Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
The
International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance
Claims The
Vatican and Francisan order are sued in the
USA Vatican
accused of war crimes in the Ukraine Hitler greets Croatia's
wartime leader Ante Pavelic The recent apology by Pope John
Paul II holds little weight with the heirs and few elderly
survivors of one of the bloodiest chapters in the Roman
Catholic Church, the 1941-1945 atrocities by the Croatian
Nazis known as the Ustashe. In April 1941, multi-ethnic
Yugoslavia fell to the Nazis who wasted no time in
installing the fanatical Ante Pavlics Catholic Ustashe in
power in Croatia. With the blessing of the Roman Catholic
Church and the active participation of clergy, especially
Franciscan monks, the Ustashe killed 750,000 Serbs, Jews,
and Roma in an orgy of violence that shocked even some of
the Germans and revolted their Italian allies. Holocuast survivors in the USA
are now suing to recover hundreds of millions of dollars of
property looted by the Croatian Nazis, converted to gold,
and held by the Vatican Bank for safekeeping. Rumours had
circulated about the fantastic wealth that allowed Croatian
war criminals to escape justice and live lives of luxury in
South America, Spain, and even California until a June 1998
US State Department report confirmed the story. In March 2000, Serb and Jewish
survivors filed a class action lawsuit in San Francisco
Federal Court, California, USA, seeking an accounting from
the Vatican Bank and Franciscan Order. While the Vatican
Bank has repeatedly denied their involvement, service of the
lawsuit on the Franciscan Order took place in Oakland,
California on Tuesday, March 15, 2000, appropriately upon a
Croatian Franciscan priest, and on the Vatican Bank in Rome
on Friday, March 17. According to Easton & Levy,
California lawyers representing victims and their
organizations, "the defendants responses will put the Popes
apology to the test; will the Vatican continue to hide their
past crimes under their cassocks, or face the truth of their
past actions in the spirit of John Paul II?" . For
information on how to contact Easton & Levy see the end
of this article. In December 1997, delegates
from 40 countries gathered at an international conference to
consider the origins and the fate of Nazi gold looted from
the victims of the Holocaust. One amazing thing happened at
the conference - the Croatian delegation managed to make an
address without mentioning Ante Pavelic, the head of the
wartime quisling regime in Croatia which butchered thousands
of Jews, Serbs, and Roma (Gypsies) at the Jasenovac
concentration camp - the third biggest such extermination
camp in the war. If anything was "holocaust denial" noted
the Observer, this was it. Another two observers sat
in a guilty silence - Monsignor Giovanni D'Aniello and
Father Marcel Chappin, who sat "in perfect silence" for
three days. Donald Kenrick, who spoke on behalf of the
International Romani Union (on behalf of Roma murdered by
the Nazis) accused the Vatican of being a conduit for Nazi
gold. The Vatican assisted fascism in many ways - it
supported the genocidal regime in wartime Croatia, and it is
alleged to have helped the war criminal escape
justice. After the war, the Papal State
continued to show it's sympathies towards one of Europe's
most bloodthirsty rulers: When Pavelic died in Spain in
1959, he received a special blessing from Pope John XXIII on
his deathbed. This for a man whose murderous regime had it's
own way of dealing with the so-called "final solution": To
"kill a third" of the Jews, Serbs and Roma people of
Yugoslavia, "deport a third" to the concentration camps, and
"convert a third" to Roman Catholicism. (The
Guardian, 18th October 1993). It also helped organise
escape routes for other Nazi war criminals out of Europe to
Latin America, and crucially for the post-war underground
Nazi movement, it provided a means of funneling the stolen
Nazi gold bullion into safe banks beyond the reach of the
Allies. The Church participated in crimes against humanity
and aided and abetted those who carried it out. It is one of
the most shameful chapters in the history of the Catholic
Church. Fifty years on we can see that
other countries along with Switzerland - that ostensibly
