Croatia's State Prosecutor Forced To Resign Over Masonic Membership

(NOTE: This story has been updated on 2/25/2020 at 3:18PM EST.)

The chief state prosecutor for the nation of Croatia has just been forced to resign his office solely for being a Freemason.

An Associated Press story on February 20th reports that Croatia's State’s Attorney, Dražen Jelenić, came under fire after he publicly acknowledged his membership in a Masonic lodge.

From the AP story:

Jelenic initially refused to resign, saying that being a member of the fraternal organization did not affect his independence. However, the prime minister and other Croatian officials insisted he leave his post as the country’s top prosecutor.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at a Cabinet meeting Thursday that membership in an organization or order like a Masonic lodge could undermine public trust in “the integrity of people running the highest institutions.”

“I would like to stress that this does not mean the state attorney has acted against the law or did not perform his duty objectively and independently,“ Plenkovic said. “This duty does not leave any room for doubt in independence or objectivity.”

Jelenic became state’s attorney in 2018. Plenkovic said the government had no prior knowledge of his Masonry affiliation.

A slightly more detailed English-language story appeared on the Balkan Insight website last Thursday:

“This membership is lawful [but it] burdened the performance of my duty as Chief State Prosecutor,” Jelenic said on Wednesday, when he confirmed his resignation.

The weekly Nacional reported on his membership on Tuesday. While explaining it earlier to local media, Jenelic denied belonging to a secret or semi-secret organisation, and said it was just a civic association registered in accordance with the law, so there was no conflict of interest.

Jelenic told the media that he was invited to join a freemasonry association in March 2018, a month before being named to his post as chief prosecutor.

The association was registered as a non-profit dedicated to “promoting masonic worldviews, above all general morality, culture and love for one’s fellow man and charity”, according to the Croatian Registry of Associations.

However, Croatian officials are obliged to declare their membership of associations or organisations to the Commission for the Resolution of Conflicts of Interest, which Jelenic failed to do.

The resignation followed only days after media reported that several journalists from the tabloid Dnevno.hrand its sister print weekly, 7Dnevno, had been arrested for allegedly trying to blackmail an ophthalmologist over his links to the same masonic association.

Nikica Gabric claimed the journalists had tried to blackmail him into buying 27,000 euros worth of advertising space in the weekly in exchange for not publishing pictures of him attending masonic ceremonies. Jelenic had become involved in the affair, after accusing Gabric of trying to influence the investigation into the Dnevno.hr journalists. On Wednesday, Jelenic clarified his statement, saying Gabric had clearly been the victim of attempted blackmail.

President Zoran Milanovic made it clear he supported the prosecutor’s departure. He said that everyone who was a member of a masonic association and was doing a public job or was a public official, notably in law enforcement, was unnecessarily bringing into question their objectivity and loyalty.

Jelenic was appointed to his post in April 2018. He earlier served as president of the State Judicial Council, and as a municipal prosecutor and county prosecutor.

In additional articles I have found so far, Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković declared that Jelenić's Masonic membership constituted a case of what he called "dual loyalty," which is frequently cited by anti-Masons as an excuse for persecuting members of law enforcement, the judiciary or in government positions over their Masonic membership. These are the sort of accusations that were common in the late 1990s and early 2000's during the English witch hunts against Masons by their Home Secretary, Jack Straw.

A story on the N1 website gave more details about the blackmail end of the story and what is already being called the "Masonic Affair":

The unusual scandal began unravelling last week, when a prominent Croatian eye doctor, Nikica Gabric, reported to the police that journalists of the popular tabloid website Dnevno.hr and its weekly print issue 7Dnevno were threatening to publish photographs showing Gabric attending masonic ceremonies.

Gabric claimed that, in exchange for not publishing the photographs, the journalists wanted him to buy 200,000 kuna (€27,000) worth of advertising space in the 7Dnevno weekly. The police investigation was opened, resulting in arrests of Dnevno.hr’s editor-in-chief, his deputy, and the website’s owner. According to Gabric, the arrested editor-in-chief’s deputy is also a member of the same masonic lodge.

The first Masonic lodge in Croatia and the Balkans was established in 1764 by Croatian Count Ivan Drašković VIII. The first Grand Lodge of Croatia was established in 1778, but the fraternity was shut down in 1795 across Croatia, Austria and Hungary after Illuminati-inspired (or connected) conspirators with Masonic membership hatched a failed revolutionary plot in the region. Masonic lodges would reopen again, only to be shut down throughout much of the 19th century at various times as fears of 'Illuminism' continued.

After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, Croatia was handed over to the Kingdom of Serbia, and eventually folded into Yugoslavia. Freemasonry was reestablished under the Grand Lodge of Serbia and flourished from 1919 until the pro-Nazi fascists came to power in Croatia in 1940. Jews, Serbs and Freemasons were persecuted, arrested and murdered, and many were removed to the Nazi-inspired Jasenovac extermination camp in Slavonia. Jasenovac became one of the largest concentration camps in Europe and was nicknamed the 'Auschwitz of the Balkans.'
After Yugoslavia's collapse in 1941, the new government of the Independent State of Croatia also completely banned Freemasonry, and it remained illegal after the end of World War II for another 51 years.

After the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the re-formation of the nation of Croatia, the Grand Lodge of Austria formed a 'provisional lodge' in Vienna with the task of raising and educating a whole new generation of Masons who would eventually be able to revive the Grand Lodge of Croatia. In 1994, the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Croatia was successfully registered as a civil society with the Croatian Ministry of Public Administration.

An English-language website for Freemasonry in Croatia today can be found at http://www.freemasonry-croatia.org/indexen.htm

UPDATED 2/25/2020

From my admittedly imperfect, drive-by understanding of the story, this appears to be a political battle with looming elections, and this demand for his resignation was his party's leadership squeezing him out, NOT some official government policy. If I'm reading this correctly, it's mostly about political optics in a contested parliament election cycle. That's not to blunt Croatia's long history of outlawing Freemasonry at several points over the last three centuries. But Croatia is a member of the European Union, and when Italy and England both enacted actual laws banning the participation of Freemasons in government, law enforcement or judiciary positions back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, such laws were deemed to be illegal discrimination by the EU Court of Human Rights. It's unlikely that an EU nation today would attempt to actually codify and enforce such official policies these days. But one never knows anymore.

