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BRUC WEISS CUSTOM JEWELRY YOU HAVE IT MADE 26325 TWELVE MU ROAD, SOUTHFIELD, MICHIGAN IN THE MAYFAIR SHOPS AT NORTHWESTERN HIGHWAY 10:00-5:30 MONDAY-SATURDAY, 10:00-8:30 THURSDAY HEART LINE an Fridqv Fphrupry 13 1987 (313) 353-1424 THE IWTROIT .IFWISH NFWS Church Not Bothered By Trifa's Association FRANKLIN H. LITTELL Special to The Jewish News T he death of Valerian Trifa on January 28, in a hospital in Cascais, Portugal, reminds us of the way in which many criminals lied their way into the United States — and only a few were caught. Trifa was the center of considerable controversy be- fore the United States finally deported him in 1984. In that controversy some of the Chris- tian church leaders played a less than estimable role, for Trifa was an archbishop of the Rumanian Orthodox Church and had even served on the governing board of the Na- tional Council of Churches. A look at the facts of the Trifa Case may illuminate the larger question about forgiv- ing and forgetting. Trifa did not become a clergyman until after he entered the United States. His earlier history was political. Among his other "ac- complishments" was leader- ship in the Iron Guard, a traitorous fascist movement in Rumania that was best known for anti-Semitism and servility toward Nazi Germany. Trifa entered the U.S. in 1950, lying about his past and claiming to be a DP (Displaced Person) who had been in a con- centration camp in Germany. In fact he had — as the Rus- sians overran the eastern front — lived with special privileges inside Germany. Significantly, he entered the U.S. during the years when American vigi- lance against facism and Nazism was weakened by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his na- tive right-wing extremist al- lies. The McCarthy politics of polarization, which weakened the middle ground of honest liberalism and honest conser- vatism, led some Americans to forget that both Communist to- Facist/Nazi a nd talitarianisms are unaccept- able to patriotic Americans. Trifa made much of his "anti-Communism." Entering the priesthood, he made a rapid rise within his own denomina- tion and within interdenomi- national agencies such as the National Council of Churches. Semi-public agitation to bring Trifa to trial began in 1975 and 1976. Some of us in the Chris- tian ranks joined with Jewish activists in demanding expo- sure of the facts. A personal vignette may interest readers and also help to show where the real Chris- tian problem is to be found in such cases. During the winter of 1975-1976 a group of Jewish students came from downtown Manhattan and staged a demonstration against Trifa — Rev. Littell is the founder of the Anne Frank Institute in Philadelphia. Valerian Trifa: Who should forgive? then a member of the policy- setting general board — at the offices of the National Council of Churches at 475 Riverside Drive. They had tipped off the newspapers and TV in ad- vance, and the resulting pub- licity was embarrassing to the church bureaucrats. The bureaucrats took refuge, however, in some rule of the organization to the effect that each denomination chose and sent its own delegates. That did not answer the question, of course, of why the National Council of Churches couldn't — publicly, preferably! — ask that Trifa be withdrawn and a decent delegate sent in his place. A few days later I was hav- ing lunch with the key figure of one of the denominations, also a member of the general board. I asked him what was being done about the Trifa case, since it was embarrassing to have an anti-Semite and escaped war criminal in such a key position. The response which astonished me, coming from a generally very quiet and restrained churchman, was a condemna- tion of the Jewish students' ac- tion (which made dodging the issue more difficult). His exact words were these: "Those Jews didn't do themselves any good. . ." I was appalled, and still am, when I think of what he really said in that outburst. Instead of dealing with the issue at hand, which was the disgrace to the churches of Jesus Christ in having a Trifa helping to govern their affairs, the ecclesiastical bureaucrat did what we see so often: he changed the subject to a con- demnation of "the Jews." The dead weight of centuries of theological and cultural anti- Semitism made it impossible for him to face honestly an issue there a wrong done "the Jews" was a major part of the equation. He was in fact the most dangerous kind of anti-Semite in America: not the KKK or