were neutral - were in effect, like Sweden, Portugal and
Spain, collaborators with the Axis powers, either supplying
them with hard currency and military hardware. But top of
the list is Switzerland, which gave Hitler's regime crucial
financial support to help it's war effort. In late 1999, a
report by an independent inquiry, led by the Swiss historian
Jean-François Bergier, into Switzerland's wartime
history concluded that Swiss officials: It was found that some 300,000
people - many of them Jews - had fled to Switzerland during
the war. The inquiry found that at least 24,500 were
rejected - that is sent back into the hands of the Nazi's -
by the Swiss authorities to certain death in the
concentration camps. Most historians believe figure is much
higher. This was the inquiry's second report, the first, in
1998, covered Nazi gold transfers to Switzerland, during
which is was involved in what has been described as the
"greatest economic crime of the century" - the looting by
the Nazi's of Europe's gold, including victims of the
holocaust in Yugoslavia, and how the Swiss profited from it
from banking it, and how they kept it safe for the nazi
movement after the war by moving it to either Spain or
Portugal and then on to countries such as Argentina. As
The Observer noted on 7th December 1997: A study commissioned by the
Swiss government estimated that Swiss banks received about
£2 billion in looted gold stolen from the mainly
Jewish, Roma and Slavic victims of the Nazi holocaust
(The Guardian December 5th 1997). The Papal State has
come under heavy pressure to open it's archives. The World
Jewish Congress (WJC) released a declassified letter from
the US treasury which showed that in 1946, the Americans
were told that: The funds, stolen by the
fascist Ustashe regime in Croatia, was sent through a
Vatican "pipeline" to Spain and Argentina. However, US
treasury suspected that the funds were still possibly held
by the Vatican (The Guardian, December 5th 1997). The
Vatican secretly worked with the fascism, notably supporting
the puppet Nazi regime in Croatia, and crucially, it helped
leading war criminals escape justice at the end of the war.
Furthermore, evidence has at last confirmed the involvement
of the Vatican in hiding gold looted by the Ustashe regime
in Croatia. Although the Vatican denies these claims, a
recently revealed US intelligence report from 1946 showed
that that Britain had impounded and kept gold coins worth
150m Swiss francs. This money had been looted from holocaust
victims in Yugoslavia, who been murdered by the Ustashe
regime. The post-war Labour Government in Britain also
seized frozen bank accounts belonging to Holocaust victims.
The government told banks to hand over the money instead of
returning it to individuals. Some of this money was used to
compensate British companies for their wartime losses or to
newly liberated countries not indebted to Britain. Some
money was also confiscated in lieu of payments for
governments in debt to Britain.(The Guardian, 4th
December 1997). The WJC also produced other
declassified US documents which it said, proved the Allies
knew 55 tons of Nazi gold - worth about £400 million
today - was mixed with gold taken from the central banks of
Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria. Instead of separating
the two classes of gold, the Tripartite Gold Commission
(TGC) - administered by the US, France and Britain - decided
to give it all to the central banks of Europe. The TGC
itself, still holds 5.5 tons of suspected Nazi gold, which
strangely for the last 50 years has not been distributed to
holocaust victims (The Guardian, 4th December
1997). Altogether, the British
government ended up with 350m francs' worth of gold seized
from the Croat's after the war. The rest, the report says,
was given to the Vatican for "safe-keeping". It's alleged,
that later the British government impounded it's share,
leaving the Vatican 200m Swiss francs. In turn, the Vatican
set up a "smokescreen", pretending to forward the gold to
Franco's fascist regime in Spain, and then onto Argentina.
Under the dictator Juan Peron and his wife Evita, Argentina
became a safehaven for other escaped Nazi war criminals such
as Klaus Barbie, Adolph Eichmann, and Joseph Mengele.
