This will set the mood.

“Balkan, Balkan,” they said in France of a pimp slapping a whore or three kids beating up a fourth — anything barbarous or brutal.

— Alan Furst, Kingdom of Shadows (2000)

Eleven of 15 bishops of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church currently in office were spies for the former communist regime’s Committee for State Security — the Darzhavna sigurnost or the DS — according to an inquiry carried out by the government’s Committee on Disclosure of Documents.

If you had not heard this news, I would not be surprised. While this has dominated the news in Bulgaria and in the former Soviet bloc, only the Agence France Press (AFP) among the Western wire services picked up the story. And as far as I have been able to tell via the magic of Google, only two Australian news organizations subsequently published the story — nothing so far in the U.S. or U.K.

Well what of it? Am I writing this post to capture the Bulgarian Orthodox demographic audience for GetReligion?

While the setting is Bulgaria and the characters are Orthodox clergy and secret policemen, the issues are of collaboration with evil and the battle for truth. Change the characters and the same story could be told of Vichy France, the Deutsche Evangelische Kirche and the Confessing Church in Germany, or the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the House Church movement in China.

While the canard that Pius XII was a pro-Nazi stooge continues to excite journalists — a real story of church leaders collaborating with evil is being ignored. In French there is an expression très balkan: meaning hopelessly confused with the connotation of labyrinthine or byzantine machinations. It would be easy to dismiss this story as being a très balkan intrigue more worthy of an Eric Ambler novel than hard news. However this story raises profound questions of morality and journalistic integrity.

Follow me through the Balkan labyrinth and see if we emerge in the same place.

As you might expect the Bulgarian press has been all over this story.  The English-language Sofia Echo has half a dozen stories: the initial report, what the bishops did for the secret police, popular reaction, calls for the bishops to resign, actions to be taken by the church’s synod — as well as the surprising revelation that the 97 year old Patriarch of the church, Maxim, was not a spy.

Before the report was released the country’s largest circulation daily newspaper Dneven Trud called for the bishops to seek forgiveness.

The clergy have had 20 years to prepare the faithful for this moment, to do penance and explain how they served the police as well as God: ‘To save the Church and protect you from persecution we had dealings with the secret police”, or something along those lines. But only Joseph, Metropolitan of the New York Bulgarian Orthodox Church, has shown contrition for his connections to the secret police. All the others claimed to be clean and free of blame. In view of the anticipated revelations the Church must prepare itself for a retaliation from society.

After the report was  released the daily Standart — which is Russian owned and follows a pro-Russian line — called for repentance from the bishops but forgiveness from the people.

The bishops did everything possible to prevent the files in question from coming to light. … But as the Bible says: “Nothing is concealed that won’t be revealed and nothing is hidden that won’t come to light.”  … What the bishops will do now depends on them and is a matter of conscience since the law does not foresee lustration. But now is not the time for excuses but for repentance. For God loves the sinner who repents more than the just. In this respect the disclosure of the secret service files could prove to be salutary for the Church.

The Echo noted that those debating the church’s relation to the Communist regime could not stand in isolation from the current political scene.

… the secular political element has become most obvious with the grouping of a number of left-wing intellectuals who have publicly hit out against what they described as a politically-motivated attack on the church and on ancient Bulgarian traditions (the group accuses some media of connivance in this attack). These intellectuals, in turn, have come under fire among centre-right commentators in the media as well as from other academics and theologians as including several who were State Security collaborators and avowed supporters of the communist atheist system.

A week after the story broke in Sofia, The Australian on 23 January 2012 published the AFP story under the headline “Bulgarian bishops were communist spies.” The following day the Australian newspaper chain News Limited published a story on its website entitled “Communist past catches up with bishops”.

The AFP stories run in Australia give the basic details of the case, but no background or context. They also offer the voices of commentators critical of the church — when as the Echo reported a lively debate is being waged between defenders and critics of the church. It is hard to fault a wire service story for brevity — the AFP has no control over the title or the length of the story its subscribers use — but a casual reader would take away very little from these reports.

