23 October 2017

Ghosts of WWII: The Murderers Among Us and 1989's Music Box

The title comes from Simon Wiesenthal's famous work. It's the story of ex-Nazis and fascists with dark pasts blending back into the world and it's one that draws me back time and again.


Why do I find the subject to be so captivating? Maybe it is in part due to my upbringing. My father was a mysterious man and when I read about Michael Corleone in Puzo's The Godfather, I think of him. He wasn't a mafia Don, but he reflected some of the attitudes and values represented by the characters in the book. The notions of power, loyalty, secrecy and worldly wisdom and a kind of pragmatic morality were reflected by him at times.
Likewise the tales of ex-Nazis, men running from their pasts, men with dark secrets they must keep even from their own families always has steered my mind back to him. The idea that men walking around, smiling and shaking hands, men of respect could actually be harbouring great evil and dark mysteries is fascinating... and not just to me.
Perhaps these tales are especially evocative when we reckon not only with the ghosts of the past, but the idea that people aren't who they present themselves to be, they aren't who we think they are. They are keepers of secrets and they hold on to them in desperation. Their exposure will mean their undoing and the exposing of one trail of carnage will most certainly create another... as another series of relationships and families are destroyed.
For me it was watching The Odessa File when I was a kid. That movie and its storyline had me hooked. I had already been captivated by tales of Nazi treasures hidden in Alpine lakes.  
Later as a teenager I read Wiesenthal's The Murderers Among Us and then re-read it while I was in Italy during the 1990s. I read some of his other works and have continued to probe the topic. It was only in the early 2000's that I began to understand the magnitude of what happened with the Nazis after the war. Everyone knew about Werner von Braun (of Nazi V-2 fame) and his recruitment by the US space programme. There were always the stories of the ratlines and the Vatican. But the extent of Operation Paperclip, the machinations of the CIA, the Gehlen Organisation and the structure of West Germany were something new to me.
I grew up in a Right-wing home governed in part by the conservatism of Barry Goldwater and even Joseph McCarthy, men my father looked up to. In that sort of environment such questions aren't probed. They're unpatriotic and subversive.
The truth usually is.
1989's Music Box, a movie that today has been all but forgotten is yet another example of Hollywood using a fictitious composite to communicate a larger story. It's fictitious but rooted in real-life examples.
The protagonist, played by Jessica Lange is a Chicago lawyer defending her father from deportation back to Communist Hungary. He's charged with being a member of the Hungarian Arrow Cross during the war, the fascist party that was allied with Nazi Germany. If true, he's a war criminal and would be expelled from the US for lying on his asylum application. He's also accused of leading a death squad and other specific war crimes related to Hungary's Arrow Cross regime near the end of the war, a brief but violent episode ended by the Red Army's taking of Budapest in early 1945.
Her father played by Armin Mueller-Stahl argues the charges against him are a communist plot. He's been targeted because he has participated in an anti-communist demonstration among the Hungarian expatriate community in the United States.
The storyline is plausible and in fact is rooted in some truth. But in reality the truth goes even deeper. Not only were there Arrow Cross members in the United States, their anti-communist activities were being sponsored by elements within the US government. I did not know this when I watched Music Box in the early 1990s. It was something I would come to learn later.
As I've written before, one could say it was to be expected that I was wrestling with these questions in the 1990s. It was an era I have described elsewhere as a brief window.
The cracks began to appear in the 1980s. The scandals of the 1970s had bred a new era of journalism and stories were finally being told. It's amazing how many unresolved issues from World War II were still very much on the table during the 1980s. With the end of the Cold War there was a flood of information and stories. The newspapers and later the infant Internet were flooded with deep secrets that were being uncovered, indeed many ghosts from the past were at last meeting the light of day.
It was a new era and many historical chapters were being closed, even while many grieved and wronged people sought restitution, justice and public acknowledgement. The 1990s were in this sense an era of both uncertainty and possibility. Many foolishly believed that the American victory would hale a new epoch of transparency and justice.
Instead, many old alliances were broken, many who lived under protection found themselves isolated and alone. The people with the secrets that were still alive went off into shadowy corners to die or lived in fear of being exposed. Their patrons and protectors were long gone and I don't doubt that many of them felt a sense of betrayal.