(The Guardian, 23rd July 1997). Similar allegations had already
been made by Yallop about the Vatican. During the war, an SS
Oberleutnant called Licio Gelli was said to have derived his
wealth from his presence in the Italian town of Cattaro,
where the seized national treasures of Yugoslavia were
hidden. A significant portion of these were never returned
to Yugoslavia "but were stolen by Gelli". Furthermore, as
the war ended, and with the help of the Vatican, he
organised the aptly named "Rat-lines" to get Nazi war
criminals to South America - for a fee of 40%. Helped by
notorious pro-Nazi Catholic priest from Croatia, Father
Krujoslav Dragonovic, he helped Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher
of Lyon" escape, with his costs borne by the US Counter
Intelligence Corps. During the 1960's, Gelli formed
the sinister P2 lodge of Freemasons in Italy. In Argentina,
he became a close confident of Peron, and by 1972, had
become Argentina's economic adviser to Italy, and later,
it's honorary Counsel. He is believed to have been a central
figure in the acts of political violence that destabilised
Italy from the late sixties to the early eighties, as well
P2's involvement in the collapse of the Vatican Bank,
according to Yallop (In God's Name. David Yallop,
Corgi Books, Britain, 1984. Pp 173&endash;75). Details of the disappearance of
Yugoslavia's gold was also raised in 1991 in Rat
Lines by Mark Aarons and John Loftus. They say 400 kilos
of gold - which was the property of Yugoslavia and worth
millions of dollars, - and "a considerable amount of foreign
currency", was secretly taken to Wolfsburg in Austria, under
the control of a Ustashe minister, Lovro Susic. The Croats
were apparently warned that the British "would seize the
gold" so they asked Dragonovic to help: he was "only willing
to oblige", and immediately smuggled 40 kilos of gold to
Rome concealed in two packing cases. (Rat Lines, Mark
Aarons and John Loftus, Mandarin, London, England, 1991, Pp
122&endash;125). The Vatican not only hoarded
the gold the Croats looted, it also helped them escape -
with a nod and wink from the OSS and MI6. In 1986 for
example, the US government released documents that revealed
the Vatican had organised Pavelic's safe-flight from Europe
to Argentina, along with 200 senior officials of his regime.
During their escape, they had hidden "frequently in
cloisters" in Catholic churches and in many instances, had
"disguised themselves as Franciscan monks", according to
Vladimar Dedijer , writing in The Yugoslav Auschwitz
(Ahriman-Verlag, Freiburg, Germany, 1988, p53). According to most accepted
accounts, some 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma
(Gypsy) people were slaughtered by Ante Pavelic's openly
pro-Vatican regime in Croatia (The Yugoslav Auschwitz
and the Vatican, p30). Dedijer writes that "the highest
dignitaries in the Roman Catholic Church gave their blessing
to Ante Pavelic at a time when the so-called state of
Croatia was proclaimed - at a time when the Yugoslav state
and it's army still existed". Clerics working for the
Ustashe regime took part in shocking war crimes in
Yugoslavia, notably participating in the genocide at
Jasenovac concentration camp, where 200,000 people were
systematically murdered. For example, at one point, a
Franciscan monk was camp commandant of what the second
largest concentration camp of the war. At the Nazi gold conference,
Donal Kenrick of the International Romani Union said that
£1 million of gold coins and personal belongings that
had been stolen from 28,000 Roma people killed by the
Ustashe regime, ended up in the Vatican (The
Guardian, 4th December 1997). Thus, from this conference
alone, we know that the Vatican helped steal money from
victims of the holocaust. Perhaps it is because of this,
that it made no representations at the conference - it's
archives anyway are presently closed until 2045. The Vatican was further
implicated in August 1997 when newly discovered documents in
the US national archives show that the Vatican engaged
itself in potentially illegal transactions with Nazi Germany
and it's axis partners during the war. The archives show
that the Vatican Bank (known as the Institute for Religious
Works) used Swiss banking middlemen on at at least 3
occasions to obtain money from the Reichsbank or to transfer
funds to a bank blacklisted by the allies for it's dealings
with Nazi Germany. (The Guardian, 4th August
1997). In January 2000, it was
announced that Thomas Easton and Jonathan Levy, lawyers in
San Francisco, USA had filed a lawsuit against the Vatican
and the Fransican Order for complicity in war crimes in
Yugoslavia during the Second World War. The press release
from the firm states: In November 1999, California
attorneys Jon Levy and Tom Easton filed the original
Complaint in San Francisco. On January 20, 2000 Easton and
Levy filed an amended class action law suit. The suit names
the Vatican Bank, Franciscan Order and other unidentified
Swiss, Austrian, Argentine, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese,
German, and American banking institutions as defendants. The
suit seeks an accounting of the gold and money and
ultimately, restitution for the victims and their families.
