Announcement

**Mil-Archive** · 01-30-2013, 09:18 PM

I have seen it before and thought it was greatly overstated. Cathal Shannon was an Irishman with a serious chip on his shoulder.

In all about 10 cases were covered, which considering the trauma going on in continental europe and what the Soviets were doing to whoever they got their hands on at that time is not all that surprising.

One of the cases related to Albert Folens (who went on to be a book publisher who published Every schoolbook in the country for decades), his case at the least is not straightforward :
http://www.independent.ie/national-n...ort-59034.html

In a statement last night the family of Mr Folens' hit out at what they claimed were "false allegations" being made against him in media reports.

Mrs Folens admitted he had joined the SS linked Flemish Legion in Belgium in 1941 but said he "was never a member of the Gestapo and was never a member of the Nazi party."

She added: "in fact he absolutely refused to pledge an oath of allegiance to Hitler because he had already pledged an oath of allegiance tot he king of Belgium on becoming a teacher."

She said recent news reports were "extremely damaging personally to the family and to Folens publishing.

She and her family "were outraged and extremely angry" at the allegations being made against her late husband.

Her husband had joined the Flemish Legion in 1941 "to support the cause for an independent country for the Flemish people and to fight against Stalin and communism."

Her statement added: "the Flemish legion was sent to the Eastern Front under German Military Command but Albert became ill and returned to Belgium.

The family insisted that he saw "no military action whatsoever."

Reacting to the allegations that he worked for the Nazis as an interpreter, Mrs Folens said: "Because of his fluency in French, German and his native Flemish he was deployed in Brussels as a translator - not an interpreter - compiling in German a report on what it said in the Flemish papers."

Nor is the Clissman one :

http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&...41642243,d.ZG4

'We had already seen the first programme in the series on Tuesday last. David Farrell described it to me as a 'dark' programme in advance. By referring to my father's life in Ireland and Germany both before and after the Second World War, you are creating the impression that he was a war criminal and sought refuge in Ireland to escape consequences. This is utterly false and contrary to the truth. He never committed any war crime and was never even charged with any. His internment (and torture) by MI5 was to elicit details of his friends and contacts in Ireland. The reason he returned to Ireland was because he had a wife and four children living here with whom he wished to live, and in order to support them'.

Aside from the false representation of Mr. Clissmann, the complainant objects to the following:
1. the lead in the voiceovers at the beginning of the two programmes
2. the programmes themselves which characterised Mr. Clissmann as a war criminal and fugitive from his actions.
3. the final comments made by Cathal O'Shannon at the conclusion of the programme on 16 January.

Mr. Clissmann was included in these programmes; thereby the overwhelming impression that was given was that he was a war criminal and that he sought refuge in Ireland to escape the consequences.

The verifiable facts in relation to Helmut Clissmann are as follows:
1. he had worked, studied, married and had a child in Ireland before the outbreak of the Second World War.
2. he was neither accused of, charged with nor convicted of any war crimes.
3. after his release as a prisoner of war he returned to Ireland to his family.
4. his return was entirely legal in that he held a valid Irish travel visa to re-enter Ireland.

Therefore, the suggestion that he was a member of Irish society, who had been a Nazi war criminal, evaded justice and punishment for his supposed crimes by escaping to and obtaining sanctuary in sympathetic Ireland at the end of World War II, is entirely inaccurate, biased and unfair.

**Mil-Archive** · 01-30-2013, 09:43 PM

Of the other cases I see Cathal shannon included Otto Skorzeny, hardly a war criminal in my view.