Some commentators on Masonic boards in the U.S. have taken to opining that Jelenić may be a member of an irregular, unrecognized grand lodge in Croatia. In addition to the regular Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Croatia, there are Droit-Humain, Memphis-Misraim and Grand Orient bodies at work in the country today. It is important to note that anti-Masonry sees no difference between regular or irregular Freemasons. Our internal distinctions are meaningless to the outside world when embarking on anti-Masonic crusades, witch hunts and persecution.

Universal League of Freemasons: How Masons and Esperanto Were Going to Save the World

The journal Ritual, Secrecy and Civil Society Volume 6/Spring 2019 included a fascinating paper by Denis LeFabvre about a group of starry-eyed Masons who created the 'Universal League of Freemasons' - a global association of lodges that began in 1905 to help affect the spread of Esperanto,  a newly-created, neutral and purportedly "universal" language. But their ultimate dreams were much greater than that. They hoped that a universal language combined with a universal fraternity would ultimately save the world.

Esperanto is mostly a strange curiosity these days (pre-Star Trek William Shatner starred in the first notable movie ever made in the language, Incubus in 1966, proving he could overact and chew scenery in any language), but it had its enthusiastic supporters in an earlier age. 

L.L. Zamenhoff

Esperanto was created in the 1870s and 80s by a linguist and Polish Jew named L.L. Zamenhoff using elements of Russian, German, English, French, Polish, Hebrew, plus Greek and Latin. His goal was to create an easy to learn and adopt second language that would transcend all national borders, tribal and cultural divisions. His ultimate hope was that Esperanto would be adopted as the new lingua franca for diplomacy, science, commerce and international understanding, and ultimately end, or at least defuse, the dangers of fervent nationalism that had so torn Europe apart for so long. His dream was born in reality, because those very divisions would plague Europe and kill millions for another 70 years. He himself had been raised in the Jewish ghetto and was surrounded on all sides by people who spoke numerous different languages and were in constant conflict. He saw the two issues linked together - that misunderstanding your neighbors' words often led to violent misunderstandings on a much larger scale. Rinse and repeat.

Zamenhof initially called his language Lingvo internacia ('international language') and attempted to publish a book in Russia to introduce it to the public in the mid-1880s. When the Russian government prevented its initial publication, author Leo Tolstoy became a public supporter and the authorities at last relented. 

The book was published under the pseudonym of 'Doktoro Esperanto' ('Doctor Hopeful'), and the growing fan base for the language soon began to call it Esperanto instead. It had a slow but steady increase in popularity over the next three decades, and Zamenhof was even nominated for the Nobel Peace prize in 1910.

7th International Esperanto Congress in Antwerp, Belgium - 1907

Zamenhoff wasn't a lone dreamer, and the horrors of World War I between 1914-18 ushered in a new sense of commitment to find drastic ways to prevent such future devastations from ever happening again. 

Zamenhoff died while the war still raged, but after hostilities ended in 1918, an awful lot of people came to agree with his point of view – that if only stubborn nationalism and artificial divisions could be licked, countries would stop shooting at each other. Esperanto became a sensation. In fact, the newly established League of Nations came within one vote of adopting Esperanto as their official diplomatic language. 

At the same time, some Esperanto utopianists and other advocates sought ways to incorporate Freemasonry and its philosophy of universal brotherhood as one of several ways to unite the people of Europe and the world to prevent future wars. Originally formed in 1905 as 'Esperanto Masona,' ('Hopeful Masonry') the creators of the UFL - Universala Framasona Ligo (Universal League of Freemasons) believed Esperanto, combined with the universal brotherhood of Freemasonry, could ultimately unite the entire world in brotherhood and finally bring global peace. 

The first practical mission of the UFL was to break through Freemasonry's own artificially erected barriers of recognition and regularity and accusations of clandestinism so that Masons could enjoy fellowship with each another in a non­-tyled Masonic environment, all without breaking their respective obligations. The notion was that Freemasons could meet informally from all different jurisdictions and obediences and find that they shared much more in common with one another than what divided them. 

But the harsh realities of the 1930s and the rapid rise of fascism in Germany, Spain and Italy, the atrocities and deprivations of Communism in Soviet Russia, along with the brutal spread of the Japanese Empire in the East, briefly brought the UFL's lofty dreams to a halt. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had declared that 'Esperatism' was a tool of the dreaded world-wide 'Jewish-Masonic Conspiracy.' During the WWII, only the Swiss group of the UFL remained active and their headquarters remained in Geneva.

Bust of Zamenhoff in Budapest

Both the Nazis and Josef Stalin's Russia persecuted and killed advocates for Esperanto. Zamenhof himself died of a heart attack in 1917, but he and his wife Klara Silbernik raised three children, a son, Adam, and two daughters, Sofia and Lidia. All three children were murdered in the Holocaust.

Nevertheless, there are still some 2 million people around the world today who speak or read Esperanto, and it's commonly known enough in pop culture that it even appeared in a Simpsons episode. The Internet has breathed new life into the spread of the language, and some foreign language programs teach Esperanto first as a stepping stone for then teaching more difficult languages. It's a simple one to master with few basic grammar rules that have no irregular exceptions, and advocates say teaching it to toddlers makes mastering many other languages later in life much faster. They regard Esperanto almost as the next step after learning the basic alphabet.

The Universal League of Freemasons didn't die after WWII, but very few Masons know about it these days. While you may never have heard of it, this was not some insignificant little discussion club — at their peak, the Universal League of Freemasons was spread into 72 countries with upwards of 12,000 members worldwide. 

Back in the 1960’s and 70’s the UFL generated an uproar in mainstream U.S. grand lodges who condemned the organization as clandestine because its members associated with irregular and unrecognized, clandestine Masons. There was an American group of the UFL founded by Harvey Newton Brown, who was also a major force behind bringing awareness to mainstream Masons about Prince Hall Freemasonry. Harvey Brown was a powerful advocate for broaching the artificial divisions of regularity and recognition among the world's Freemasons, so naturally he was treated by many American Masons like he had horns and a forked tail sprouting from his body. 

