Is Frankie Bag o’ Donuts Our Friend? Shall the Vatican Canonise Ustaša Monster Stepinac?

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According to Croatian media, the Vatican shall declare Alojzije Stepinac a saint by the end of the year, as his cause met the last condition for canonisation… the competent Medical Commission determined one case of a “miraculous healing through Blessed Alojzije Stepinac’s intercession”.

Efraim Zurof, the Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, said in announcing a letter of protest to the Vatican, “We should state that all associates of Ante Pavelić, all those who supported the policy of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), are war criminals, not saints. As soon as we learn more on this, we’ll address a letter of protest to the Vatican. This is outrageous! I don’t know how come, and about the process, but it’s on Pope Francisco to make the right decision”.

Dr Veljko Djuric Mišina, historian and director of the Belgrade Museum of Genocide Victims explained, “Stepinac was the ranking military vicar for the Independent State of Croatia (NDH)  armed forces; therefore, he’s responsible and bore the blame for the monstrous crimes of Catholic priests in the Ustaša militia and Domobrani units. He advocated the forcible conversion of Orthodox Serbs [in Croatia]; in a mid-1943 letter to Pope Pius XII Pacelli, he related the forcible conversion of some 244,000 Serbs… and that’s one of his ‘good points’. There isn’t any evidence that Stepinac ever protested against the crimes committed against the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) or against those committed against the Serbian and Jewish peoples. His intervention remained limited to only a few cases, even though he acknowledged what was going on in concentration camps throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, being aware of the murder of many thousands Serbs, Jews, and Roma. Certain Croatian and German claims that Stepinac protested and intervened against Nazi crimes in Croatia are dishonest, as not a single notation of such is in his papers or in his diary, which are in the BIA archives in Belgrade, earlier, they were in the UDBA archives. After World War II, Tito (a Croat) and Bakarić (another Croat) made a backdoor deal, so, the monstrous Bishop wasn’t tried for crimes against Serbs, Jews, and Roma, but for  ”pronounced anti-communism, hiding treasures and archives of the Ustaša régime, and for aiding terrorist groups infiltrated into Yugoslavia“.

Historian Predrag Markovic emphasised the risk in perceiving Stepinac as a victim of the communist government, as an ordinary Catholic priest who merely followed Pius XII’s policy, whose crime laid in not speaking out against the Holocaust, saying, “We have similar cases in Estonia and Hungary; they rehabilitated Nazi criminals under the guise of rehabilitating victims of communism. However, Stepinac was a far more complex personality than the majority thinks. He wasn’t a criminal, but we can talk about his personal responsibility for abetting the suffering of over a million victims in the NDH. After all, the Ustaša killed his brother”. Archpriest Velibor Džomić of the SPC said, “It’s their (Catholic) decision about who they declare saints. If they want to make Alojzije Stepinac a saint… well, I think that he’s far from embodying the Christian virtues that adorn all the holy men that we learn about in the Gospels”.

12 February 2014

M R Petrović

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Milojko Budimir, the President of the Association of Croatian Serbs, said that the Vatican’s intention to declare Stepinac a saint is fiercely condemned by the descendants of those whose fathers and grandfathers experienced the heinous crimes of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) (1941-45). He pointed up that Stepinac supported these atrocities within the Catholic Church, saying, “It’s a proven fact that Stepinac called on his clergy to support and defend the Catholic State of Croatia and that he was aware of the atrocities at Jasenovac and other camps around the NDH, but he didn’t publicly oppose them. Even after the liberation, Stepinac didn’t change his mind, which is why the Supreme Court of the People’s Republic of Croatia sentenced him to 16 years in prison and the loss of civil and political rights for three years, but they commuted his sentence to house arrest. This seems to me to that they rewarded him for his contribution to the NDH’s creation and for the crimes committed against Serbs, Jews, Roma, and others who opposed the fascist state. During this time, including physical liquidation, they violently repressed 250,000 Orthodox Serbs, who didn’t have a choice in the matter. I hope that progressive forces amongst Catholics could organise, oppose such an action, and stop this shameful canonisation, for this person was no saint, he did nothing to deserve such”.

The Vatican officially confirmed that it would soon declare Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac a saint. In Rome, at Mass commemorating the 54th anniversary of Stepinac’s death in Krašić, held at the Chiesa San Girolamo dei Croati a Ripetta at the Pontifical Croatian College of St Jerome, Cardinal Angelo Amato SDB, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, announced that Pope Francisco declared that Stepinac would be a saint, based on the findings of a medical commission that found that the “Blessed” interceded for a “miraculous healing” of a believer. We expect that Stepinac’s canonisation will occur later this year.