I'd broadly agree with this synopsis here :

In this context, as well as in the inevitable chaos of post-war Europe, some quite serious war criminals, along with smaller fry, were able to use Ireland to escape retribution. The worst, and also the most intriguing, case was the escape to Ireland of Andrija Artukovic. As minister of the interior in the pro-Axis Ustase regime in Croatia during the war, Artukovic organised genocidal killings, chiefly of Orthodox Serbs, involving horrific barbarity. Despite being captured by the British in 1945, he was released and reached Switzerlad via Salzburg in 1946, probably through contacts in the Catholic Church, which had provided important support in Croatia to the Ustase regime. In Berne Artukovic, under an assumed name, was given papers by the Irish consulate and arrived in Dublin in July 1947. He was able to live quietly in Rathgar for a year, before moving to the USA, where he lived until he was finally extradited to Yugoslavia in 1985. The file on Artukovic in the Department of Foreign Affairs is still classified. If there is a hidden history here, then we are still a long way from an explanation. At this point the film might well have recalled the long involvement of Hubert Butler with this and other Croatian matters (‘Yugoslav papers: the church and its opponents’ (1947); ‘The sub-prefect should have held his tongue’ (1956); ‘The Artukovitch file’ (1970), in Independent spirit: essays (New York, 1996)). Butler raised important questions about the church’s role in wartime Croatia, which earned him considerable vilification in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s.

The case of Artukovic is the most important one dealt with by the film, but O’Shannon exposed other quite serious cases, including that of Pieter Menten, who, as well as organising a massacre in eastern Poland, organised the murder of his Jewish friends to facilitate his looting of their property. Menten was able to maintain a peaceful country retreat in County Waterford, stuffed with valuable works of art, until his arrest in Switzerland in 1986. The Breton nationalist Celestin Laine, who commanded a Breton militia, the Bezen Perrot, which operated as an auxiliary unit of the SS and was particularly effective against the Resistance in Britanny, may have been in touch with the Irish consulate in Paris before his arrival in Ireland in 1947. Laine, an admirer of the IRA, was able to live quite freely in Ireland, and some interesting archive footage survives from the 1970s.
Apart from these cases, O’Shannon’s film produces a number of lesser figures who variously managed to find an escape hatch in Ireland after the war. Two of them—Albert Folens, the schoolbook publisher, and Albert Luykx, the sinister businessman who was involved the arms trial crisis of 1969–70—were Belgian collaborators. Folens was sentenced to ten years in prison for SS activities, while Luykx was sentenced to death, but both managed to get to Ireland using an escape route organised by Trappist monks in Belgium. Some of those who featured, such as Helmut Clissmann, Otto Skorzeny and Staf Van Welthoven, seem rather harmless, or even attractive, by comparison with the likes of Artukovic and Menten. Perhaps the journalist’s desire to tell a good story won out over the maintenance of proportion in the latter stages of the film, but there is clearly a lot more to be known about the attitudes and conduct of both church and state in the aftermath of World War II.

Source: http://www.historyireland.com/volume...ews/?id=113938

Of the other men mentioned in that programme (leaving aside Andrija Artukovic who stayed for a year before moving to the USA & Mienten who was arrested) who moved to Ireland after the war - one helped found Amnesty International (in Ireland), one became a schoolbook publisher and another went into the restaurant business.

One did end up involved in an arms importation trial when the troubles began but to the best of my knowledge bar that example the rest led peaceful lives.

**Schnellmeyer** · 01-31-2013, 10:17 AM

I agree fully with Helden's posts , I was an extra in this programme and played the part of Peter Menten . There is no doubt but Cathal Shannon put his own version of events forward in this programme . Well he would I guess as he had served in the RAF during WW2 .
I knew and had met Albert Folens and Helmut Clissman and these men were no criminals , in fact Irish society owe them a great deal for what thet did while they lived in Ireland. When I spoke to Cathal and the TV company and pointed out mistakes they were making , they did not want to know . They were more interested in making a programme that they could sell to other TV stations .
To be honest , anybody who looks at the two part series will see that all except possibly two of the men featured were ordinary men .

**damien C.** · 02-17-2013, 02:00 PM

Thank you gentlemen,I agree with every thing you have stated,there is a tendency by some entrenched political interests today in Ireland to exaggerate the nazi's involvement in Eire both during WW2 and after, it is merely the politicalisation of past events for cheap present day political point scoring by extremists.

Announcement

Ireland's Nazis

Ireland's Nazis

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Users Viewing this Thread