A man who has been campaigning for almost 30 years to bring to justice Nazi war criminals residing in the United States warned that the efforts to deport Bishop Valerian Trifa, the leader of the fascist Romanian Iron Guard during World War II, may be lost unless there is enough pressure on the U.S. Attorney General’s office and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to end its continuous postponement of the case.
Dr. Charles H. Kramer, president of the Committee to Bring Nazi War Criminals to Justice in the U.S., who is also president of the Romanian Jewish Federation of America, said that the case against Trifa has been dragging on since May, 1975 “during which there have been three different U.S. Attorneys General and the deaths of some of our most important eyewitnesses against Trifa.”
In a letter to Jewish organizations, which he released to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Kramer, who is 80 years old, noted that “Trifa’s pogrom took place in January, 1941. Our witnesses are over 70 years old. They cannot live forever. Only Trifa is still relatively young — now 64 years old.”
Kramer said he has submitted documentation to the Attorney General’s office and the INS since 1952 “and last year I undertook a trip to Europe and Israel specifically concerning this issue. I returned with an additional list of over 50 witnesses which I have personally discovered and which I submitted to Martin Mendelsohn, head of the litigation unit of the INS involved with trying Nazi war criminals.” Kramer noted that Trifa has reportedly collected $680,000 for a defense fund while “our government is not spending that kind of money to win the case.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