And in America we hear? Nothing.

The tone and feel of the story also would do little to challenge Western prejudices that this is a très balkan affair taking place in the back of the beyond. Yet the Bulgarians are attempting to address their past in a way no other former Soviet state has done.

Russia has yet to examine the Stalinist era. The Moscow Patriarchate — the official name for the Russian Orthodox Church — was set up on the orders of Joseph Stalin in 1943 as a front organization for the NKVD and all of its senior positions were vetted by the Ideological Department of the Communist Party, according to reports published in the U.K. following the defection of KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin  in 1991.

In two books written with intelligence historian Christopher Andrew, The KGB in Europe and the West and The KGB in the World, Mitokhin claimed that Russian Orthodox priests were used as agents of influence on behalf of the KGB in organizations such as the World Council of Churches and the World Peace Council.  Patriarch Alexius II was also named as KGB agent with the codename DROZDOV, whose services earned him a citation from the regime.

The Bulgarian stories — writing it is true with the luxury of space in the paper to report and the immediacy of the issues — have also spoken to the issues of repentence. How should society judge those who collaborated with evil or who were agents of evil?

Is this an Orthodox thing? A Bulgarian thing? Or a human response?

Imagine if the New York Times devoted articles on the Roman Catholic pedophile scandal to how or why abusers should be forgiven?

Over the holidays I happened to read a new book about Gertrude Stein (yes we GetReligion writers lead exciting lives).  Written by Barbara Will the book Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma (Columbia University Press, 2011) examined the novelist’s war years.

As one reviewer put it — the question facing biographers was:

How had Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas—foreigners, lesbians, and Jews—somehow managed to survive World War II in a rural enclave in southeastern France?

The answer Will and other researchers found was that the celebrated feminist author was a collaborator, who translated Marshall Petain’s speeches into English and penned a number of articles supporting his regime — even after it was apparent what collaboration with the Nazis meant.

What is the journalist’s task in all of this? Is it too much to expect a discourse of the ethical and moral ghosts that lay behind a story on collaboration with evil — or is it enough to just report the events. Or, is the behavior being disclosed not evil? Reams of newsprint have been devoted to the pedophile scandals — and rightly so — but little to no work has been done on the fellow travelers and useful idiots that provided moral sanction to an evil regime.

I would have hoped that one of the major newspapers or serious magazine would have picked up this story. Perhaps the Balkans are too far away and the Cold War a fading memory — but I believe that the truth and journalism have not been faithfully served so far.

Bishops photo courtesy of office of the Bulgarian president.

First published at GetReligion.

Not sure how to translate English to American? Kevin and George offer their years of experience in interpreting MISC 1011. They also take a gander at the news of AMiA, PEAR, and Moving Forward. And then there is that History thing.

Bishop Peter Adebiyi

First printed in the Church of England Newspaper.

The Bishop of Lagos has called upon the President of Nigeria to convene an all-party, all-ethnic congress to negotiate the future of the West African nation in the wake of a week-long general strike that followed the government’s lifting of price controls on fuel.

On 16 January 2012 President Goodluck Jonathan capitulated to union demands and partially restored the state-subsidy on fuel.  The week of civil strike saw the military deployed in the streets of Lagos and most major cities.

President Jonathan conceded that the “government appreciates that the implementation of the deregulation policy would cause initial hardships” and agreed to subsidize the price of fuel.

Under a deal brokered with union leaders, the price of gasoline in Nigeria will drop from £.60 per litre to £.39, or from $3.50 to $2.27 per gallon.  Before the government lifted price controls fuel prices averaged £.29 per litre or $1.70 gallon.

The International Monetary Fund and the country’s economic advisers had pressed the government to eliminate the fuel subsidy.  While Nigeria is sub-Saharan Africa’s largest oil producer, the country’s four refineries are incapable of meeting consumer demand.