Others were able to reinvent themselves and became important figures in the march to capture the Eastern Bloc for NATO.
But largely the 1990s was a period in which the Old Order, the remnants of power from the deep dark days of the Cold War were trying to cut ties, erase history and turn the page.
A new generation had arrived. There were crusading bureaucrats who sought to remedy wrongs and in their way close out old unfinished chapters. Seeking to write a new narrative, they wanted to purge some of the ghosts from the past. It was an era in which old archives were opened, sins were aired and apologies given. The window was brief and would quickly snap shut in the fall of 2001.
There were many movies, books and television shows in the late 1980s and into the 1990s which dealt with ex-Nazis, World War era betrayals and conspiracies regarding shadowy groups waiting in the wings that would rise from the dust of the Cold War. Secrets were being uncovered and long forgotten tales were being told.
This feeling comes alive in the aforementioned Music Box and the ethos weighed heavily on me when I was in Europe during the mid-1990s. Everywhere I went, even while pondering ancient and medieval history, one is also confronted with the ghosts of World War II. In Budapest, one minute I'm looking at Roman Aquincum, then just moments later I'm gazing upon what was the Jewish Ghetto during the war. I'm not a movie tourist but standing there on the Danube, Music Box once more came to my mind and following in the footsteps of Jessica Lange, I stood on the landings... the spot where Jews were shot and thrown into the river by members of Arrow Cross.
I remember standing on that spot, realising I was in Budapest and almost shaking. I couldn't believe I was actually there. I must confess this was in part due to my previous misunderstanding regarding the nature of the Eastern Bloc.  It was possible to visit but often difficult. But now in the 1990s it was as easy as taking a train. The only hint of the past-in-the present was the traversal of Croatia, then emerging from the Bosnian War. Riding the train through former Yugoslavia and into Hungary evoked memories of the recently ended Cold War and in some ways it felt like it hadn't quite ended yet.
In Music Box, the fascist in hiding is a composite and yet one rooted in reality.
First, we are reminded of John Demjanjuk, the Ukrainian born auto worker who suddenly found himself in the news in the 1980s as he was deported from Ohio to Israel under the charge that he was a brutal concentration camp guard.
To this day there are disagreements regarding who Demjanjuk really was. Was he 'Ivan the Terrible' or some guard of lesser importance? The story fascinates and like Music Box there are episodes of courtroom drama and suspected forgeries of identification cards.
The Demjanjuk story also evokes another chapter of Eastern Front history, one not well known in the West. I refer to the many fascist parties in Europe that were happy to collaborate with the Third Reich. While many know about Quisling and Vichy and maybe some know about the units of Waffen-SS, not as many know about the vital role played by fascists from countries like Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and regions like Ukraine. These parties and their fighters joined in the Holocaust project and in the invasion of Russia. Their motives were often self-serving and motivated by their own nationalist concerns. And yet they were all but equal partners in Nazi crimes and participated in brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing, mass murder and anti-Semitism. In some cases they built their own concentration camps and even showed great initiative in exterminating Jews.
This history while largely forgotten in the West resurfaced in the 1990s as the parties were revivified and even today their descendants (through many name changes and sleight of hand techniques) survive and even flourish.  
Casting a wider net we could discuss the US relationship and alliance with fascists in Latin America and places like Turkey. In some cases actual fugitive Nazis played a part. One thinks of Klaus Barbie for instance. A former OSS agent in Music Box mentions the US relationship with him. But the casual viewer would be unaware of just how deep it went.
In Europe the Americans at first used Nazis and fascists in establishing intelligence networks after the war. There's also the long and tangled but fascinating tale of Stay-Behind networks, sometimes referred to by their Italian moniker: Gladio.
In the East, it was the underground fascist networks that were opposed to the Communists. Through the Gehlen Organisation and other means the US made contact with these people and relied on them for intelligence and paramilitary activities. They often utilised expatriate fascists, men who had fled to the West and found a new life working in the capacity of go-betweens, liaisons between Western intelligence and the Fascist Underground.
While the US intelligence services have never established close ties with Neo-Nazi groups they worked with actual Nazis and fascists for decades... and still do.