12 February 2014

Blic Online

http://www.blic.rs/Vesti/Drustvo/442045/Ustaski-nadbiskup-Stepinac-ce-postati-svetac

http://www.blic.rs/Vesti/Svet/442100/Reakcije-na-predstojece-proglasenja-Stepinca-za-sveca-Katolicke-crkve

Editor’s Note:

Blic is a mid-market tab… in orientation, it’s centre-left, with populist leanings. Therefore, I wouldn’t discount this report, but I’d wait for more Vatican confirmation before going ballistic about it. As for Francisco… nothing will change that I find his politics and societal stance congenial. However, if he allows this canonisation to go through, he’s our enemy. It’d torpedo all chances of any real dialogue with the Vatican. I’d hope that the papists would pull back from this one. Truly, they should… I don’t want to see more petrol tossed on the fire. There’s enough bad blood already, isn’t there? If this does happen, DO NOT take it out on individual papists… they didn’t propose it nor did they approve it. Keep it focused and keep it clean. We can oppose one another without rancour or hate… we’re Christians, after all…

BMD

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Oleg Tyagnibok: Neo-Nazi, Anti-Semite… and One of the Maidan Leaders

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Out of all the ultra-nationalists on the Maidan, Oleg Tyagnibok is probably the most noticeable one. There are several reasons for that. Firstly, he’s the official leader of the legal neo-Nazi all-Ukrainian Union Svoboda (Freedom), which has seats in the Rada. Secondly, he’s one of the “troika” or Big Three of the Maidan’s leaders. This made him eligible for many photo-ops with Catherine Ashton, John McCain, and a number of other Western dignitaries who came to support Ukrainian nationalists fighting what they call “bad guys in Russia”. The third reason comes last, but certainly, it isn’t the least one. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which tracks anti-Semitism around the world, put Mr Tyagnibok into the international top ten of Jew-haters. One should note that Mr Tyagnibok certainly toiled a lot to deserve this title. Ten years ago, he called on the Ukrainian people to get rid of what he called “the Jewish-Russian mafia” allegedly running the Ukraine.

If Mr. Tyagnibok limited himself to the word “Russian” in his description of the Ukraine-running mafia, that would’ve earned him some title like “European of the year” and Catherine Ashton and Herman Van Rompuy would want to shake hands with him a thousand times more after their first meeting in München. However, he added the J-word, and this brought Mr Tyagnibok some bad headlines, even in the USA. A member of the top-five of Tyagnibok party, named Igor Miroshnichenko, made things even worse by describing the Ukrainian-born Hollywood star Mila Kunis as, well, not entirely Ukrainian. In fact, Mr Miroshnichenko described her as, I quote, “a Yid who says nothing but bad things about the country where she was born”. Again, if Mila Kunis had nothing but scorn for the USSR, for that was the true name of the country where she was born, that’d be OK with the USA and Tyagnibok, who suggested outlawing all Soviet symbols in his party programme. However, Mila Kunis allegedly criticised the Ukraine, and this was something Tyagnibok’s people couldn’t stomach. Therefore, instead of being a Ukrainian-American, she simply became a Jew in their eyes.

The question remains… how long are the EU and the USA going to stomach Mr Tyagnibok? The people whom Tyagnibok called the Jewish-Russian mafia are waiting for their answer.

7 February 2014

Dmitri Babich

Voice of Russia World Service

http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_02_07/Danilyuk-a-civil-society-organizer-with-burning-desires-and-fiery-substances-4052/

German Trial is New Twist in Demjanjuk Saga

Heartless bastards! If you wish to see the face of evil, this is it. Reflect on the fact that THIS is what “zero tolerance” means. Reflect also on the fact that the prissy konvertsy approve of this (in common with their self-congratulatory American suburban neighbours). I pity the Demjanjuk family and ask you all to pray for them. Poor old fellow… he deserves to be home with his family, not awaiting trial. He was nothing but a spear-dragger, you ignorant and boorish bastards. I spit on the lot of you… the only thing that you deserve is to be put against a wall and shot without mercy for your lack of proportion and lack of human decency. K Chortu!