Approximately 85 per cent of Nigeria’s refined petroleum must be imported from abroad, with the federal government spending an estimated £4.5 billion to subsidize fuel purchases.

Successive Nigerian governments have kept diesel prices low as most small businesses and many private homes rely on generators to provide electricity as the national power grid is antiquated and unreliable.  For the vast majority of Nigerians subsidized fuel prices were one of the few benefits they received from the country’s oil wealth.

Church and union leaders had urged the government not to life the fuel subsidies, and when the government refused to compromise a national strike was staged that led to mass protests, riots and outbreaks of communal violence across the country.

The Bishop of Lagos West, the Rt. Rev. Peter Adebiyi said it made no sense for President Jonathan to send the army into the streets of Lagos in response to the strike.

Lagos State had “recorded an unprecedented number of votes during the last presidential elections [for President Jonathan], despite the fact that the state is being governed by one of the opposition parties.  It is instructive that from the pattern of voting in other elections, the people of Lagos State voted the President as a person and not the political party he represents”

The bishop was amazed that the candidate “Lagosians voted massively for, turned around to militarize the state in the face of simple and peaceful demonstration against government policies that affected citizens of Nigeria.  Are we at a war,” the bishop asked.

“It is rather shameful and unbelievable seeing military personnel brandishing guns and armour tanks in the early hours of Monday 16th of January, 2012 as if we are at a way”, the bishop said, whereas “simple dialogue and sense of reasoning would have prevailed instead of the military option.”

Christians and Muslims, Yoruba and Hausa were united in opposing the fuel increases, the bishop said.  “Going by the overwhelming presences of dignitaries that attended the rallies in Lagos against the removal of fuel subsidy, despite their differences in party and religion affiliations, attests to the fact that government must always do what pleases the people,” he said.

Bishop Adebiyi called upon the government go convene an all-party Sovereign National Conference “where different ethnic groups in the country will come together in a round table and decide how they should be governed.” For as it stands now, Nigeria is not working, the bishop said.

A clergy wives’ conference has been cancelled following intervention by the Zimbabwe secret police.

On 13 January 2012 the Diocese of Harare was contacted by the management of the Jamaica Inn, a hotel/conference centre outside Harare, informing Bishop Chad Gandiya that agents of the CIO had visited the Inn the night.  The manager reported that she had been instructed by the security services to cancel the meeting which was scheduled for later that day.

Bishop Gandiya told SW Radio Africa the manager “sounded traumatized, very, very traumatized by the CIOs and it was sad news indeed for the organizers of the retreat.”

However, “we are not even sure these people were genuine CIOs and I am in the process of drafting them a letter to find out if they sent anyone to Jamaica Inn,” the bishop said.

On 2 Jan the broke up a clergy retreat for the Dioceses of Harare and Manicaland held at Peterhouse School.  The police stated they were taking preemptive actions to prevent violence at the clergy conference in case supporters of former bishop Dr. Nolbert Kunonga invaded the venue.

The latest police action comes after Bishop Gandiya wrote to the commissioner of police Augustine Chihuri.  According to the bishop’s letter, published on 16 Jan by the Association of Zimbabwe Journalists, Bishop Gandiya was arrested by police after he performed a confirmation service on 17 Dec 2011 at St Bernard’s School in Mhondoro.

“After the service two local policemen based at Mamina approached me and asked me, the local priest and our Church Wardens to go to Mamina Police Station because their ‘boss’ wanted to ask some questions about our Service,” the bishop said.

However, two members of the “CID based at Kadoma arrived in the company of their superior with orders from the Mashonaland West Province to investigate us,” the bishop said, taking the bishop, his wife and churchwardens to the police station for questioning.

