Szittyakürt, 1980 (19. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1980-02-01 / 2. szám

12. oldal «IttVAKÖkt 1980.február hó •SPOTLIGHT December 24,197» Smear Patriot in Zionists Frenzied ‘War Criminal’Hun t “WASS ALBERT ÍRÓFEJEDELMÜNK személyének védelme minden Egyesült Államokban élő magyar kötelessége. A cselekvés meddőségét, hiábavalóságát hirdető emigráns vezetőkkel szemben a Hungária Szabad­ságharcos Mozgalom álláspontja az, hogy nincsenek cselekvésre alkalmat­lan időszakok, pusztán cselekedni nem tudó emberek. A szűk perspek­tívákba zárt gondolkodás, a magyarság nemzetvédelmi feladatainak cse­lekvési terét korlátozni szándékozás helyett a Hungária Szabadságharcos Mozgalom — WASS ALBERT VÉDELMÉBEN — az első-lépcsőben az amerikai közvélemény tájékoztatására a SPOTLIGHT c. antibolsevista amerikai újságot kívánjuk felhasználni” — jelentettük 1979. nov. 4-én, a HSzM 2. számú Mozgalmi Jelentés-ben. A SPOTLIGHT SZERKESZTŐSÉGÉVEL TÖRTÉNT MEGBESZÉLÉSÜNK EREDMÉNYE: By The SPOTLIGHT Staff ASTOR PARK, Florida—An attempted smear of one of Hungary’s most­­revered patriots has stirred a deluge of protest that could dampen the Justice Department’s multimillion-dollar tax-paid witchhunt for alleged “war criminals” among elderly, law-abiding U.S. citizens. With repercussions shaking Washington, the brouhaha has reportedly prompted the FBI to search for communist Romanian secret police agents illegally operating in Florida. The target patriot, a U.S. citizen born in Transylvania in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe, is 71-year-old Albert Wass de Czege. Dr. Wass, a retired University of Florida professor, lives here quietly with his American­­born wife in an old farm house on what was once the estate of John Jacob Astor’s grandson and is now Ocala National Forest. He has four children, 19 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, all U.S. citizens. One son served with the U.S. Marines. Another, a West Point graduate, is a lieutenant Army who has been j" colonel in the U.S cleared for classified jobs by investigations which certainly covered his parentage. Both Dr. and Mrs. Wass have been active in church and civic affairs and the Boy Scouts. In pre-war Hungary, Dr. Wass was an award-winning, best-selling novelist, poet, playwright and freedom philo­sopher whose work was translated into several languages besides Hungarian. From 1936 he was chief lay executive of the 400-year-old Hungarian Calvinist Church (established in 1526 when, through efforts of his ancestors, the Transylvanian Parliament passed the first-ever formal law protecting freedom of religion). CHAMPION OF LIBERTY Dr. Wass himself has been a champion of individual liberty since the age of 10 when, in 1919, he faced bullets during a street demonstration for Woodrow Wilson’s promised “self­­determination,” in which several of his relatives were wounded, arrested and beaten. Aide de camp to Gen. Lajos Veress, leader of the Hungarian anti-Nazi underground which later turned its efforts against the communist tyranny, Wass was arrested with his commanding officer by both the Nazis and the communists. Fleeing Hungary ahead of the advancing Soviet artillery, he surrendered to American forces in Germany. There he worked for awhile a; a surveyor for the American military government and later as a script writer foi Radio Free Europe. Security clearances were usual in both cases. In 1951, with intercession of “Mr. Republican,” the late Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Dr. Wass came to the U.S. as a displaced person. Later, an aquaintance told his wife that the U.S. Army CIC officer who investigated Dr. Wass called him the “best qualified” to be a U.S. citizen of all “DPs” he had probed. Granted U.S. citizenship by the federal district court of Orlando in 1957, he later that year joined the faculty of the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he taught until his retirement in 1970. While there, he was faculty adviser to the Young Americans for Freedom and lectured throughout the U.S. against nazism and communism. Since retirement he established the American Hungarian Literary Guild, the Danubian Research and Information Center, and the Dunubian Press, a small publishing company. He was the first president of the Transylvania World Federation, a vice president of the American- Hungarian Federation and