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:1299600113:000:13060
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  6:26 pm  Mar  4, 1990 by nlgclc in igc:publiceye */
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, <Blowback>, 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.