Interestingly, California's own Past Grand Secretary and 2014 PGM, John L. Cooper III (photo) was the last official Secretary for the American wing of the UFL in the 1980s when he was forced by the GL of California to drop out of it. 

The U.S group died soon afterwards, but John wrote his own paper about them. 

See 'The Universal .League of Freemasons: A Twentieth Century Experiment in Masonic Dialogue.'

Although they were pretty free-wheeling in their makeup, the UFL nevertheless restricted their membership to male Masons for a variety of practical reasons — not the least of which being that they knew accepting female Masons into the group would kill it in the cradle among even the most progressive-minded jurisdictions throughout the 20th century. At their World Congress in Berlin in 1992, the UFL voted to also include female and co-Masons for the first time. But they were already diminishing in popularity.

After the UFL faded, the international research group The Philalethes Society took on this same sort of role in the 1980s and 90s after the UFL disappeared, and they frequently invited "irregular and unrecognized" Masons to participate in their conferences and contribute to its magazine. PSOC presidents and editors Allen E. Roberts and later, Nelson King were both strong advocates of encouraging these types of cooperation, participation, education and understanding. It was this sort of informal Masonic interaction that both promoted Prince Hall recognition and stirred up a major brouhaha in the early 2000s in Minnesota over recognizing multiple French grand lodges.

In truth, the Internet did what the UFL couldn't do by the end of the 20th century. Masons from every jurisdiction — regular, recognized or not — began to communicate through online BBS systems, instant messages, chat rooms and forums, much to the chagrin and frustration of grand masters everywhere. 

Those freewheeling years of the CompuServe Masonry Forum and the later PSOC (Philalethes Society) Mailing List did more to advance international communication, understanding and scholarship between mutually unrecognized Masons all over the world than anything in the previous 275 years. Issues like Prince Hall recognition, almost the entire basis for so-called 'traditional observance' and 'European concept' lodges and practices, 'Chambers of Reflection,' and much more that are commonplace topics today would not exist had it not been for those early resources.

If you believe Internet websites, the Universal League of Freemasons still hangs on today. Last updated in 2011, there appear to be groups in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Canada.

Meanwhile, Denis LeFabvre's paper in Ritual, Secrecy and Civil Society is a fascinating snapshot of these early UFL Masons who gallantly – albeit naively – attempted to use their fraternalism to achieve what politics, religion and traditional avenues of diplomacy could not. And it helps to explain some of the differing attitudes about Freemasonry's role in society between what we in the U.S. and the wider "regular, recognized" Masonic world practice, versus the very politically- and policy-minded attitudes in unrecognized obediences like the Grand Orient de France that developed in Europe. Those differences in philosophies about Freemasonry's proper role in the world and society didn't grow out of a vacuum, and this paper goes a long way in putting that into its proper perspective.

It's just one of the many fascinating papers you will find in the journals of  Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

As I said, John Cooper's paper on the ULF is also well worth reading. He poignantly ended it with a quotation from Socrates to Meno in about 400 B.C., that appeared in the December, 1972, issue of the U.S. Group of the ULF's Newsletter, La Heroldo:

“That we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; ­­ that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.”

For a list of back issues of the Journal, SEE HERE.

Or pick them up through Amazon HERE.

Video: Nazis vs. Freemasons

Finding a decent Masonic program at random on Amazon Prime's leviathan on-demand streaming service is frequently an exercise in futility, given the abundance of lurid video nonsense about our fraternity choking the marketplace. But I stumbled into an outstanding documentary last week - Nazis vs. Freemasons: the Robbing of the Lodges (La Mémoire Volée des Francs-Maçons).

(NOTE: The Amazon version is dubbed into English and also has English subtitles for the French interviews. The title listed on Amazon is ‘Nazis and the Freemasons’ but the onscreen title on the program itself is ‘Nazis vs. the Freemasons.’ And yes I know, that Nazi swastika in the poster above is backwards - not my artwork.)

Over the last few decades, much attention has been given to the far sexier topic of art treasures stolen by the invading forces of the Nazi regime as they tore across Europe. But it's difficult to find much when it comes to the subject of their sacking of Masonic temples in Germany and in the occupied countries. Few historians outside of the fraternity are even aware this was done, and almost no one even talked about it before the mid-1980s or so. 

Of course, there was Hitler's well-known philosophy that the Freemasons and the Jews were in cahoots to "take over the world," and that "all Jews are Freemasons; all Freemasons are Jews." So there was a direct anti-semitic aspect to the destruction of the lodges. Then there was the longstanding European claim that French Masons had started the French Revolution, and that Masons had essentially designed and controlled the entire government of France's Third Republic in the late 19th century. 

Alfred Rosenberg

Heinrich Himmler

A certain clot of influential Nazis like Alfred Rosenberg (one of the chief architects of Nazi ideology and its top "racial theorist") and SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler had their own reasons for wanting their hands on Masonic archives. Rosenberg created an entire institute for pursuing cultural, historical and anthropological "proofs" of Nazism's racial theories and especially the "Judeo-Masonic Conspiracy." His Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (or ERR) had an entire division devoted just to Masonic archives. Meanwhile, Himmler really was a full-throated devotee of occultism, and had a longstanding inkling that the secretive Masons really might be secretly hiding the the secrets to Life, the Universe and Everything in our secretive secret secrets. 

Once Hitler came to power and shuttered Germany's lodges, the ERR set up their Masonic division in the basement of Berlin's largest former Masonic Temple, while upstairs was turned into the national headquarters of the SS. They made odd housemates: Rosenberg's ERR and Himmler's SS were in direct competition with each other to see who could confiscate more cultural and artistic treasures. 

Rosenberg stored the ERR's loot at Neuschwanstein Castle, while Himmler's best finds got hauled off to Wewelsburg Castle, which became his own virtual crypto-religious shrine for the SS' most elite officers. But the invading Germans weren't just interested in stripping expensive Masonic decor or spooky props. They also gutted Masonic libraries wherever they found them. By the end of the war, Himmler had amassed the world's largest library of esoteric books made up of more than 13,000 stolen volumes from across Europe. A huge portion of them came from Masonic libraries.

