Author: Jon Levy
Publication:
Date: June 16, 2000
NEWS ADVISORY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 15, 2000
Law Offices of Easton
& Levy
Tel. (513) 528-0586
E Mail: jlevy1@cinci.rr.com
UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan has been called upon to investigate claims of World War II era
Genocide by the Vatican and Franciscans. An open letter on behalf of Serb
and Jewish survivors of wartime atrocities by the fanatical Catholic Croatians
known as the "Ustasha" requests the UN Secretary General to investigate
allegations of genocide committed by the Vatican and Franciscans. Specifically
the victims claim:
The Vatican and Franciscans
knowingly helped Croatian and Nazi war criminals escape justice by organizing
and funding the Nazi smuggling ratline based at San Girolamo and the Vatican
whose many beneficiaries included Eichman, Barbie, Artukovich and Pavelic.
Allegations of money laundering of the Croatian Nazi (Ustasha) Treasury
consisting of loot stolen from concentration camp and other victims; and
as to the Croatian Franciscan order, actual participation in genocide against
Serbs, Jews, and Roma comprising the over 500,000 victims of the Croatian
Nazis slaughtered in
Croatia, Serbia, and
Bosnia during Word War II.
Victims' claims in the
class action Alperin v. Vatican Bank include mass rape, beheadings, torture,
mutilations, burnings, establishment of concentration and forced labor
camps, destruction of Orthodox Churches and Jewish Synagogues, and looting
of assets valued in the hundreds of millions by the Ustashe and Franciscans.
Post war the Vatican provided sanctuary for the Ustashe killers until they
could be whisked away to safety in South America via the Vatican ratline
financed by Ustashe loot.
The Vatican and Franciscans
have steadfastly denied involvement in these activities despite documentation
by the US State Department, recently declassified documents, and numerous
exposes of the ratline.
The victims through their
attorneys Easton and Levy have called upon the Secretary General to consider
and investigate the allegations and to call upon the Vatican and Franciscans,
both of whom enjoy Observer status at the United Nations, to open their
wartime archives.
For more information
and full text of letter see:
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/press6.html
**************************************
June 13, 2000
Secretary-General Kofi
Annan
Executive Office of
the Secretary-General
U.N. Headquarters #
S-3800
New York, NY 10017
Your Excellency:
We are writing to express
our concerns about unresolved World War II era war crimes involving the
Vatican and the Franciscans OFM.
Holy See enjoys the privilege
of Non-Member State Permanent Observer status at the United Nations. In
this capacity, the Vatican has the opportunity to vote with member states
at UN sponsored conferences.
Franciscans International
enjoys Non Governmental Organization status at the United Nations and General
Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC). Franciscans International is an umbrella organization representing
Franciscan orders internationally and whose leadership includes members
of the Franciscans OFM.
The Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the United
Nations General Assembly in 1948 states at Article 3:
The following acts shall
be punishable:
(b) Conspiracy to commit
genocide;
(c) Direct and public
incitement to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
Recently declassified
American documents covering the period 1944-1962 and the 1998 US State
Department Report authored by Deputy Secretary of State Eizenstadt "The
Fate of the Wartime Ustasha Treasury" implicate the Vatican and Franciscans
in the following postwar activities:
1. Knowingly shielding
and hiding Croatian and other Balkan Nazi war criminals from justice in
the Vatican including the mass murderer Ante Pavelic (The Croatian Fuhrer);
2. Organizing and funding
the Nazi smuggling ratline based at San Girolamo and the Vatican whose
many beneficiaries included Eichman, Barbie, Artukovich and Pavelic;
3. Money laundering of
the Croatian Nazi (Ustasha) Treasury consisting of loot stolen from concentration
camp and other victims; And as to the Croatian Franciscan order only:
4. Actual participation
in genocide against Serbs, Jews, and Roma comprising the over 500,000 victims
of the Croatian Nazis slaughtered in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia during
Word War II.
Unlike every other civilized
nation the Vatican has refused to acknowledge its complicity in genocide
and has refused repeated requests by the United States government, Jewish
and Roma organizations to open its World War II archives to public scrutiny.
A lawsuit, Alperin v.