“Although they said we were not under arrest, technically we were because we now had to have a policeman with us all the time,” Bishop Gandiya said, noting that after interrogation, he was told he was being “charged with ‘contempt of Supreme Court Orders’ that barred us from holding our church service on premises controlled by Dr Kunonga.”

The bishop protested the service had been held at a school unaffiliated with Dr. Kunonga or the Diocese of Harare.  It had allowed the bishop to use its facilities as a worship venue, he explained. After being held at the station for the rest of the day, the bishop, his wife and the churchwardens were released “late at night pending further investigations.”

“Why are we being harassed like this,” the bishop asked the police commissioner.  “Are we second class citizens in the land of our birth? Like any other citizen of this country we expect equal protection by the law enforcement agents of our Republic,” Bishop Gandiya said.

Bishop Dorai leaving the CSI synod hall after being turned away on 13 Jan 2012 : Photo CCC

First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.

A trial court of the Church of South India (CSI) has found the Bishop in Coimbatore guilty of misconduct and directed he be removed from office and deposed from ordained ministry.

On 9 January 2012 the Moderator of the CSI, the Rt. Rev. S. Vasanthakumar released a letter written to the clergy of the diocese reporting that the synod court had “unanimously passed the sentence that Bishop Manickam Dorai cannot be continued as Diocesan Bishop any longer.”

The “Bishopric of the Coimbatore Diocese has become vacant with immediate effect,” the letter stated, and as per the CSI’s canons, the moderator of the CSI will serve as diocesan bishop until a new bishop is elected. Bishop Vasanthakumar asked the clergy to “kindly make an announcement of the above mentioned facts during the worship services in your churches” on 15 January.

On 2 July 2010 the executive committee of the CSI’s General Synod placed Bishop Dorai on an indefinite leave of absence and dissolved the diocese’s executive council. The bishop and his cronies were accused of embezzling diocesan funds and taking kickbacks on construction projects amounting to over £500,000.

An October 2010 report by a fact finding committee led by retired Karnataka High Court Justice Michael Saldhana found evidence of criminal behavior by the bishop. It said Bishop Dorai had pledged diocesan bank accounts, trust funds and pension funds as collateral for personal loans, sold admissions to diocesan schools, took kickbacks on building contracts and diverted diocesan funds for his personal use. They found the bishop had authorized the sale of diocesan property to real estate developers at approximately 20 per cent of their market value, in return for what the committee believed were kickbacks from the real estate developers.

“These transactions are not a mere case of mismanagement but point to rank dishonesty and criminality,” the committee said.

On 17 May 2011 the Crime Branch-CID of the Tamil Nadu Police filed a 500 page charge sheet with the Chief Magistrate in Coimbatore, accusing Bishop Dorai, his two brothers, and four other accomplices with defrauding his diocese of over £500,000. The former bishop’s criminal trial is expected to begin later this year sources tell The Church of England Newspaper.

The former bishop’s removal from the ministry must be affirmed by the CSI Synod executive committee, which is scheduled to meet later this month in Kanyakumari. However, his dismissal has already been enforced. When the former bishop attempted to enter last week’s meeting of the CSI General Synod, he was ejected.

Should Bishop Dorai seek a civil injunction to block his removal, the CCC – a lay anti-corruption advocacy group in the CSI – reports the “CSI Constitution states in Rule 28 of Chapter XI on ‘The discipline of the church and settlement of disputes’ that ‘No decision or judgment of the Court of the Synod shall be subject to appeal or revision by any person or court outside the Church of South India.’ Were Bishop Dorai to challenge his dismissal before the Madras High Court it would be interesting to see how this provision holds up as it appears to be prima facie in violation of the Indian [civil] Constitution.”

CSI Moderator, the Rt. Rev. G. Devakadasham

First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.

The General Synod of the Church of South India has elected a new moderator.  At the 13 January 2012 meeting of the synod held at the Bishop Selvamony Retreat Centre, the Bishop in Kanyakumari the Rt. Rev. G. Devakadasham was elected moderator.