Most of all, the Nazis desperately wanted the detailed membership records from the various grand lodges and lodge secretaries (along with trade unions and other voluntary associations) from every country they advanced into. The Nazis removed Masonic records and libraries across France, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, the Baltic States, Greece, and Italy.

Those records - frequently consisting of lodge petitions and other personal information - were a treasure trove for the Gestapo and other security forces and their quislings for tracking down men through their Masonic memberships, sponsors, occupations, known residences, spouses and families, and much more. France's various competing grand lodges, whether male, female or co-Masonic, made no idealogical difference to the Nazi security apparatus. Notions of regularity that Masons might obsess over were meaningless distinctions, and every grand lodge and individual lodge room was looted, regardless of whose it was. The files and confiscated libraries were ultimately sent back to Berlin where the Gestapo, the SS, and their cooperative collaborators pored over them. This was the way that an estimated 250,000 Freemasons wound up being systematically arrested and sent to the camps throughout Europe. 

Because of U.S. and British bombing campaigns on Berlin as early as 1942, the archives began getting shipped eastward into Poland and Czechoslovakia by the Nazis to avoid destruction - only to be captured when the Russians marched in from the opposite direction. Russia's Red Army were the first of the allied forces to roll into Berlin and seize control of the Nazi's centralized record keeping infrastructure. But the story didn't conclude in 1945. When the war ended, the Masonic records never returned. 

The Soviets under Stalin were every bit as obsessive about spying on private citizens as their defeated Nazi enemies had been, and just as ruthless when it came to stuffing their ideological foes into the dark hole of the gulags. The leaders of the Russian Revolution and their successors had been every bit as anti-Masonic as Hitler's Germany, for many of the very same reasons, just without the grim efficiency. So Stalin was happy to capitalize on the Nazi's diligence - those very same Masonic records were packed up from Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia and shipped farther eastward as fast as the Russians could find boxcars and trucks. And they remained behind the Iron Curtain for the duration of the Cold War. Because the Soviets had taken all of the former Nazi territories east of Berlin, all of those former Masons still alive throughout the Warsaw Pact countries could still be traced by Moscow through their old lodge records.

All of this is partially why this very topic today brings out heated fights in, for instance, Italy, when government prosecutors periodically demand that grand lodges turn over their membership records in their regular-as-clockwork anti-Mafia investigations. European Masons have the past as a grim example of how their own private information can be used against them, and it's a large part of the reason they aren't as publicly showy over their Masonic memberships as we are in the U.S. The wartime experience is also why European Masons on the continent are far less consumed by discussions of regularity and recognition at the local lodge level — they know from experience that the enemies and persecutors and would-be destroyers of our fraternity make no such distinctions.

Another reason for Moscow's desire to pore over the Masonic archives was strategic, once the Cold War was in full swing. A large proportion of the military and political leaders of the Allied forces, the post-war Marshall Plan administrators and officers, and leading NATO figures were Freemasons. Many of them were quite public about it (especially the Americans), so the Russians clung to the Masonic information in case it could be used for their own purposes. After Stalin's death, that particular obsession fell by the wayside, but the lost Masonic archives simply disappeared into the massive maw of Soviet bureaucratic detritus. 

Think of the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Patricia Grimsted

It wasn't until 1999 after the fall of the USSR that those decades-old Masonic archives began turning up in forgotten warehouses dotted all across the fallen Soviet empire. That was thanks to the detective work of the redoubtable Patricia Grimsted, an American historian who has specialized in investigating confiscated Nazi treasures, files and other lost cultural material. She is quite literally the hero of this detective story.

This video was originally a French program, but dubbed into English. At 51 minutes, it would make an excellent presentation for a lodge's Masonic education. It features Pierre Mollier, the Director of the Grand Orient de France's incredible Museum of Freemasonry in Paris; historians Andre Combs and Sophie Coeure; Philippe Charuel, Grand Master of the Grande Loge de France; Marc Menschaert, Grand Master of the Grand Orient de Belgique; Philippe Gugliemi, Past GM of the Grand Orient de France; and Patricia Grimsted, whose dogged investigation of Nazi plunder over the years led to the ultimate return of these archives.

Memorial Day: Heroes and Giants Walked In Our Midst

Brother Michel Henry Bellon during his stint in the British SAS

If you suddenly found yourself in a society that outlawed Masonic affiliation tomorrow, how important would it be to you to be a Freemason? 

Memorial Day may be the most poignant time of all to pause and reflect upon that question. Of this very special and sombre holiday that makes up part of America's unique "civic religion," the soldier, journalist and poet Joyce Kilmer wrote:

Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,

They kept the faith and fought the fight.

Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom and the Right. 

May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.

Since I started this blog back in 2006, I have very, very rarely ever posted an entire presentation or paper written by anyone else here. Usually it's because of space, and I generally link to an online version elsewhere. But my friend and Brother Shelby Chandler at Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4 in Virginia sent the following story to me this week as Memorial Day approached, and I felt that it was especially timely. 

Fredericksburg, Virginia is home what is believed to be the oldest Masonic cemetery in the United States. For the last 15 years, the brethren of Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4 (George Washington's own Mother lodge) have held an outdoor Memorial Day presentation at the historic 1784 Old Masonic Cemetery at the corner of Charles and George Streets. Traditionally, the lodge reads off the list of Masons interred there who died in the service of America, and they pay tribute to a noteworthy Brother from the past. 

I've highlighted some deeply troubling anti-Masonic activity in Europe the last few months, and this story today brings up something vital that every Freemason should ask himself: are we Freemasons in our lives and in all we do, or are we just in some club called 'The Freemasons?' As Masons, we must hold ourselves to standards of conduct higher than others so that we may stand as shining examples in society. That is how we change the world one man at a time – whether that world is at peace, at war, or in the brief, chaotic pauses between the two throughout history.

The paper that follows was given on Saturday at the cemetery, but the subject was a bit different this year. The Brother who was the subject of this presentation did not die in battle, but in 2014. He was not an American at the time he fought the fight, he was French. And though his father and step-father were both Masons, he did not join the fraternity of Freemasonry until he was 51 years old. 