Vatican Bank has been filed in United States District Court for the Northern
District of California by survivors of Ustashe wartime atrocities. Plaintiffs'
stories of genocide are horrendous and include:
Plaintiff's father and
brother were tortured, then murdered. Before their death, his father asked
to embrace his son, and thus they were shot together. Five years later,
their bodies were exhumed and identified because still embracing one another.
At the detention center Plaintiff's sister was gang raped by Ustasha; .the
Ustasha burned to death 45 Serb victims in the Orthodox Serb church in
the village of Vojnic; Plaintiff's teenage cousin was taken from her home
in Dalmatia to Croatian capital Zagreb, along with other kidnapped Serbs,
and hung to death on Serb Eastern Orthodox Christmas, January 7, 1942;
Plaintiffs paternal family lost 48 family members in May 1945, when all
the women and children were murdered and placed in a mass grave. They were
killed by Croatian Ustasha after they descended from hiding in the mountains
above their village in Korencia, Lika (Krajina) Yugoslavia. The war had
just been declared "over" and they thought it was safe to return home;
Plaintiff's father discovered a naked body floating down the river from
Sisak and pulled it out. After removing the board nailed to its head, he
recognized it as a Jewish liquor dealer from Sisak and thereafter buried
his body in the Strmen Orthodox cemetery. Two days later Plaintiff's father
was arrested by Ustasha for the crime of burying a Jew and sent off to
Auschwitz; At the age of 13 Plaintiff was in August 1942 one of some 3,000
Serb children forcibly converted to Catholicism by the Ustasha, where he
was so viciously kicked by Franciscan priests for accidently tripping into
one, that his friend watching reported to his mother that he was dead;
Plainitffs father, a 40 year old Serb Orthodox priest was taken along with
all of the town's prominent Serbs to Velebit Mountain, tortured, and in
July 1941 thrown into the Jadovno pit; plaintiffs relatives were tortured,
then made to dig their own graves, chained together, and every other victim
shot (to save bullets) causing them all to fall into the graves, dying
and alive together. Some in her village who resisted were murdered on the
spot. Plaintiff's uncle resisted and was beheaded in his own yard; an eyewitness
told Plaintiff that his body stood upright for a few unbelievable seconds
with blood spouting from his neck, while his wife ran out from her hiding
place screaming in horror. The Ustasha then murdered her by smashing her
head with their rifle butts until her brains oozed out. Another eyewitness
told Plaintiff that her cousin resisted also and as punishment the Ustasha
tied him up in his yard while they drove his widowed mother and wife and
two small children back into the home to which they then set fire. The
Ustasha only murdered him, after forcing him to listen until the dying
screams of his family ended, by cutting off his extremities and finally
decapitating him so that his body looked like the carcass of a slaughtered
animal;
Plaintiff's father had
been a very successful businessman in textile manufacturing, but all his
property was looted by Ustasha and Germans. This property was valued by
the Tito government in 1948 in excess of $1,500,000 in prewar dollars.
No compensation has ever been received by plaintiff.
Franciscan priests encouraged
pogroms and served as military chaplains in Ustashe killing squads and
as command personnel at the Jasenovac complex of concentration camps.
The Vatican protected
Ustashe war criminals, smuggled Nazis and processed through its banking
system, loot valued at hundreds of millions of dollars taken from Serb,
Jewish, and Roma victims.
Numerous scholars including
Vladimir Dedijer, former Yugoslavian ambassador to the United Nations and
John Loftus former US Department of Justice attorney have documented these
events and found them to be true.
Therefore we call upon
the United Nations to investigate these allegations and if found to be
substantiated, to take appropriate action against the Holy See and Franciscan
International in order to encourage them to open their archives and account
for their actions during the Second World War and its aftermath.
Only by holding the Vatican
and Franciscans to the minimal standards of the Anti Genocide Convention
and the recent examples set by Switzerland, Austria, and Germany in settling
Holocaust related financial and moral issues can justice be had within
the few years still remaining to the survivors of these atrocities.
Respectfully submitted,
Jonathan Levy
Law Offices of Tom Easton
and Jonathan Levy
Attorneys for Plaintiffs
Alperin v. Vatican Bank