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Once, John Demjanjuk was the focus of the world’s attention for the bloodcurdling crimes he stood accused of. Today, he’s attracting notice for being the lowest-ranking person to go on trial for Nazi crimes in World War II. The latest chapter in a 32-year legal saga brings the retired Ohio autoworker to a court in Munich in a case opening Monday that breaks new ground in Germany’s pursuit of alleged Holocaust perpetrators. If successful, it could significantly lower the bar for who’s considered important enough to go to jail for being part of the Nazi apparatus. In the 1980s, Demjanjuk stood trial in Israel, accused of being the notoriously brutal guard “Ivan the Terrible” at the Treblinka extermination camp. They convicted him, sentencing him to death, then, freed him when an Israeli court overturned the ruling, saying the evidence showed he was the victim of mistaken identity. Now, at age 89, he’s accused of serving as a low-ranking guard at the Sobibór death camp, charged with being an accessory to the murders of 27,900 people during the time he’s alleged to have been there. Demjanjuk maintains he was a victim of the Nazis, first, wounded as a Soviet soldier fighting German forces, then, captured, and held as a prisoner of war under brutal conditions. German prosecutors paint a different picture. After the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was in German captivity, they maintain, he volunteered to serve with the fanatical German SS, going to Sobibór in Nazi-occupied Poland. It’s the first time prosecutors have tried someone so allegedly low-ranking, without proof of a specific offence. If they convict Demjanjuk, other low-ranking suspects could face prosecution.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said, “This definitely marks a change in the decades-old policies of the German judiciary, a positive change”. Immediately after the war, war-crimes trials run by the Allied Powers convicted top Nazis such as Hermann Göring. Investigations of lower-ranking figures eventually fell to German courts. Many of those trials ended with short sentences, or acquittal, of suspects in greater positions of responsibility than Demjanjuk allegedly had. Demjanjuk faces accusations of having served as a “Wachmann”, a guard, the lowest rank of “Hilfswillige” volunteers, who were subordinate to German SS men. For example, Karl Streibel, commandant of the SS Trawniki training camp where the Germans allegedly trained Demjanjuk as a guard, stood trial in Hamburg, but his judges acquitted him in 1976, ruling that it hadn’t been proven that he knew what the guards being trained would be used for. However, today’s judges grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, and, recently, approached war crimes cases differently from their predecessors. In August, the same court that’ll hear Demjanjuk’s case convicted Josef Scheungraber, a former German officer, of murder for the massacre of 10 civilians in Italy in 1944, even though no witness saw him give the order. There are no direct living witnesses in Demjanjuk’s case either, but prosecutors argue that if he was a guard at the death camp, that necessarily proves his involvement in the death machinery. Kurt Schrimm, head of the special German prosecutors’ office responsible for investigating Nazi-era crimes, said, “In the early 1950s, there were certainly some mistakes made, and sometimes there may have been an agenda behind it. However, one must remember that our office embarked since its founding in 1958 into completely uncharted territory. It’s unique that a people pursues their own crimes over decades, and we’re always learning more”.

Demjanjuk’s family argues that there’s pressure from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the US Justice Department, and others to try him. John Demjanjuk Jr told the Associated Press in a telephone interview, “I think they’re going to push forward to have the trial no matter what, to have a media event, to make it seem like Germany is doing what it can to hunt down and prosecute so-called Nazi war criminals”, adding that his father suffers from a bone marrow disease and could only have months to live. Schrimm said it wasn’t until 2008, when his prosecutors’ office found lists of Jews transported to Sobibór during the time Demjanjuk was allegedly there, that there was enough evidence to pursue a case against him in Germany. Now, he said, there’s an obligation to proceed with the trial. Schrimm said, “It’s naturally difficult to deal with men who are soon in their 90th year. However, there are no doubts… the lawmakers decided in 1979 to remove the statute of limitations for murder, so, therefore, I see no reason to treat this case any differently”. Proving the case is another matter. Demjanjuk maintains he was never at the camp and questions how authentic one of the prosecution’s main pieces of evidence is… an SS identity card that they say features a photo of a young, round-faced Demjanjuk and that says he worked at Sobibór. He claims to be a victim of mistaken identity; a Red Army conscript from the Ukraine, captured in the Crimea in May 1942, and held prisoner until joining the Vlasov Army. Germany formed this force of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others to fight with them against the Soviets in the final months of the war.