And yet, I think you will agree that his story is worth repeating here.

Not every hero wears a helmet, or a cape for that matter. When the fighters and survivors of World War II were our living parents and grandparents, these everyday lionhearts and giants walked silently in our midst every day. Keep their memories alive by telling their stories for them, because the only way we can successfully chart the future is to learn from the past. 


And remember.

---

Michel Henry Bellon

Michel Henry Bellon

On November 16, 2007, Bro. Michel Henry Bellon gave a presentation on his life as a 14-year old boy within the French Resistance of Nazi-Occupied France and the Masonic leadership that had helped organized these French patriots. Brother Michel Henry Bellon was born in Paris, France on December 19, 1926.

France surrendered to Germany on 22 June 1940, and those who resented Germany occupation and the Vichy government formed cells that were collectively named the French Resistance. His father was a Freemason as was his stepfather, who was one of these underground leaders and Michel was a boy who was invaluable to the Vercors's efforts simply because he spoke English and would become the translator for three American OSS agents who were sent into enemy territory to train them on the use of weapons and ordinance.

At the time of the occupation, France was divided into two zones; the Occupied Zone, which was directly controlled by the Nazis, and the Free Zone, which was the new French Vichy Government who supported the Axis powers. The German Gestapo, or the German secret police controlled the internal operations of the Occupied Zone, while the Milice francaise, or “French militia” (also known as the Milliciens) a paramilitary force trained by the Gestapo who controlled internal operations within the Free Zone. On October 13, 1940, once the Millicien was established and trained, the government of the Vichy Free Zone immediately decreed that all Freemasons were to be arrested and many Brethren went to concentration camps.

As Bro. Michel reported, following this, the Freemasons within the Occupied Zone came together to discuss the idea of the first active-passive Resistance force, and left the meeting agreeing to three active participants per Lodge in this resistance. As a result of this meeting, the natural network of 211 French Masonic Lodges became the core foundation of the newly established French Resistance, the Maquis de Vercors. The agreement of three members was so that if any of the three were caught, the rest would be protected and none would know which others took their place. It was further agreed that the majority of the Masons were to join the various military groups with the intention of returning home to teach others what martial skills they learned.

The decision was made that the Resistance should gather intelligence, rescue downed allied pilots, to assist escaping Jews, and to support allied espionage infiltration. It was also later recognized that some of these Masons would freely volunteer to work within the Vichy and German governments in order to collect information to be sent to London. Michel’s stepfather, Roger Bellon, was a leader of one of these Masonic Lodges and was one of the three selected from his Lodge, and would go on to become a Commander of the Andromeda sector of the Resistance. On June 17, 1941, this group as a whole formed the Provisional Council of French Masonry working out of an apartment in Paris and communicating with London; this would be the decision making committee of action until 1944.

Bro. Michel tells of a story of Bro. Levant, who for a time headed this Provisional Council. He was arrested, sentenced and then sent before some elderly German gentleman of great authority, who repeatedly asked him for his “birthdates.” Shortly thereafter, Bro. Levant realized that his interrogator was a German Freemason who was attempting to learn of his “Masonic birthdates,” and once he established that Bro. Levant was indeed a French Mason, the German Brother not only let him go, but gave him the name of the informer who turned him in; a French Mason who happened to be part of the resistance himself.

While many Freemasons were captured, tortured and killed by the enemy, of those captured, few were imprisoned but most were sent to Germany to be interred into concentration camps. Bro. Michel’s father was one of those Masons who suffered this fate, and after much abuse he would lay down his working tools at Auschwitz. 

Roger Bellon, Michel's step-father, upon his liberation from Buchenwald in 1945 by US forces

Likewise, Michel’s stepfather was eventually captured and sent to Buchenwald, but was later freed by Patton’s army on April 11, 1945 (photo). 

Bro. Michel himself also had his own part to play in this resistance movement. Initially, he was sent to the Free Zone, where he collected information and delivered documents and reports to people going back to England.

Bro. Michel notes that as a kid, he befriended an Italian officer who hated the Germans and Mussolini so much that he would divulge information to him on what the Germans were doing, and young Michel would get this information “to the right people.” Because of this, his stepfather eventually had to come for him, informing him that his name was on the German’s capture list, and that they were coming to arrest him. So he was taken to a school where he would be safe, and which happened to be a central and major part of the French resistance with regard to activity. Michel joined as a soldier of Aster sector.

Bro. Michel reported that when he first got to the school, the British would drop night deliveries of basic-need items to them twice a week. But shortly after the Americans joined the fight, the Americans took over and begin to drop clothes, ammunition, rifles, machine guns, mortars, and explosives nightly at an unprecedented rate. Then one night, three Americans dropped from the sky and informed them that they were agents sent there to train them in the use of these items. They trained in the use of this equipment and worked together to clear the field below the school for incoming gliders and paratroopers.

Over time, they received word that someone reported to the Nazis of strangers in the area, and it was decided that it was time for the Americans to leave. The head of the school informed the Americans that they would need to escape, but someone would have to be their interpreter in their travels. Since Bro. Michel spoke English, he was assigned the duty of getting them out of France. Bro. Michel laughed as he told us that his first assignment in this duty was to get normal French clothes for these Americans to wear, which was difficult because most Frenchmen stood 5’8” to 5’10” and the shortest American was 6’3”. He eventually found them proper attire, and the four of them begun their five day journey to the Spanish border. He informed the Americans that if they were discovered during this journey or if anyone attempted to talk to them, he would excuse them as deaf and dumb and would use sign language. It was during this journey that Michel would see many atrocities done to the people whose bodies were left for others to see by the Germans. Bro. Michel reported that seeing the bodies of rape victims and children was something that he would remember forever and always made him very angry to recall it.

They would eventually make it to the American Embassy in Spain and sent immediately to London where the Americans were separated from him to be officially debriefed.