The Ustasha Treasury with the
connivance of the Vatican and other banks was laundered in
1944-45 and used to assist the top Croatian war criminals
evade justice. Ante Pavelic, known as the "Butcher of the
Balkans" and leader of Nazi Croatia was given refuge by the
Vatican and later escaped to Argentina. The whereabouts of
the Croatian "blood" money was a dark mystery, however in
1998 the US State Department demanded the Vatican account
for the loot. Despite numerous requests from governments and
Holocaust victims, the Vatican Bank and Holy See have
refused to open their wartime archives. The original plaintiffs, four
Ukrainian and Jewish concentration camp survivors and two
organizations representing over 300,000 Holocaust survivors
are now joined by plaintiff Vladimir Brodich of
Arizona, who was 9 years old in 1941 when they took away and
shot his father and brother and gang raped his sister, by
plaintiff William Dorich of California, who lost 17
relatives when the Ustasha burnt alive 45 Serbian victims in
the Orthodox Serbian Church in Vojinic, and plaintiff
Igor Najfeld of Vermont, who was born June 28, 1944,
the day his two physician parents escaped from slave labor
in Bosnia to join the Tito partisans, and whose mother had
56 relatives killed by the Ustasha, some in the infamous
Jasenovac extermination camp. The Jasenovac Research
Institute of Birmingham, Mississippi has also joined with
the effort to force the Vatican to open its archives and
reveal the truth of the "hidden holocaust" of World War Two.
Restitution could reach hundreds of millions of dollars
which would be distributed to the tens of thousands victims
of the Ustasha Regime and their descendants. On 19 January 2000 the
Jasenovac Research Institute joined seven Serbian, Jewish
and Ukrainian Holocaust victims in a class action lawsuit
against the Vatican Bank, the Franciscan Order and several
unnamed Austrian, Swiss, Argentine and other banking
institutions. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court
in San Francisco, seeks restitution of several hundred
millions of dollars in looted property and assets taken in
World War II Croatia by the clerical-fascist Croatian Nazi
regime which the suit charges was subsequently deposited in
the Vatican Bank and other institutions. The original
lawsuit was filed by U.S. attorneys Tom Easton and Jonathan
Levy on 15 November 1999 in the San Francisco U.S. District
Court on behalf of four Jewish and Ukrainian Holocaust
victims. On 21 January 2000 the class action lawsuit was
amended and re-filed to include the Jasenovac Research
Institute, a non-profit organization committed to the study
of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, and three additional
individuals as class-representative plaintiffs: Following the Nazi invasion and
dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Independent
State of Croatia was established as a clerical-fascist state
under the rule of the Croatian fascist party, the Ustashe.
Some 700,000 Serbs, Jews, Romas and other anti-fascists were
killed in the Jasenovac death-camp complex, while many more
were killed in smaller camps or in local massacres. While
the Ustashe regime set about to racially exterminate all
Serbs, Jews and Romas living within its borders, it also
carried out a systematic policy of plundering the assets of
these three nationalities. These looted assets, the property
of millions of people, were never recovered. The bulk of it
was smuggled out of Croatia at the end of the war to the
Vatican, and from there to still other destinations.
