Word: trifa
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Behind the dry legal charge stood a far more bloodcurdling allegation: that this bespectacled man of God was once Viorel Trifa, head of a pro-Nazi youth organization in Bucharest. Witnesses accuse him of delivering an anti-Semitic speech in January 1941 (sample: "A group of Jews and Jew-lovers are ruling everything") that helped to incite rioting during which hundreds-perhaps thousands-of Jews were slain. (The official report listed 236 dead, half of them Gentiles...
Dedicated Nazi-hunters in the U.S. consider Trifa's court action a tacit admission of guilt not only on the technical charge but on all the rest, since all their accusations would have been aired during a long trial. But Valerian issued a prepared statement that his decision "is in no way to be considered an admission of the Government allegations." His lawyer, George E. Woods, a former U.S. Attorney in Detroit, denies that the 66-year-old archbishop caved in before a strong prosecution case. Valerian, he says, was ailing and simply tired of the legal fight that...
...Trifa first came to the U.S. from Italy in 1950. Two years later, he led anti-Communist Rumanians in seizing control of their church headquarters from a rival group loyal to the Orthodox patriarchate in Rumania. Meanwhile Charles Kremer, a Rumanian-American dentist in New York City and a Jew, learned that Trifa had come to the U.S. Kremer inundated the Government with documents to prevent Trifa from getting U.S. citizenship in 1957. The Immigration and Naturalization Service evidently paid him little heed. Kremer kept on trying...
...matter was complicated, since the National Council cannot tell member churches who their delegates should be. Moreover, council leaders rightly feel Trifa should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. The U.S. Attorney in Detroit charged last year that in a 1957 naturalization hearing, Trifa falsely denied participating in Rumania's Nazi-lining "Iron Guard." That suit, still pending, ultimately could cost Trifa his citizenship...
...hastily called emergency meeting in Chicago Oct. 30, the Council Executive Committee took an unprecedented step. Declaring that "we cannot allow any doubt about a complete repudiation" of the atrocities of the Nazi era, they called upon the Orthodox Church in America, parent body of Trifa's Rumanian churches, to ask Trifa to suspend his National Council activities until the federal courts, and an investigation by the Orthodox Church, settle the case...