Before leaving France, his stepfather, Roger Bellon, directed Michel to seek out his godfather in London, who was a French General. Michel was not able to find him, so the British persuaded him to join the British Army SAS or paratroopers. He made his five required jumps and received his wings before his godfather found him and used his influence to process Michel out of the British Army. Michel was then sent to Morocco to recertify as a pilot because Michel was known to have flown planes since he was 12 years of age. While training as a French pilot in Marrakech, he received his pilot’s license and was selected as one of ten French men to enter into a US Army Air Corps program to train French pilots on American fighter planes.

Initially he flew a transport plane while in Marrakech, but the American flying program had him relocate to Casablanca, Morocco, where he was given the opportunity to fly American planes such as the P-51 Mustang, P-47 Thunderbolt and B-17 Flying Fortress and as a completion of this program, Bro. Michel would likewise fly four combat missions as a bomber pilot. It was during this time that Bro. Michel would meet with the Pasha Thami El Glaoui, Lord of the Atlas, who was a friend of the Bellon family, and gifted Michel with a pair of fighting knives for his bravery during his time in the French Resistance.

When the war ended, Bro. Michel was 21 years old, and for his service in the resistance he received the Croix de Guerre, or Military Cross, which outside of the Legion of Honor is France's highest military citation that any military personnel could receive for acts of bravery and heroism. He received this award for destroying a Nazi fuel and munitions depot when he was 17. Americans who have received this medal are George Patton, Audie Murphy, Dwight Eisenhower and Jimmy Stewart.

His citation reads, in part:

Decision no. 297

SECRETARY OF STATE TO THE PRESIDENCY OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE

CITE THE ORDER OF THE BRIGADE

Michel Henry Bellon

"In August 1943, as a Liaison Officer of the Aster Network sector of the France Fighting Force (FFC) Nestle. Voluntarily committed at seventeen years of age to the army of the Vercors and took part in the French regions of Rousset, Romans, Vasmieux, Thains and Lyon. He showed great courage and military qualities by successfully destroying at the peril of his own life, a German ammunition depot. After the Liberation he joined the 2nd Airborne Infantry Regiment 4th Battalion of Foot. This quote includes the award of the Military Cross with Bronze Star."

But one of his favorite memories was when he finally came to the United States in 1951 to become an American citizen, he found that his paper work was already processed, and three of his American friends from the war were present to be with him when took upon himself the oath of citizenship.

As for his Masonic record, Brother Michel was initiated, passed and raised in Amity Lodge, Massachusetts: EA 11/4/77, FC 12/9/77, MM 1/17/78. He would later affiliate with Virginia's Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4 on 5/8/98.

Brother Michel would go on to become a model American citizen, flying as a pilot for Air France, and he would meet his second wife, Rita and remain with her till his death. He loved being a Freemason and a member of Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4, and he served as its Tyler from 2004 to 2008, and Masonic Home Ambassador from 2004 to 2010, until his health began to deteriorate. In later years, he was often reported to say that he would miss his time away from his brethren and he enjoyed those moments they would visit him. Brothers would share similar feelings that he was an exemplary Freemason who cared for people and enjoyed the best in each individual and distinguished himself with modesty, humility and curtesy.

He passed to the Celestial Lodge at the age of 88 on August 6, 2014.

As for those of us who called him friend and Brother, it is our lot to honor the courage and love of a good brother and to remind others of his accomplishments which has greatly contributed to the accolades and honor to the whole of our Masonic legacy. Let those who never met him learn from the story of his life that the sacrifices of those before us will never be in vain. Through Brother Michel, let us recognize the Masonic ideas and virtues that we promise to inculcate and to renew ourselves to our obligations. 

Let us remember Brother Michel Bellon.

Research Team on Bro. Michel Bellon: Bros. Dennis David, Christopher Decker PM, Anthony Rudder PM and Shelby Chandler PM

---

Brother Michel told his story at a meeting of National Sojourners Chapter 545 on November 16th, 2007. You can see a video of that presentation on YouTube below.

Anti-Masonry: Be Careful What You Print

Here's a publishing tip: Don't go rooting around in Nazi propaganda for your stock photos.

During the anti-Masonic media tumult in England in February, the Manchester, England-based Catholic Times newspaper decided to weigh in with their own take on Freemasonry by publishing a letter from one of their readers on the 'Letters To The Editor' page. Blaring the headline, 'Dangers Lurking In Masonic System Of Philosophy,' the letter contained the usual array of canards against the fraternity. Given the Roman Catholic Church's official strictures against joining Masonic lodges, that's to be expected in a paper specifically skewed to that particular audience. If any organization has the right to create their own lopsided messaging that is specifically anti-Masonic in nature, it would certainly be the Catholic press, no matter how incorrect they might be.

Unfortunately, the large graphic they chose to accompany the letter couldn't have been a stupider choice. 

Immediately below the anti-Masonic letter was a different letter, this one a complaint that the paper had recently published blatantly anti-semitic material in an earlier issue. Anthony Silkoff, the Interfaith and Social Action officer of the Board of Deputies of British Jews  wrote a strong objection to the Catholic Times about a different reader’s letter which had alleged “a dramatic increase in Jewish voices on the radio”, as well as complaining about a “Jewish comedian” using sexual slang. Mr. Silkoff described the original letter in the paper as “racist drivel,” and his message was printed on the same page as the anti-Masonic letter. Right under it, as a matter of fact.

So what did the Catholic Times use to illustrate their reader's takedown of the fraternity? 

A photo that's appeared in books like The Hiram Key and others, and apparently has been around since the 1940s. 

I'll let an article by Daniel Sugarman from TheJC.com website explain it:

The man, blindfolded with his trouser leg rolled up, was standing in front of a door with two Stars of David above it.

However, as Mr Silkoff highlighted, the picture of the man was taken from a Nazi-era antisemitic pamphlet about Jews using Freemasonry for subversion.

In a second letter to the Catholic Times, Mr Silkoff wrote: “At best, this is an incredibly grave mistake for you to use this Nazi image, and especially to use it on the same page where you had to print an apology for antisemitism.

“Where did you find this Nazi image and how did it end up in your paper?”

Mr Silkoff told the JC: “This episode has caused such concern because the Board really values the strong relationship we have with Catholics in Britain.