director of the Polish-Hungarian World Federation and has held office and membership in several other civic and patriotic organizations. He has been particularly active on behalf of human rights for the oppressed peoples of Eastern Europe. Yet this distinguished, brilliant U.S. citizen is on a list of 200 alleged “war criminals” who are the quarry of a new Justice Department “task force” whose large staff and globe-trotting expense accounts are being paid by your tax dollars. ■SEARCH' FOR ‘FUGITIVE* In late August, Dr. Wass was the subject of a front-page, three-part series of the Chicago-“Tribune”-owned Fort Lauderdale "News” based on unnamed "sources.” Friends are urging Dr. Wass to sue the newspaper for libel. The first article, August 29, screaming across four columns on the front page and filling a full page inside, called the internationally known and admired Dr. Wass a “fugitive.” The articles quoted at length from what the newspaper alleged were “records” of what it called a “Romanian war crimes tribunal.” These “trial documents,” according to the “News,” were given to the U.S. Immigration Service during the 1950s by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith. The "News,” which said it acquired copies this year, quoted Arthur Titlebaum, ADL executive director in Miami, as follows: “Albert Wass is one of many persons alleged to have committed war crimes in Nazi Europe whom the ADL have been searching for and ultimately investigating over these past years.” “Why ‘searching’?” smiled Dr. Wass in an interview with The SPOTLIGHT. “I’ve always been in the limelight.” Quoting the “court documents,” the newspaper admitted that Dr. Wass had been tried in absentia but failed to point out that such kangaroo courts have been a favorite communist trick since even before the great Stalinist purges and proliferated with vicious vengefulness as the Reds consolidated control of Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the war. The newspaper also failed to mention that such trials are not recognized in the U.S. under our ancient tradition of recogniz­ing the right of the defendant to face his accusers (Constitution, Sixth Amendment). KANGAROO TRIAL The so-called “court” found Dr. Wass “guilty of inciting Hungarian soldiers to murder four Romanian civilians in the village of Sucutard on September 23, 1940, and of arranging the murders of at least two others, including a priest.” No dates were given for the latter crime. This “court” sentenced Dr. Wass to death in 1946, the articles said. According to the newspaper’s quotations from these “trial documents,” this_ “conviction” was based on far-fetched hearsay testimony that would never have been permitted in any U.S. court. Voluminous documentation exists that communists obtain such “testimony" by torture. Yet, although normally all newspaper stories pass under correcting pencils of several editors and copy readers, the communist- American contrast was not pointed out, even if the reporter was so ignorant of U.S. criminal procedure. Much more disturbing, the reporter’s “sources,” presumably in the U.S. Justice Department, appear, judging from the articles, to be equally unfamiliar with American law and long traditions of justice. Only one such “source” is named: Eugene Theroff, described as an attorney with the department’s Office of Special Investigations. The “News” quoted Titlebaum as saying that prior to creation of the new “task force,” the ADL had been frustrated for three years “trying to get INS (the Immigration and Naturalization Service) to move” on the Wass case. The newspaper stated, “Wass admits that he was convicted.” But Dr. Wass told The SPOTLIGHT, “I was never notified. I heard by grapevine among displaced persons in Germany after the war that such a trial had taken place. But it was like a joke, this rumor. Everybody was being tried and sentenced to death by such courts.” ‘NO FORWARDING ADDRESS’ In ludicrous contradiction, the newspaper then admits that the Romanian embassy in Washington itself admitted that it did not advise Wass of his “conviction” and “sentence.” Mrs. Wass said the “News” reporter quoted a Romanian spokesman as saying Wass had not been notified of his trial because “he did not leave a forwarding address.” This statement is even more ludicrous. The plundering, pillaging, raping, looting Red army and its 5th-column