THE SECRET UNDER THE LITTLE CEMETERY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100140065-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 65
• Publication Date: May 23, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100140065-7
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE
THE WASHINGTON POST
23 May 1982
Aeli'thp, 1,
BY?Thomas OToole
Washington PostSratr writer
SOUTH RIVER, N J, May
22--No more than 15 miles from the
busy New Jersey Turnpike outside,-
New York City is a private, fenced
in cemetery unlike any other in'the
United States..: ;
In it are buried at. least two sus2
pected Nazi war criminals and as
many as a dozen former members of
a Waffen 'SS division? that. fought::.
under Hitler and were smuggled into
the United States in .'the 1950s . to'
help in the Cold War struggle "with...
the Soviet, Union.-,. Buried : undeP ,a'
black' tombstone seven 'feet high is
Radoslaw Ostrowski, a native of
Byelorussia, the westernmost region
of the Soviet Uniori.. ; .:
Ostrowski was also the president
of then White Ruthenian. state set up
by Adolf Hitler -when the .German
Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet
Union,in 1941.....:.
Ostrowski occupied .the puppet
leadership position until 1944, when '
the Red Army reoccupied Byelorus-
sia
During that time as,`rnany as
750,000 citizens of Byelorussia were-.
massacred by their Nazi masters and
the puppet civilian auxiliary police
force under the control of the SS.
Thirty feet from.Ostrowski's-tomb
is a grave -narked only by a white
wooden Byzantine cross. There is no
nm'ne-on that cross, but the grave is
"No old immigrants
?f
U Ua Y
of St. Euphrosynia's," said John J. .:roster and mostl
Loftus, a former Justice Department, Y by Byelorusslans. Its
?ement are d
Prosecutor. "Old immigrants are 1 mented on microfilm in the National?
not Arc5ivec
~0N'~ to join St. Euphrosynia's:
Church." . -'The document identifies 447 of its,
300 Loftus has charged that as many 600 men as White Ruthenians, with
Y . .names that . sound remarkably like;
Byelorussian Nazis were'
gled into the United the .ofthose on the tombstones inj
-Ste Department d to States by l the cemetery near
ash St. Euphrosynia's:
spies and propagandists aga worinstk the! thmara. Grabowski. Radiejeti~ski
Soviet Union. To hear him tell it St, ' Tarasowski. Paschkow. Ba:aoki.
:Euphrosynia's is the shrine cvh St. Misluchowski. n
ere
.many of these Byelorussians came to Now former SS troops `managed!
Worship after they entered the Unit-? .to emigrate to the United: States is
-id States. Still something of a mystery,
- and is
It is clearly a curious church. On? Departrnen tlandon by . the. Justice ,
'top of a hill behind the church is a' said that a Byelorussian
R priest
Tonument = to ' . Byelorussia's war dead. Inscribed on the monument.il n4m0-- ?Tlkolai Litsky . helped j
ussian and English are t them to emigrate . Like Ost helped I1
;words: "Glory to those who fought eLavitsky died six years-ago: He isj
for freedom and independence of
Byelorussia" is, next s toO
"The trouble with that inscription trowski's:
that they fought for the Nazis in i "catesMany that I Byelorussian- birth' certif
of P
the 30th Waffen-Grenadier Division as a prosecutor ford
the
ument is SS," Loftus literally a This said. the Justice Department had fa;
-.of birth and false dates
monument monto- ~ places ~II
o
'dead members of the SS. It is even birth to suggest they were-too young
topped off to have'
fought with the SS," Loft
in
by a circle of iron around; said. "These birth certificates were
the Russian cross, which was they Sworn to 'by Father Lavitsky, w?h9
symbol adopted by the 30th Waffen: serving as' a cleric in DP [dls;
ThSS."e tombstone that marks Os- was Hplace sdow eperson] camps in Germany."
'
ros ~Nazcs are buried in Stn
trowski's grave in the White Ruthe-' Eu h many
Man' cemetery six P ynia's. There are 96 krav
was es,l
ree .unmarked.
marks the .grave blocks of a from in the an in of th -i the them
who founded Nobody
church church the other- day
. the 30th Waff
'
en SS
whnpr s
.e a reortetopped by to aska
s,,d to contain the remains of Em- This fact is noted in a docume t1 1
otner li
h
- once t
e mayor of describing Archives .-
the Byelorussian city of . Kledsk. It is a document describing the de
More than 5,000 Jews were slaw h- briefing. of a White Ruthenian p?(_;
tered in Kledsk 'in a single day in l ttlclan , Stanialas Hrynkjewietsch, by
1942. Eyewitnesses to the massacre U.S. Third Army intelligence officer;;
have told Justice Department inves- in May, 1945'
t: tors. that Mayor Jasiuk ordered Nrsmllewtetsch names Ostrowski
the slaughter. as the Puppet ruler of the White Ru-!
Less than six city blocks from this] :thenian state that served Hitler in' cemetery is the cemetery's mother to the S1944.oviet city of Minsk from 1941
church, the 10-year-old Byelorussian ."Ostrowski came
Orthodo:c Church ..of St. Euphro with the SS E ~into Byelorussia'
symia. t?gruppen, the mo-j
bile killing units of the SS," Loftus!
In a Slavic immigrant city, where ;said. He had his own Gestapo staff
church onion-shaped domes of Russian' car, and was so efficient at his work
churches are common, St. Euphro-I that inside of a week he had orga-'
sy iia's is uncommon. The church; razed a Nazi Collaborationist net-'
11--is only 300 parishioners from 100; work in every town
in the county
families, all imnl:grant; to the Unit , '.''here Minsk located."
ed Slates since the Displaced Per-, vies ['here is no dr--h,, i
t
---J
vin ,?
person in the cemetery was the SS-
.
year-old caretaker, who did not want'
to tell his name. Nevertheless' ' the
question was asked: ' -
"People . say Nazis buried here." the-caretaker said -inheavily broken'
English. "No Nazis here: My wife
here. Is- my wife I Nazi? Those are
veterans' crosses on these' . graves.
:.That's 'a veterans' cross on the cnon
ument behind the church: There are,'.
no swastikas on these crosses. There,
are no. Nazis. here." _
?lat the 30th:
sci,Is act was passed by Congress in} SS Wafron n..:_:..- -
~I,. Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100140065-7