The government of Switzerland has informed the U.S. Justice Department that it will not accept Archbishop Valerian Trifa of Grass Lake, Mich, for residency in Switzerland, according to a report in The Jewish News by Alan Hitsky, news editor.
Trifa, who heads the Rumanian Orthodox Episcopate in America, voluntarily accepted deportation in October rather than continue his fight against U.S. charges that he lied about his ties to the fascist Rumanian Iron Guard when he entered the U.S. in the early 1950’s and when he applied for American citizenship.
Under the agreement reached in Federal District Court in Detroit, Trifa asked to live in Switzerland. Allan Ryan, Jr., director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special investigations, told The Jewish News that the U.S. “is now making the inquiries and arrangements to see if Trifa can go to other countries,” Hitsky reported.
“Switzerland was his first choice, ” Ryan said “Under the law we were obligated to wait for that decision.” According to Hitsky, Ryan was reluctant to discuss the countries that would be approached or the length of time it would take. “It will take some time,” Ryan said. “The decision will have to be made in the capitals of these countries, not at their U.S. embassies. It will take some time, but I am hopeful it will not be an inordinate amount of time.”
Trifa has been accused of being the leader of the student movement of the Iron Guard and inciting a pogrom in Bucharest in January, 1941.
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.