There is no statute of
limitations for claims against these crimes. There are two
reasons for this: the 1968 international convention
regarding the non-applicability of statutes of limitation
for war crimes, and the concealment of vital information
regarding the culpability of the accused parties in these
crimes. Another law firm, Zimmerman and Reed, has filed a
similar lawsuit seeking restitution for Holocaust victims
from Yugoslavia on 27 January 2000 in Minneapolis. It is
expected that still other law firms will join these two
suits or file additional suits in the coming months. The JRI
will offer its support to all such efforts and encourage
others to do the same. The lawsuit which the JRI has
joined is based on evidence contained in recently
declassified government documents from the United States,
Britain and Argentina. Several of the declassified U.S.
military intelligence reports obtained by the JRI clearly
state that the majority of these looted assets was deposited
in the Vatican "for safe-keeping." The June 1998 U.S. State
Department "Supplement" to its 1997 Report on "Nazi Gold"
contains a crucial chapter documenting the Vatican's role in
the transfer of stolen assets entitled "The Fate of the
Wartime Ustasha Treasury." Still newer reports are to be
released in the coming months, including one from Argentina
expected to detail the transfer of millions of dollars in
gold from the Vatican to Argentina as payment for the
emigration of Croatian Ustashe and other Nazi war
criminals. According to the most recent
estimates, the total amount of stolen assets transferred out
of Croatia by the Ustashe at the end of the war was at least
$250 million. Based on conversion tables provided by the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, this would now be worth
$2.325 billion in December 1999 dollars. It is the position
of the Jasenovac Research Institute that this entire amount
plus interest must be paid to the remaining Survivors and
their heirs, and to the heirs of all victims of the Ustashe
genocide. This amount would only be a partial accounting for
the crimes of genocide committed in wartime Yugoslavia by
the Ustashe and other fascist forces; however it would
provide the initial foundations for better relations in the
future for the peoples of the region. Several new plaintiffs have
stepped forward since the re-filing to ask to be added to
the suit. Among them is Eva Deutsch-Costabel, a Yugoslav Jew
born in Zagreb and currently living in New York whose
family's two businesses and home were stolen by the Ustashe
regime and whose father was arrested and murdered.
U.S. attorneys Easton and
Levy are seeking additional plaintiffs for the case. To be
added as a plaintiff to the lawsuit one needs to be either a
Survivor of the Ustashe regime or a relative or heir of a
victim of Ustashe crimes. If you are such an individual and
you wish to become a plaintiff, or if you have vital
information regarding this case, you are encouraged to
contact either the Jasenovac Research Institute or the law
firm of Thomas Easton at 707-464-4513 or
tomeaston@earthlink.net.
The Jasenovac Research Institute urges everyone who is
concerned with the search for justice for the victims of the
Ustashe Holocaust to help us in our efforts to achieve a
successful outcome of this historically important
case. The lawsuit was filed in U.S.
District Court in San Francisco: No.C99-4941MMC by the Law
Office of Thomas Dewey Easton and Jonathan H. Levy. PO Box
6080, Cincinnati OH 45206, USA (resistk@yahoo.com).
Restitution & justice for concentration camp survivors
of Serb, Jewish, and Ukrainian background and their
relatives
"Helped the Nazi
regime achieve its goals" (The Guardian,
December 11th, 1999)
"Some of the
bullion went via the Vatican and the Iberian
dictatorships to Latin America, the destination of choice
for Nazis on the run"
"Money and gold
stolen from the Jews and Serbs (in Yugoslavia) were sent
to the Vatican" (The Guardian, December 5th
1997).
The
Vatican and Francisan order are sued in the USA
"More than 700,000,
Serbs, Jews, Roma and former Soviet Union citizens were
murdered by the Nazi puppet regime of Croatia during
World War II. The Croatian Nazis, known as the Ustasha,
burned villages and churches, operated slave labor and
concentration camps, and committed atrocities that
shocked even hardened German observers. In a scenario
shockingly similar to today's Yugoslavia, genocide
wascommitted to cleanse Greater Croatia of non-Roman
Catholics. Hundreds of millions of dollars of gold,
property, and money was looted by the Ustasha from their
victims"