He defeated the Bishop in Madras, the Rt. Rev. V Devasahayam by 219 to 125 votes.  Bishop Devakadasham’s slate of candidates also won handily.  The Rt. Rev. Govada Dyvasirvadam, Bishop in Krishna Godavari Diocese was elected deputy moderator defeating the Rt. Rev. P. Surya Prakash, Bishop in Karimnagar Diocese while M. M. Philip was reelected Secretary and Abraham Bennet Treasurer of the Synod.

The 61-year-old Bishop was ordained as priest on 11 Jan 1981 and elected the fifth Bishop in Kanyakumari Diocese in 2001, and was elected Deputy Moderator on Jan 14, 2009.  He succeeds the Rt. Rev. S. Vasanthakumar, and his term of office will last for two years.  He is eligible to stand for reelection, but must step down by age 65.

Writing from the meeting in Kanyakumari, leaders of the lay led anti-corruption coalition, the CCC, said Bishop Devakadasham’s victory was influenced by several factors. The new bishop “hails from the politically influential Nadar community in Tamilnadu while his rival Devasahayam is a Dalit.  In the 2010 Synod elections the Nadar candidate for Moderator Bishop Christopher Asir of Madurai Ramnad Diocese lost by a whisker of just eight votes to Bishop S. Vasanthakumar of Karnataka Central Diocese. This time the Nadars present in sizeable numbers from among voters representing Vellore, Coimbatore, Trichy. Tirunelveli, Madurai-Ramnad and Kanyakumari dioceses of the CSI made sure there was no repeat of 2010.”

CCC also reported that the outgoing moderator “threw his weight behind his deputy Devakadasham and played a proactive role in influencing the outcome.”

Diocesan leaders standing amidst the ruins of the demolished church

First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.

Christian leaders have denounced the seizure and demolition by the Punjab government of a two acre site in Lahore that housed a church, a women’s shelter, and seven homes.

The Punjab government has defended its destruction of the properties saying it acquired the land after one of the residents at the shelter announced her conversion to Islam.

On 10 January 2012 residents living in the church properties on Allama Iqbal Road in Lahore’s Garhi Sahu district were awakened at 6:30 in the morning and told to leave their homes immediately. Bulldozers then leveled the church and all other buildings on the site.

The Catholic Bishop of Lahore Sebastian Shaw told the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need that what the “state government of Punjab has done is a very, very brutal act of injustice.”

“How can they do such a thing, just to come in, wreck a charitable institution and ruin the lives of people living there? They do not listen to anybody.”

The Church of Pakistan’s Bishop of Lahore, Dr. Alexander Malik condemned the destruction of the church buildings. He also called for the state to register a case of Blasphemy against the local government officials who ordered the demolition as Bibles, crosses and other church ornaments were destroyed.

This incident was a manifestation of the state’s “unaccounted power” and demonstrated the “grave injustice and cruelty [directed] towards non-Muslims/religious minorities in Pakistan,” Bishop Malik said.

Bishop Shaw added that this was a “criminal act of land-grabbing by the government functionaries” as the Catholic Church held title deeds to the property showing it acquired the property in 1887. The controversy over the ownership of the land began several years ago, the Lahore press reported, when one of the residents of the shelter announced her conversion to Islam and began to harass the nuns who ran the refuge. She refused to leave the shelter and questioned the ownership of the two rooms she occupied.

The state intervened in the dispute, but was unable to resolve the disagreement. In 2007 local government officials announced they were confiscating the land, and claimed to have notified the church of this decision. A government spokesman said that a “land-mafia” group had taken adverse possession of the property, and had used armed gunmen to drive away local officials when they had attempted to gain access to the property.

However, local residents had disputed this claim, according to the Express Tribune, and Emmanuel Yousaf Mani, director of the National Commission on Justice and Peace, said that a court had issued a restraining order forbidding destruction of the buildings.

