Valerian Trifa

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Valerian Trifa (civil Viorel Donise Trifa ; born June 28, 1914 in Campeni ; † January 27, 1987 in Cascais ) was a Romanian Orthodox priest and fascist politician.

Life

The son of a shepherd was born the first of seven children. From 1931 to 1935 he studied theology at the University of Chișinău . From 1936 he studied philosophy at the University of Bucharest and from 1939 to 1940 history in Berlin.

Second World War

Trifa was a member of the fascist and anti-Semitic Iron Guard . In 1940 he was elected President of the National Union of Romanian Christian Students (NUCRS). In a radio address on January 20, 1941, he agitated against Jews in Bucharest. The next day, thousands of Jews were persecuted in Bucharest and several hundred killed. In 1941, the Guard unsuccessfully launched a coup against the Romanian leader Ion Antonescu . The leaders of the guard, including Trifa, fled to the German Reich. Trifa was taken to an SS convalescent home in Berkenbrück in 1941 . As a guest of the Nazi government, he lived in relatively good circumstances. In 1942 he was sentenced in absentia to life hard labor by the Romanian military tribunal.

In 1944 Trifa was secretary to the Orthodox Bishop Visarion Puiu in Vienna.

Post-war career

After the collapse of the Third Reich, Trifa went to Italy. In 1945 he became professor of ancient history at a Catholic college in Rome. In 1950 he immigrated to Michigan in the United States. He claimed to the immigration authorities that he was a Nazi victim and a Gestapo prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp . Two years later he became bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church in America . Trifa was ordained a priest in the United States. He changed his name to Valerian. His eloquence earned him a high reputation in the Romanian Orthodox Church. He made the rise from simple parish priest to bishop and eventually archbishop of the Diocese of Detroit. His Grass Lake ward grew to 35,000 members. In 1955, at the suggestion of then Vice President Richard Nixon , Bishop Trifa was allowed to say the opening prayer before the US Senate . Trifa was accepted as a member of the board of the National Council of Churches in the USA. Two years later he was granted American citizenship. In 1970 he became Archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Detroit.

Revelations

Romanian immigrants accused Trifa of being involved in the murder of Jews during World War II . He is said to have been a follower of Adolf Hitler and a leader of the Iron Guard in Romania. They also claimed that Trifa was the editor of the Iron Guard newspaper, the Libertatea . The newspaper also called for violence against Jews. Trifa denied having been a member of the Iron Guard and saw himself as a victim of mistake. The New York dentist and Romanian refugee Charles Kremer spent twenty years investigating this case. Kremer traveled to Romania and Israel to collect evidence against Trifa. He had lost his relatives to the Iron Guard. As early as 1953, the CIA had a document that the clergyman was one of the leaders of the Iron Guard uprising in January 1941. Trifa's good relations with FBI chief Edgar Hoover helped . Hoover considered Trifa an important figure in the Cold War . Men like Trifa prevented immigrants from sympathizing with communist governments in their home countries.

It was not until the mid-1970s that the Ministry of Justice started the investigation and asked the West German government for assistance. During German research, twenty postcards of a Viorel Trifa were found. By analyzing handwriting, it was possible to identify the signatures between the author of the German postcards and the bishop. A fingerprint was discovered on a postcard. However, prosecutors doubted that the evidence against Trifa would be enough. Besides the manuscripts, they only had eyewitness accounts that were decades old. A suspected fingerprint on the postcard could not initially be secured because the German government feared damage to the postcard. In the 1970s, fingerprints were still made visible with a powder. It was only several years later that new forensic medical techniques made it possible to make a fingerprint on documents visible without damaging the postcard. With the help of laser technology, it was possible to secure the fingerprint on a forty-year-old postcard. The fingerprint on a postcard written by Trifa in 1942 during a spa stay in Bad Mergentheim was identical to the fingerprint on the American entry document. The forty-year-old fingerprint was the oldest latent print ever discovered by a judicial authority. Trifa then gave up American citizenship. After two days, the trial against him was broken off because Trifa agreed to an order for his deportation.

Last years in asylum

Switzerland, Italy and Germany refused to accept him. Trifa applied for asylum for two years. In 1984 he was finally able to enter Portugal. There he lived in Estoril . Trifa died of a heart attack three years later in Portuguese exile. His body was transferred to the United States. Trifa found his grave in Michigan at the headquarters of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

reception

The "Valerian Trifa" case is of particular importance for the development of forensic science. The case was dealt with in the Medical Detectives ( Document of Death ) series .

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ https://archive.org/details/TRIFAVIORELDONISE-0044
  2. ↑ See the list of Romanian refugees housed in Berkenbrück in Gerhard Köpernik: Faschisten im KZ. Romania's Iron Guard and the Third Reich. Berlin 2014, p. 146.
personal data
SURNAME Trifa, Valerian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Trifa, Viorel (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian Orthodox priest and fascist politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Campeni
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1987
Place of death Cascais