And why some might ask would these sundry ex-fascists of the World War II era desire to work with the United States? Upon examination one will find their motives both varied and sometimes mysterious. People's attitudes change, others turn to pragmatism and wish only to survive. The wealth of the United States was and is appealing to many and I'm sure in more than a few cases they did not want to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Others clearly despised the United States but hated the Soviet Union even more and thus were willing to use any means necessary to keep up the fight. For those motivated by racial concerns, America was a mongrel nation unworthy to rule. It was a nation of avarice and individualism and thus could never be 'great'. It could never be the focus of a vision, ideal or a means to propagate a righteous mastery of the earth.
Not all fascists were as focused on race and some understood there were (and are) strong fascist tendencies among the ruling elite of the Anglo-American Establishment. Indeed, few today remember how much support there was among Western elites for fascism in its early stages. That is a story in itself. Some ex-European fascists were content with the new order of things, others held on hoping at some point for the two great enemies... the Capitalists and Communists to destroy themselves and from the ashes a new fascist state would arise, one that would not fall into the same errors of Hitler.
The re-boot version of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears employs this scenario. It's a Hollywood thriller film and thus is not above critique and yet the premise, while a bit far-fetched and exaggerated in the movie, does contain a seed of truth and a degree of plausibility.
For the United States, the utilisation of ex-Nazis can be viewed twofold. One, it was purely pragmatic. They like the Americans were anti-communist and they had the networks in place and the will to fight. Thus evil though they were, they were allies in the new struggle. Second, as mentioned before there were many in the American and European Establishment that harboured some sympathies with the various fascist movements. Sometimes this was motivated by ideology with regard to democracy or race. Other times there was a unity found in Ultramontane Roman Catholicism, the Black Nobility, the Knights of Malta and the like... organisations strongly devoted to the traditions and ideas that found common cause with some forms of fascism. For some of this category the crimes of the Nazis were not all that heinous and they were willing to forgive and forget in the name of a larger fight. They found allies and in some cases even friends. It's no secret that some in US intelligence became quite 'chummy' with ex-Nazis and clearly some ex-fascists rose into the favoured ranks of the Deep State both in the US and Latin American systems.
This brings us to Laszlo Pasztor. Like Jessica Lange's father Michael Laszlo in Music Box, the real life Laszlo Pasztor was also a member of Arrow Cross, once again... the Nazi-like fascist group that brutally ruled Hungary for several months at the end of the war.
Pasztor actually served time in prison for his participation in war crimes. And he was not imprisoned by the Communists but by the pluralist parliamentary Second Republic that took over in 1946. That government was dissolved in 1949 due to the Communist takeover.
Pasztor would later flee to the United States, lie regarding his immigration status and would become entrenched in American Right-wing politics. He became a key player in the Republican plan to establish a coalition of Eastern European contacts. Originally functioning under the aegis of several Anti-Communist 'ethnic' projects overseen by Vice-President Nixon, his career extended decades. Eventually he ended up working with men like Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich. Pasztor assembled a cadre of ex-fascists from Romania, Ukraine and other areas of Europe. He was even tied to members of the fascist-Masonic group P2 which was exposed in the 1980s and connected to the Vatican Banking scandal.
In other words Pasztor became an operative of the US Deep State. He rose in fame and became close to figures like Reagan and Bush I. Rumours of his past haunted him and by the late 1980s prevented him from formally breaking out into the open, into mainstream US politics. He was still of value but the public faces of the Right-wing didn't want to associate too closely with him. Such an exposure would prove too embarrassing and had the potential to unleash political scandal.
But Pasztor was far from done. Continuing to work with Weyrich and others he played an important role in the 1990s. US operatives (both formal and informal) swept into Eastern Europe and worked to quickly shift their governments to the West. Through the Free Congress Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy, Weyrich, Pasztor and others sought to manipulate the new 'democracies' of Eastern Europe and establish political and economic footholds in these countries.
This undoubtedly contributed to the formation of a new Liberal Establishment in these societies and helped accelerate their moves toward the then nascent EU and NATO. These activities tie in with a larger and largely unknown story regarding US posturing toward Russia, the former USSR and the former Warsaw Pact countries in the 1990s. Public ignorance of this chapter of history has led to today's confusion and misunderstanding and indeed the malleability of public opinion with regard to the rise of Putin and Moscow's posture vis-à-vis the West.