On 16 January 2012 Justice Mansoor Ali Shah of the Lahore High Court ordered the local government authority to respond to the violation of the court order staying demolition.

The All India Christian Council has condemned an indictment issued by a Sharia law court in Kashmir that charges two priests with blasphemy by enticing Muslims to convert to Christianity.

On 11 January 2012 Muslim leaders in the Northern Indian state issued a statement saying that “it was proved beyond doubt that the accused” the vicar of All Saints Church in Srinigar, the Rev Chander Mani Khanna of the Church of North India, “along with other accomplices was luring Muslim people to change their religion.”

A second priest, Fr. Jim Borst, a Roman Catholic missionary who has worked in Kashmir for 46 years, was also charged with converting Muslims to Christianity.

“The Kashmir situation is going through a critical phase and if such elements are not brought to book it will have a serious and negative impact on the (Kashmiri Muslim) society,” the Muslim leaders said.

“It is shocking and surprising that the state government was allowing such activities. Kashmir society will not tolerate such activities at all and we stand united against such elements,” Mufti Muhammad Nasir-ul-Islam said.  The sentence from the court would be announced shortly, he added.

On 19 Nov 2011 Mr. Khanna was arrested by the Jammu & Kashmir police on charges of fomenting civil unrest.  He was released on 1 Dec 2011 and has since left the state for fear for his life.

However, Christian leaders have denounced the indictment stating that Sharia courts have no civil standing.  In a statement released on 13 January 2012, the All India Christian Council (AICC) said it was “deeply disturbed” by the Sharia court’s actions.  “Such statements can encourage extremist elements to indulge in violence,” the Council said.

“It was hoped that religious and secular authorities, and the state government, would show maturity and responsibility,” the AICC said, “keeping in view the delicately poised public peace situation” in Kashmir.

The “Church does not accept as genuine any conversion brought about by fraud or force,” the AICC said, noting that a fact finding team which went to Srinagar shortly after the arrest of Mr. Khanna and “interviewed Church personnel, Ulema, school, authorities and the police, found no evidence of force or fraud in baptisms that have been carried out over a period of time. Each baptism has been proved to be voluntary.”

The head of the AICC, Dr John Dayal, said it “devolves on the Jammu and Kashmir Government, religious leaders and people of goodwill in the Kashmir valley to ensure that the nights of minorities are respected, their welfare assured, and communal harmony strengthened in the region which so desperately requires and environment of peace for its development and well being.”

Bishop Chuck Murphy

First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.

Bishop Chuck Murphy along with the other former bishops of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) have rejected the protocol for reconciliation with the Church of Rwanda brokered by the Archbishop of Kenya at the 4 January 2012 meeting in Nairobi.

Speaking at a conference in Houston this week, Bishop Murphy reiterated his plans to form a mission society with an international focus from the remnants loyal to him within the former AMiA.  The decision to repudiate ties with Rwanda severs the last link to the Anglican Communion for Bishop Murphy and his faction within the AMiA.

Bishop Phillip Jones, one of the resigned suffragan bishops told the Houston Conference, the new group no longer sought to be Anglican or to work within the confines of the Anglican tradition.  The Murphy group wanted to be attached to some wider organization, but in its current form it was a non-institutional entity with a global focus, that did not need to be Anglican, Bishop Jones said according to those present at the meeting.

On 17 January 2012, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala released a letter summarizing the 4 Jan meeting in Nairobi.  Present at the gathering were Bishop Murphy and Bishop John Miller from the U.S., Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje and Bishop Laurent Mbanda from Rwanda, Archbishop Ikechi Nwosu from the Church of Nigeria, Archbishop Wabukala from the Anglican Church of Kenya and four other Kenyan bishops.