“We cooperate on lots of issues, particularly education and faith schools.
Our many friends in the Catholic church will be just as surprised as us to see this happen twice.”

Mr Flaherty said: “I had no idea the photograph was an antisemitic image.”

He said he had found the image on Google and not checked its source.

Ooops. Pesky details like that tend to reinforce the beliefs of Freemasons, especially in England and other European countries, that the press is never to be trusted.

Just as a matter of reference, two recent surveys of U.S. and Canadian Freemasons have shown that as many as 23% of Masons in those two countries identify themselves as Catholic. The fraternity does not restrict Catholics from joining. On the contrary—Freemasons do not ask a petitioner or their own members what particular faith they espouse. 

These two surveys were anonymous and unofficial. Freemasonry is designed specifically NOT divide its members by religion, politics, race, economic class, or profession. As a result, when Speculative Freemasonry first became widely known in the first half of the 18th century, the lodge was the first organization of its kind in England where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews met and socialized side by side without discrimination.

Apparently that is still considered a radical notion by a shrinking handful of people who just can't contain their contempt for it to this day.

Huge Stash of Nazi-Confiscated Masonic and Occult Books Discovered

The grand lodge building of the Norwegian Order of Freemasons in Oslo.

A collection of 13,000 books on occult subjects, including Freemasonry, were amassed by Nazi SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler's forces during Germany's wartime occupation of Norway. The collection was stolen, in part, from the Norwegian Order of Freemasons' grand lodge library in Oslo. 

Shortly after the war ended, the collection was put into a storage building near Prague, Czechoslovakia.  In 1948, the Communists took power, and as part of the Warsaw Pact nations, they were effectively lost behind the Iron Curtain for many years.  Even after Czechoslovakia's opening to the West, they remained hidden away without any record since the 1950s.

These were just a small part of an enormous library of works on Masonic, occult, esoteric and witchcraft subjects that were confiscated throughout occupied Europe by a division of the Nazi SS.

From a story on the Prague Post website:

Books on witchcraft and the occult collected by SS chief Heinrich Himmler were found in a storage depot near Prague used by the Czech National Library.

The depot has not been accessed since the 1950s, according to UK tabloid the Daily Mail, which cited Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang. 

Bjørn Helge Horrisland, a Norwegian Freemason historian, told Verdens Gang he was involved in identifying some of the books. “Many of them belonged to the central Norwegian Order of Freemasons library in Oslo,” he said.

The collection of books totals some 13,000 volumes, some 6,000 of which allegedly came from a library of books owned by the Norwegian Order of Freemasons. The Masonic library [was] seized by Nazis when Norway was occupied during World War II.

Himmler began amassing the collection in 1935 and had a strong interest in the occult, He had a special unit within the SS to collect and manage information on witchcraft.

Many of the books deal with witchcraft trials in Germany, and Himmler reportedly believed that the trials were part of historical plot to weaken the Germans. He also claimed to be descended from a witch that was executed.

 Himmler also believed that knowledge of the occult could be used to benefit the Third Reich.

The books were not meant for Prague but for Wewelsburg Castle in Germany. Himmler intended to make that castle a modern-day Camelot with a round table of SS officers in the place of knights. Himmler signed a 100-year lease on the triangular castle in 1934. The building is now a museum.

The books will now be examined by scholars, and a Norwegian TV company is planning a documentary.

The project to recover the library of books received European Economic Area funds from Norway and is a result of a cooperation between Stiftelsen Arkivet, the National Library of Norway and the Czech National Library, according to Norwegian new server TheLocal.no.

Himmler's interest in collecting occult items has been well-documented and has inspired works of fiction including the 1981 film 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'

Himmler was captured May 21, 1945. He committed suicide with a cyanide capsule May 23 and was buried in an unmarked grave near near Lüneburg, Germany. The exact location is not known.

In 1935, Himmler founded the Ahnenerbe Forschungs-und Lehrgemeinschaft (the Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society), to use the methods of science to bend history and archeology enough to back up the Nazis’ racial and cultural policies. (In the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Nazi group looking for the Ark of the Covenant is supposed to be a contingent of Ahnenerbe archeologists.)

The tales of Himmler's alleged fascination with the occult have waxed and waned over the years. The Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) was formed in 1939 as part of the SS, combined with the SD, and was subordinate to Himmler.  It's purpose was to fight all enemies of the Reich both inside and outside of Germany.  It eventually grew to become a massive bureaucracy with close to one hundred sub-sections, divided into seven main divisions. Amt II was headed up by SS-Brigadefuhrer Professor Franz Albert Six, and was dedicated to "Ideological Investigation." 

Not long afterwards, Amt II was reorganized and split off as Amt VII for "Ideological Research and Evaluation," again headed by Franz Six (and after 1943 by SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul Dittel.) Their mission was partially to create anti-semetic and anti-Masonic propaganda, as well as surveying occupied Nazi population's public opinion.

Modern scholarship has dug into captured Nazi documents long held by Warsaw Pact countries, which have revealed Amt VII's other activities, including the collection of stolen  esoteric libraries. They also, allegedly, created an extensive card catalog on publications and other resources regarding witchcraft, a special interest of Himmler's (it was long whispered that a relative of his had been burned at the stake for being a witch). 

After the Soviets took parts of Berlin, and Germany was divided into East and West after the war, many of the records and books from their confiscation of occult, esoteric and Masonic libraries eventually wound up in Russia, the Silesia region of Poland, and Czechoslovakia, and were not researched until the 1990's.

In 2002, 750 crates of Masonic objects and papers stolen from occupied lodges and Grand Lodges across Europe and held by the Russian Military State Archive were delivered to the Museum of Freemasonry of the Grand Orient of France in Paris. These included membership lists that were used to help round up Freemasons to be sent to concentration camps. (The entire library of the Grand Orient of France was confiscated when the Nazis occupied Paris, and the books were taken to Berlin and subsequently burned.) 