The Michael Laszlo character in the movie was hardly the operative that we find in the real-life Laszlo Pasztor and yet the movie hints at his involvement in disrupting Communist outreach in the West. In the movie he breaks up a heritage event sponsored by Communist Hungary taking place in the United States. Such events would have been viewed as attempts at rapprochement between the Communist state and the American expatriate communities. The Communists could be earning good will, establishing contacts and perhaps eventually recruiting assets. Through such heritage organisations, visas could be granted for people to return to the old country, visit family, cemeteries and the like. They could then be coerced and recruited.
In the film, Michael Laszlo breaks up the folk dancers and his defense argues that this is why he's been targeted by the communist regime in Budapest. They have forged an Arrow Cross identification card in order to discredit him. They want to paint Laszlo as a member of Arrow Cross and get him extradited to Hungary where he would certainly either rot in prison or be executed. Thus it is implied that the crusading members of the US Justice Department are being duped and manipulated by the communists.
The real life Pasztor was much more involved and indeed he would have had his enemies behind the Iron Curtain. But his standing was so high and apparently his friends were powerful enough, that he was all but untouchable.
While it's hardly surprising that his obituaries ignore his past and the charges made against him it is nevertheless interesting , perhaps telling that his death passed unnoticed by any investigative journalists. Only those on the fringe seemed to care about him, or dare tell his real story.
I was rather surprised by the fact that his funeral was conducted at one of the most prominent Reformed Baptist congregations in the United States. Though he resided (I believe) in the Washington DC area his son apparently is located in Carlisle Pennsylvania, just outside Harrisburg and attends the congregation formerly pastored by Walt Chantry.
Why was his funeral conducted at a Reformed Baptist church? I'm not entirely sure. It would seem it is merely because it was the congregation where his son attends. Many Hungarians are Calvinistic though the historical Church is in a pretty weakened state. I am not sure if Pasztor's background was Hungarian Reformed or Roman Catholic. Arrow Cross like the Croatian Ustaše was closely allied with the Roman Catholic Church. The Romanian and Ukrainian fascists found support among the Orthodox community.
This hardly lets the Protestants off the hook. They too were quite supportive of fascism, especially in Germany. Their Sacralist impulses were greatly offended by the decadence of Weimar and the threat of Communism drove many of them to support Hitler and the fascist project. Many would later repent of this and realise they had made a mistake, but by then it was too late. 
Regardless of this question what I found astonishing was that an accused war criminal was given a funeral in a conservative Calvinistic Baptist Church. I inquired but was led to believe that the funeral was at the behest of his son and that the congregation (including the person to whom I spoke) knew very little about Pasztor's record during the war. If they knew anything it was that he was a dissident connected with the Republican Party that helped America battle the communists.
My question and it was one that I was unable to find an answer to was...Did he confess to being a member of Arrow Cross? Did he repent? Or did he whitewash his past and focus only on his 'good' deeds in fighting the communists?
But even his legacy of fighting the communists withers upon further examination. It too is a dark chapter and yet even many Christians seem to adopt Consequentialist Ethics when it comes to questions like this. Conduct that would normally be deemed immoral and even heinous in one context is permissible and even encouraged when placed against the backdrop of war or geopolitical struggle.
It continues to amaze me that many of these same conservatives dare to accuse their opponents of relativistic morality and situational ethics even while all too often it is they who have embraced and even applied this very principle. This is but one of the rotten fruits of so-called Worldview teaching.
My point is that some would condone and even bless Pasztor's Cold War deeds and machinations even though he basically consorted with criminals and murderers that were willing to help the United States. Of course would they feel the same if they knew more about his post-Cold War legacy? Weyrich and Pasztor schemed and helped to plant seeds of corruption in Eastern Europe in the days following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Once again, the ends justify the means. When your side is right, all is permissible as long as victory is achieved.
This was pretty much the ethic of the fascists. In need of haste and in seeking to bring about a sweeping cultural transformation they merely amplified the application of such doctrines. Thus in their case mass murder was permitted. It still goes on, just under a different guise.
While in some ways Laszlo Pasztor is the closest real-life figure to Music Box's Michael Laszlo, the real-life person is far more complex and not the retiring figure we find in the movie. The movie character is more like the real life Demjanjuk.
These men are by no means the only examples of this. We could also reference Valerian Trifa, a Romanian fascist who immigrated to the United States and lived in Ohio and Michigan and eventually became the Archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church in America.