Archbishop Wabukala opened the meeting by stating his hope that the parties could be reconciled.  The statement noted that Bishop Murphy “began by expressing his profound regret for the broken relationship and stressed his commitment to lead AMiA as a single-minded mission agency. “

He added that he had been “deeply distressed by the public accusations” leveled against him, but remained “determined” to carry on the work he began in 2000.

Archbishop Rwaje “acknowledged his deep distress at the broken relationships” and lauded the work of the AMiA over the past 12 years.  However, he was perturbed by the “continuing role” played by retired Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini, the “lack of financial transparency and the recently announced plans to separate from the Church of Rwanda and function independently without adequate prayer or consultation.”

The Kenyan archbishop reported that after lengthy discussion the parties agreed that “forgiveness should come from both sides of the divide,” and that Rwanda would “stop looking at AMiA‘s mistakes,” wiping the slate clean. Both parties would also “start the process of forgiveness” and acknowledge the wrongs “between them.”

The agreement also called for the retired archbishops who had been supporting Bishop Murphy to work the “incumbent Archbishop of Rwanda” and for the retired archbishops to acknowledge the “ecclesiastical authority” of Archbishop Rwaje.

The Murphy faction of the AMiA “agreed that they remain canonically under the Church of Rwanda” and would put on hold for six months “plans for restructuring” the organization.

The next step would be for the two leaders to work with their bishops to “begin the work of reconciliation between both groups.”

However, while Bishop Murphy has said the work of reconciliation is continuing, the wider agreement appears ready to collapse as Bishop Murphy told those attending his Winter Conference that they would not accept the authority or directions of Rwanda, sources attending the Houston conference told The Church of England Newspaper.

Illustrated by a photo of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler inspecting members of the Estonian division of the Waffen-SS, the TAZ story reports that a bill before the Estonian parliament seeks to grant Estonian members of the SS the status of “freedom fighters.”

While similar bills failed in 2006 and 2010, “majority support appears to guaranteed” during this legislative session, the TAZ reports. A second article appears on page 4 and reports the Russian embassy in Tallinn has described the bill as “blasphemous,” while the German Green Party has criticized a “retrospective justification of the atrocities perpetrated by Hitler’s henchmen in the Soviet Union.”

Die Welt has the story also. On 12 Jan in “Estland denkt über Ehrung der Waffen-SS nach” it reported on the details — and provided a very good history of the Estonian division of the SS.  Worldcrunch offers a summary in English of the article here.

As an aside, Worldcrunch paraphrases stories, it does not translate them in a strict sense. This can lead to differences of meaning and shading. For example the Die Welt title in Worldcrunch is “Push To Honor Estonian SS Nazi Unit Sparks Outrage.” The Die Welt title in German I would translate as “Estonia is thinking about honoring the Waffen-SS after [70 years].” No “outrage” in the German title, nor does “push to honor” have the same meaning as “thinking of honoring” while the German title has “after” tagged on at the end, to which I would add “70 years” or “further tries in parliament.” Do bookmark Worldcrunch as it is a great source for overseas reporting.

Die Welt offers this additional history (my translation):

The Holocaust began in the Baltic states at the same time as Estonia was occupied by German troops. Jews had to flee the country, but as Estonia is the northernmost and easternmost of the three small states, they had the best chance to escape. Approximately three-quarters of the small Jewish population either left with the retreating Red Army or fled to Finland.

The remaining thousand who were classified as Jews according to Nazi racial criteria were killed — mainly by Einsatzkommando 1a under the command of Martin Sandberger, who until his death in late March 2010 was the last living top SS leader. At the Wannsee Conference [held on 20 Jan 1942] Estonia was declared judenfrei [free of Jews] by the Nazis after the murder of 963 people. …

In addition to the approximately one thousand Estonian Jews, at least 250 Roma and six to seven thousand Christian Estonians were killed during the German occupation. Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of wars as well as Jews from other states were also killed during the occupation in internment caps built on Estonian soil during the war.