Demjanjuk, who faces trial in Munich because he lived in the area briefly after the war, emigrated to the USA in 1952 and gained citizenship in 1958. The USA extradited him to Israel in 1986 after the US Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, or OSI, said it had evidence that he was “Ivan the Terrible”. He went on trial in 1987, being convicted and sentenced to death. However, in 1993, the Israeli high court overturned the ruling and freed him after it received evidence that another Ukrainian, not Demjanjuk, was that Nazi guard. At the trial, former Treblinka prisoners misidentified Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible. However, this time, there are no Sobibór survivors who claim to remember him at all. Thomas Blatt, a Sobibór survivor whose mother, father, and brother were killed immediately on arrival at the camp in April 1943, is to testify at the German trial, but he concedes that even if he had met Demjanjuk, he wouldn’t be able to remember him after so many years. “I don’t remember the faces of my parents now”, said Blatt, 82. “How could I remember him?” However, he said he still looks forward to testifying about the role of the camp guards, whom he recalls seeing returning from the gas chambers, their boots splattered with the blood of Jews who resisted. “That is what I can tell, only what the group (has) done. They weren’t regular guardsmen. They were murderers”.

Some evidence against Demjanjuk comes from statements attributed to Ignat Danilchenko, a now-deceased Ukrainian who once served in the Red Army, exiled to Siberia following World War II for helping the Nazis. In 1979, he told the Soviet KGB that he served with Demjanjuk at Sobibór and that Demjanjuk “like all guards in the camp, participated in the mass killing of Jews”. However, the OSI itself questioned his statements’ validity, saying in reports that there are “numerous factual errors”. If convicted, Demjanjuk faces a possible 15-year sentence, although he could be given credit for some or all the seven years he spent behind bars in Israel. However, even if acquitted, Demjanjuk will likely have to remain in Germany because the USA revoked his citizenship. Demjanjuk Jr said, “There’s no justice in this case, regardless of the outcome”.

29 November 2009

David Rising

Associated Press

As quoted in Yahoo! News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091129/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_trying_demjanjuk_3

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Here’s what I think of you goodthinkers and your “zero tolerance”. Nuts to you! Grow up and get some good-sense, too. NO… I don’t have to “like it”. Makes ya reach for the jug, doesn’t it?

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Editor:

Firstly, this badly-written piece resembles Trotskyite propaganda at its worst. Mr Rising, hang your head in shame. You didn’t even know the proper name of General A A Vlasov’s force, the Russian Liberation Army (there was no “Vlasov Army”, you bloody boob… you’re supposedly educated, after all). That means that you only have limited knowledge of World War II; it’s restricted to what you learnt in PC textbooks in college. It wasn’t your most egregious error, but let’s leave it at that. Secondly, did you note the self-congratulatory tone of all involved in this? It’s enough to make decent people hurl in disgust.

“I don’t remember the faces of my parents now,” said Blatt, 82. “How could I remember him?” However, he said he still looks forward to testifying about the role of the camp guards…

THIS is the evidence? God Almighty, please, do spare me. They’re all bloviating as though Mr Demjanjuk was some sort of evil and cunning demon. He wasn’t such. He was an ordinary fellow caught up in the maelström of the Russian Front in World War II. He did what he had to, to survive. He gave no orders, not even as a subordinate NCO. He planned no killings. There’s no evidence that he even laid a hand on any Jew. Then, why are some cowardly windbags persecuting him and why are they putting his family through sheer hell and needless pain and grief? I think that they wouldn’t even allow his family to bring his remains home for burial, the inhuman brutes.

Look at the photo at the head of this piece again. The poor old coot can’t even stand on his own two feet, so, the immigration agents had to carry him out of his home. I don’t blame the agents; they were only following the orders of some officious scumbag. I have no doubt that they are as angered at this as I am… they not only can’t do anything about it, they have to either praise such wickedness or keep their mouths shut… poor fellows, let me pour you all a drink… crazy and demented world that we live in, isn’t it? THIS is why I hate the konvertsy and everything that they stand for. They approve of such… they’re such goodthinkers. They believe that America the Bloody is an exemplar for the world. Never forget that America rained bombs on Belgrade on Orthodox Easter, but declared a bombing halt on Iraq for Ramadan. That is sheer hypocrisy, rank duplicity, and absolute double standards. America once stood for something… now, it’s nothing but the bottom line and satisfying mewling “interest groups”. God, do spare me!

I weep for the Demjanjuk family. As for those who persecute them… I wish that God sends you a tithe of what you have heartlessly sent the Demjanjuks (note well that I don’t wish the same on them, only a fraction thereof). Watch ’em scream and holler at the injustice of the world! I’d just walk by, spit in their general direction, and say, “It couldn’t have happened to nicer folk”. This is the sort of thing that screams to heaven for vengeance. God, don’t delay your justice… these pigs are so far gone that they’ll never listen to you, even if you sent plagues and scorpions. I know that we live in a fallen world… but must it be so obviously and maliciously twisted? God, help all us all.

BMD