Valerian Trifa; Archbishop Ejected by U.S. for Nazism

Archbishop Valerian Trifa, head of the Michigan-based Romanian Orthodox Church before he was deported from the United States in 1984 for concealing his wartime links to the Nazis, died Wednesday after a heart attack, authorities said. He was 72.

Trifa was head of the 35,000-member Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of North America when he was stripped of his U.S. citizenship and deported for lying about his role as a leader of the Nazi Iron Guard in Romania.

The U.S. government said Trifa fomented anti-Jewish riots by the Iron Guard in Bucharest on Jan. 19, 1941, that claimed hundreds of lives.

“Storming through the Jewish quarter in an orgy of killing and destruction, armed Guardist groups killed or beat up every person who appeared to be Jewish,” according to a 1941 report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The pogrom . . . cost the lives of at least 1,000 Jews in Bucharest.”

Born in Campeni, Romania, Trifa led the Iron Guard in 1936-41, as chief of the National Union of Romanian Christian Students.

In the later stages of World War II, he was given sanctuary in Germany. He entered the United States in 1950 and became a citizen in 1957.

After disclosure of his wartime activities in 1975, the Justice Department began denaturalization proceedings against Trifa. He was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1982 and ordered to leave the country. After two years of unsuccessful efforts to find a country that would take him, Trifa arrived in Lisbon in August, 1984.

He asked for permanent resident status, but his case was never resolved.

Trifa shunned the press here. On Jan. 24, he was quoted as telling a reporter for the Lisbon Weekly who had recognized him in the eastern town of Evor: “The newspapers don’t like me, and I have the right to dislike all of you.”

Trifa’s U.S. attorney, John J. Sibisan of Cleveland, said Trifa had been living in Estoril, just east of Cascais.

Joaquim Fialho Dores, of the Magno Funeral Agency in this resort town 19 miles west of Lisbon, said funeral arrangements were pending. “We’re waiting for someone who’s coming from America on Friday to tell us what to do,” he said.