960
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!cberlet    Dec 11 18:27:00 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  6:34 pm  Mar  4, 1990 by nlgclc in igc:publiceye */
Bellant: Old Nazis/Heritage Groups 4
	     
PART ONE - SECTION 4
	
[The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities)Council]
	
	
     -{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 <The Belarus Secret>, 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 <Guide to Nationality Observances>, 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 <The War 
Against the Jews>, 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.
	
Xref: sparky alt.conspiracy:13185 talk.politics.misc:64313