communists left little standing on which an address could be posted. Even streets were obliterated. The articles also refer to some letter allegedly in Dr. Wass’s file which, the paper claimed, mentioned some “list” of people supposedly connected to “fascist” organizations. The newspaper acknowledged, however, that Wass was not named in the “letter” and the “list” is not in the file. The ‘ ‘News” also admits that the alleged writer of the alleged letter, named as Paul Lockwood, a retired Immigration Service employee, told the “News” he “could not recall the letter or the list.” The “News” said that “in a statement given to famed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal concerning Albert Vass (sic) in June, 1978, an unnamed Romanian said the murders of which Wass was accused are not things which I have witnessed myself, but they are common knowledge among the Jews in Romania, having been brought up at the trial conducted against Wass in absentia after the war... he was a nationalist but not a fascist.” YOU PAY ‘INFORMANTS’ Other charges brought against Dr. Wass, according to the “News,” came from “Robert Major, a Hungarian journalist living in Austria who has been described as a ‘Hungarian Simon Wiesenthal’.” It is impossible not to wonder how much of the U.S. taxpayers’ money may be going to such “informants,” who, even by the admission of the “News,” produce no eyewitnesses and, judging from the material in the “News,” nothing any U.S. court would consider “evidence.” This question of the “large expenditure” of the taxpayers’ money was raised during the 1978 witchhunt trial at Ft. Lauderdale of 71-year-old Feodor Fedorenko, a law abiding, hord-,,working U.S. citizen for nearly 30 years whose only law violation was one overtime parking ticket. Presiding Judge Norman C. Roettger Jr., who has tried Mafia dons and narcotics potentates, said that he had never before had a case where the government marshaled a battery of four attorneys and daily ordered transcripts of the testimony. U.S. taxpayers footed that enormous bill and also picked up the tab for a holiday in the U.S. for 11 Israeli “witnesses” and their spouses. Plane fare cost $1,200 per person; hotel room $50 per day plus food, etc. All this was in addition to American and Canadian witnesses, the oversize herd of attorneys and a huge flock of translators, secretaries and other retinue. Plus, of course, court costs for a very lengthy trial, and the U.S. marshals and police maintaining order among the throng bused up daily from Miami by Zionist organizations to put on demonstrations. Figures were not made available for the cost of hunting down the gentle-faced factory worker on Social Security. If this is to be repeated 200 times or more, U.S. taxpayers better forget about any tax cuts or curbs on inflation. REFUGEES VULNERABLE This cost to taxpayers for the attack on Dr. Wass also intensified indignation and resentment among Dr. Wass’s friends and neighbors as well as the Captive Nations community nationwide. The Hungarian-American contingent alone has been known to muster a bloc vote of more than a million in political elections, warned the Rev. John Paul Nagy of Miami, South Florida chairman of the American-Hungarian Federation and the Captive Nations Committee, who has members of both organizations protesting to Congressmen. Both organizations have forwarded resolutions calling for a complete halt to “all this head-hunting by the Justice Department against our distinguished, patriotic, hard-working, tax-paying American citizens,” the minister told The SPOTLIGHT. Dr. Nagy said he would like to see that tax-paid “head-hunting” money go toward liberation of the op­pressed peoples in the Captive Nations. “I feel it is time to speak out,” said a letter to the editor of the Gainesville (Florida) “Sun,” which, like several other Florida papers, carried a much­­condensed wire service version of the Fort Lauderdale series. “Partly for conscience’s sane and partly because i know that all refugees from communism are vulnerable to such attacks. It is the easiest way to shut us up. “There is no question of a fear of deportation . . . but our families behind the Iron Curtain may suffer. We may never be allowed to visit them again, and here in the United States, our home, we could become like lepers.” PROTEST EFFECTIVE The protest may be having some effect. Dr. Nagy