Die Welt examines the Estonian SS involvement in the Holocaust and in anti-partisan campaigns, but notes:

Unfortunately all that remains of the records of this unit are three meager files in the German federal archives. There is a book about Estonians in the Waffen-SS, but it was written by an admirer of the military arm of the SS and was published by a small, far-right-leaning publisher. Its contents should clearly be viewed with caution.

However, the campaign to honor SS men as freedom fighters, supported mainly by nationalist parties in Estonia, comes from their role in trying to hold back the tide of the Red Army in the first six months of 1944. The daft legislation is expected to come before parliament in Tallinn in March.

Both newspapers do a good job in bringing this story to light. While Die Welt gives a great overview to this corner of history, the TAZ is more forthright in its condemnation. It warns against “beatifying the SS,” and reminds readers that the Simon Wiesenthal Center described the Baltic SS units as being part of the Nazi “structure of blood and death.”

There are enough religion and ethical ghosts in this story to keep me occupied for weeks. However, I want to raise a few surface items as well as a deeper issue that is being played out in Europe — who owns the Holocaust?

“Provide both sides of the story” is a mantra each journalist learns early in his career. One of the most frequent criticisms offered by GetReligion is the lack of balance in a story — of providing only one set of facts. However, is this criticism valid when dealing with Nazis? Neither paper offers space to neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers or right-wing nationalists to defend the pro-SS legislation. Die Welt offers the history, as does the TAZ to a lesser extent, that would explain motivation, but Mr. A. Hitler is not given a platform. And I believe the papers were correct in this decision.

The TAZ use of the language of religion is significant. Religion is almost always absent from the left-wing TAZ’s pages, but its use here is more than that of an arch or facile description. To my mind it symbolizes the moral and psychological uneasiness Germans (and Estonians) feel with this issue. The SS is being beautified, being canonized as modern saints by Estonian nationalists in their crusade against the Russians and the Communist past. While the vocabulary is used, there remains strong tie here between nationalism and religion that is left unaddressed in the stories.

To my ears, the story also raises the vexed question of who owns the Holocaust? Die Welt reports that almost ten times as many Christian Estonians as Jewish Estonians were murdered by the Nazis. Yet all of the Jews were killed. Is there an equivalence of suffering here? Because more Christians died than Jews — and because the Soviets killed more Estonians than the Germans, does that give moral ownership of this issue to Estonian nationalists?  Where can the line be drawn between wholesale murder of innocents and the unique evil that was the Nazi’s Final Solution?

This episode reminds me of the “War of the Crosses” that began at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1979. Following Pope John Paul II’s mass at the Nazi death camp, which he described as being the “Golgotha of the modern world,” local Catholics erected a small cross by Bunker 2 to honor Edith Stein — a converted Jew who had become a Carmelite nun before her death in the gas chambers.

In 1984 the controversy escalated when Carmelite nuns opened a convent in a brick building that had been used by the Nazis to store Zyklon-B gas crystals. The 26-foot cross used in John Paul II’s 1979 service was then moved by the nuns to a spot just outside the Auschwitz I wall where more than one hundred Polish partisans had been shot. Jewish leaders complained of the impropriety of Christianizing the site of the extermination of European Jewry, but the nuns refused to go.

Jewish complaints prompted a response by Polish nationalists who erected a further three hundred crosses.  The Polish parliament then ordered the extra crosses to be removed but allowed the papal cross to remain. John Paul II resolved the issue in 1993 by ordering the nuns to leave Auschwitz.

Can one be human and be impartial when writing a story about the SS? Is it wrong for Christians to dispossess Jews of the Holocaust? Who owns history and how should faith groups handle public expressions of faith in a pluralistic society? (Does the World Trade Center mosque controversy spring to mind to anyone?) How should reporters handle this issue when writing about the Holocaust and the SS? Is it even possible?

What say you GetReligion readers on this point?

First printed in GetReligion.