Once again the case involves communist authorities providing evidence to the American government and there are questions of identification, forensic data and paperwork involving his past. Trifa eventually left (or one might say fled) the United States in 1982 and settled in Portugal.
The story of Romanian fascism is complicated. The Iron Guard of which Trifa was a part was the more extreme expression. They were eventually defeated by the forces of Ion Antonescu who then ruled Romania, allied with Hitler and participated in Barbarossa, the June 1941 invasion of Russia. In the wake of tremendous losses especially at Stalingrad, Antonescu attempted to negotiate with the Allies in 1944. The young prince Michael (of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen) led a coup that forced Antonescu from power. Antonescu was later executed and Michael was forced out by the communists in 1947.
I referenced Michael in December of 2016 and as of this writing in October 2017, he's still alive, the last leader of consequence from the World War II era.
But I digress. Trifa was part of the ousted and very brutal Iron Guard. They were almost too extreme even by Nazi standards! Trifa was considered an instigator of the infamous Bucharest Pogrom, perhaps one of the most barbaric and gruesome episodes in a war already noted for such events.
In the United States he was not in any way as politically active as someone like Pasztor but he did work to limit the influence of the communist affiliated Romanian Orthodox Church, playing a part in forming the Orthodox Church in America, a body separate from its Old World episcopal structures. This was in keeping with American Cold War policy. Yes, the United States quite often waded into global ecclesiastical politics including schemes within, against and with the Vatican. It was all part of the Cold War. Trifa eventually was allowed to open the US Senate in prayer and became a figure within the National Council of Churches.
But people were on to him and apparently he didn't have the friends and connections he needed to keep the authorities off his trail. After fighting the justice department for several years he eventually gave up and went into exile.
Portugal had been under fascist rule until the mid-1970s and had hosted numerous fascist fugitives. Francisco Franco's Spain was another haven and fellow Iron Guard member Horia Sima died there in 1993. These figures were quite safe in Spain, especially under US-ally Franco. They could be safe in the United States as long as they were connected enough to keep the Department of Justice and the FBI from pursuing them. Otherwise they did better on the Iberian Peninsula or in Latin America.
In some cases it could be said that by the 1980's and 90's too much time had passed. The old networks were largely gone. Those chapters were closed and people wanted to turn the page as it were. If they fell into the crosshairs of crusading prosecutors, they were on their own.
This story is vast and this article only scratches the surface.
Music Box is beneficial in that it can whet the appetite and help one catch the spirit of the story... the intrigue, the ghosts from the past and the haunting questions that loom over unresolved and arcane chapters of history.
Apart from some hints at US collaboration with the likes of Klaus Barbie, the movie avoids US involvement in the larger story but the plot is intriguing enough even apart from that aspect.
You can read Trifa's obituary here:
Here's the link to a 2016 post referencing Michael I of Romania:
This is a link to a book on the Coor's family in which Pasztor and his activities with Weyrich are mentioned:
A big part of what the Free Congress Foundation under Weyrich and Pasztor was involved in was the manipulation of politics:
A link concerning Pasztor's activities and his invitation to the George W. Bush White House in 2006:
Here's a link to a Huffington Post article about Sebastian Gorka in which fellow Hungarian Pasztor is mentioned:
A link to the 1971 Jack Anderson Article in the Washington Post:
Once again it must be asked. If Pasztor was just an innocent youth, why was he imprisoned by the Hungarians at the end of the war?
A link to the Wikipedia entry on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED):
It serves as a starting point but it's interesting how some have pointed out that if anything its goal is to subvert and undermine democracy. While our media screams about a largely fictitious Russian plot related to the US 2016 election, the US has a massive web of bureaucracies and institutions structured to corrupt and manipulate democracies and elections all around the world. Why won't the US media report on this? The answer is obvious.
Additionally with regard to the previous Washington Post link from 1971, let's just say that under CIA-affiliated Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post has completed its turn away from genuine speaking truth-to-power investigative journalism.
Finally, here's a link to an article regarding Ukraine's Fascist legacy, one that lives on and even now is playing a role in the politics of the region. While the US has openly eschewed the most radical elements that claim the mantle and legacy of these WWII Nazi collaborators, the reality on the ground tells a different story.