told The SPOTLIGHT that the FBI contacted him recently in an attempt to locate a Romanian “diplomat.” Dr. Nagy believes FBI suspects the “diplomat” is operating for the Romanian secret police. Clearly, the communists want to “shut up” Dr. Wass. For years, in his writing and his lectures, he has charged the Romanian government with openly pursuing “the complete annihilation of the Hungarian minority (about 3 million) with the most sophisticated methods of modern-day genocide.” He has been warned of kidnapping and assassination. He said that he had been informed that communist Romania had offered the Zionists a deal to permit emigration of 15,000 Jews if Di. Wass is silenced. “I am not afraid. I have been through too much horror to know fear any more. I have always fought for truth and liberty. Perhaps I have 10 more years of life left. I will fight all the way.” In one of Dr. Wass’s most moving novels on war and its aftermath, comparable in power with Tolstoy or Pasternak, and more powerful than Stephen Crane, a character, at least iomewhat autobiographical, says: "Mighty lords, please listen to the tory of my life, since you were the ones vho wrote the part / had to play, for your }wn amusement. Not just one or another imongyou, no. All of you, together, are responsible for this evil and hideous play you have created and staged on theface of the earth. You are responsible together for everything that has happened. All of you, those who have ruled, directed or influenced the fate of men on both sides of the barbed-wire fences, both sides of the frontiers, oceans and continents . . . "President, generals, prime ministers, mighty and honorable lords, whether you consider it so or not, lam not a toy. 1 am a man’." _______ _____ * BREZSNYEV kelet-berlini aján­latának egyetlen és kizárólagos célja a NATO államok konferenciájának megtorpedózása, nehogy az SS-20 rakéták fenyegető túlsúlyát az ame­rikai Preshing-rakétáknak európai elhelyezésével ellensúlyozzák! Az ígért szovjet-csapatkivonásokat sem kell komolyan venni: kiöregedett páncélosokról van szó és nem komplett hadműveleti egységekről, hanem csapattöredékekről. — Leg­találóbb a volt nyugat-német hon­védelmi miniszter, Leber nyilatko­zata a páncélosokkal kapcsolato­san: “Szép és jó: 4 óra alatt ájra Itt lesznek!” A félhivatalos álláspont: Schmidt kancellár: “Minden esetre van ben­ne valami", de mindjárt hozzáfűzte: "természetesen nem elég", ha a Szovjet kijelentette, hogy nem növeli Nyugat-Európával szemben közép­távolsági rakétái számát, de ugyan­akkor új rakétákra cseréli át, ame­lyek egy helyett három atomfejet hordoznak. Bahr, a szociáldemok­raták “koponyája” egy lépéssel to­vább megy: a NATO hozzon pozitív döntést, de — a végrehajtás kap­csán a Szovjettől engedményeket kell kicsikarni. ELŐZETES TÁJÉKOZTATÓ Az országvesztés és a szovjet megszállás 35. gyászosemlékű évfordulója alkalmából a HUNGÁRIA SZABADSÁGHARCOS MOZGALOM 1980. április 13-án, rendezi meg a Nyugat-oldali Magyar Református Egyház nagytermében (15300 Puritas Avenue) TILTAKOZÓ NAGYGYŰLÉSÉT * * * A Tiltakozó Nagygyűlés előtt a Hungária Szabadságharcos Mozgalom hivatalos lapjának 19. évfolyamát köszöntve, A SZITTYAKÜRT BARÁTI KÖRE 12:30-kor tartja meg BARÁTI EBÉDJÉT Mindkét rendezvényünkre nemzettestvéri szeretettel várjuk Cleveland magyarságát. a HSzM Központi Vezetősége ftW FREEDOMFLflG cn — ^NDORZÁSZLÓ ßVf TISZTELETTEL JELENTJÜK, hogy a Hungária Szabadságharcos Mozgalom gondozásában működő MAGYAR VÁNDORZÁSZLÓ BIZOTTSÁG 1980. február hó 16-án tartja meg Clevelandban ZÁRTKÖRŰ ÉRTEKEZÉSÉT P. Jobb Andor, a M. V.-zászló Biz. elnöke «ITtVAKÖRT Megjelenik havonta Publ. Monthly — Publ. mensuelle Felelős szerkesztő — Editor: MAJOR TIBOR Kiadó — Publisher: HUNGÁRIA SZABADSÁGHARCOS MOZGALOM Levelezési cím — Corresp. Offices: HUNGÁRIA SZABADSÁGHARCOS MOZGALOM P. O. Box 35245, Puritas Station Cleveland, Ohio44135, U.S.A. ELŐFIZETÉS: Egy évre $10.00 — egyes szám ára 85 cent — Légiposta előfizetés: USA, Kanada és Mexico egységesen 14.00 dollár. Európa, Dél-Amerika és a Földközi-tengerrel határos ázsiai és afri­kai országokban 18.00 dollár. Ázsia, Ausztrália és New Zealand 20 dollár és 50 cent. A csekket kérjük “Szittyakürt” névre kiállítani. Printed by Classic Printing Corporation 9527 Madison Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44102.

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