A lengthy work, Restitution of Confiscated Art Works - Wish Or Reality?, was published in Czechoslovakia in 2008 as a collection of presentations from a conference in the city of Liberec. Buried in it are several references to the RSHA Amt VII unit's activities in assembling a vast library on the occult, witchcraft, esoteric, and Masonic books, eventually estimated to be in excess of 160,000 volumes:

Most of the books that traversed Sudeten crossroads had been held before August 1943 as part of the RSHA Amt VII (Seventh Office) library in Berlin, seized by the SD Main Office (Hauptamt) and the Gestapo starting in 1936. With the merger of the security services in late 1939, most of the collected books and archives preserved by the SD Main Office came under control of the newly formed RSHA Amt II (Second Office), headed by SS-Brigadeführer Franz Alfred Six, charged with investigation of political opponents (Gegnerforschung).

Starting in December 1941, Six organized the Seventh Office (Amt VII), specially for “Ideological Research and Evaluation” (Welt- anschauliche Forschung und Auswertung), split off from the other more  operational offices. Having inherited most of the SD/RSHA library and archival loot, Amt VII was responsible for organizing the RSHA library and archival centers, although some of the books went to other RSHA units. Most of the Amt VII staff, which Six headed until 1943, were members of the SS. Most of the books and archives were held in the buildings of two liquidated Masonic lodges the Gestapo had commandeered (Emserstrasse 12/13, and Eisenacherstasse 11/13), although some were stored in other depots in Berlin. From the spring of 1943, SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul Dittel, who from the start had been particularly involved with the collected Masonic materials, was the last head of Amt VII. Yet his title remained “acting,” indicative of the reduced importance and “mysterious twilight” of that unit towards the end of the war, as he made clear to his British interrogators afterwards.

During the Cold War, little was known about Amt VII, because its major surviving records were not publicly accessible. The Soviets found many SD Main Office administrative files among the massive RSHA-plundered archives they captured in Silesia (Wölfelsdorf), along with those of later Amt VII operations, and they seized a few more in the bombed-out RSHA Eisenacherstasse building in Berlin. Some of those files they passed on to the Stasi in the 1950s, and those are now being processed with other Stasi RSHA holdings by the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. Others were captured in Silesia by the Poles, came out of hiding in 1989, and were traded to the Bundesarchiv in 1997. However, many important SD Main Office and subsequent RSHA Amt VII files remain in Moscow, not all of them open for research. Combining clues from documents now in Moscow and Berlin provides hitherto unknown revelations about RSHA library operations, especially those in the Sudeten castles.

[SNIP]

Alleged occult elements in the Nazi ideology and Himmler’s interest in neo-paganism and Masonic rituals have aroused widespread interest since the defeat of the National Socialist regime. Even the History TV Channel produced a documentary on“Hitler and the Occult,”suggesting what would seemingly be a sensationalist theme. The popular internet Wikipedia suggests that ‘Nazism and Occultism’ is usually “a topic for sensational authors in pursuit of strong sales,” but it prominently cites Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, and his serious Oxford doctoral thesis on the Austrian Arisophists. Other important scholarly studies have analyzed occult themes in Nazi circles, especially under Heinrich Himmler, and the Masonic Library, confiscated from one of the alleged ‘enemies of the regime,’ was one of the most important components in the RSHA Amt VII holdings. Himmler’s interest in witchcraft and the supernatural was highlighted in Amt VII’s special unit devoted to Witchcraft (C 3), Sonderauftrag H, and Himmler’s card file on witches (Hexenkartothek), all of which are well documented. Reportedly, the materials gathered for the Witchcraft unit were sent to Schlesiersee [in Poland] with the Masonic collections, rather than the Sudeten castles, and that unit had ceased to function by the time of evacuation.

In the Sudeten castles, on the other hand, we find Amt VII SS specialists busily sorting and cataloguing occult literature, which the SD Main Office and Amt VII library had been collecting. Suddenly, that section of the library assumed a major prominence, and a top- secret project was launched on its basis—another important example of Nazi preoccupation with the occult. 

Himmler saw the SS as a kind of reimagining of the of the chivalric Teutonic Order, who were originally founded  in 1190, much like the Templars, to protect crusading pilgrims to the Holy Land.

Wewelsburg castle in Germany

He came to the town of Buren in the Westphalia region of western Germany in 1934, and took over the imposing castle of Wewelsburg. The castle was to become the center of a college for new SS officers and Himmler’s own elite Knightly Order. The castle became the place of initiation of his new order and the new spiritual center of the Nazi paganism that was based on Germanic legends. Ahnenerbe’s headquarters were based in Wewelsburg Castle.

Himmler planned very big. His goal was to make the surrounding village a complete SS colony, only for members of the SS and their families. In 1939, a concentration camp was established to provide 3,900 prisoners to work on the project. More than 1,200 were worked or starved to death building Himmler’s dream.

Himmler saw Wewelsburg as his own private Camelot which, of course, needed a Round Table for its knights. In the north tower, a round chamber was constructed, with a sunken area in the floor and a round, oak table.

There were just twelve seats around it, for the top dozen officers of the SS. In the domed ceiling a stylized, golden swastika set in stone can still be seen today, modified with the symbol of the SS at each corner. A different subterranean round chamber immediately below it was to be a crypt for the ashes of all dead SS members, complete with an eternal flame. Another one of Himmler’s goals was to find the Holy Grail, and a special room in the castle was set aside for the Grail when it was found.

The Nazis went to great lengths to engineer an elaborate explanation that Jesus was descended from Jacob, who, they said, was not Jewish at all, but an Aryan. Another part of Ahnenerbe’s mission was to prove the origin of the Aryans, and they even sent archeological expeditions to India, Tibet to seek evidence of the earliest appearance of their “Master Race”.

As a footnote to this post, I came across a brief account of Freemasonry in Norway under the Occupation, and especially about the grand lodge building in Oslo. From Freemasonry Under The Nazis by David Lewis, published in 2012:

When Norway was invaded in 1940 the Masonic temple in Oslo was converted to an army barracks and the order dissolved. Major Vidkun Quisling, the Nazi collaborator, had Freemasonry as point no. 1 for action on his agenda and emptied Masonic buildings and destroyed some of them. The main Temple in Oslo was converted to officers’ quarters but, according to one brother who visited it recently, amazingly it was not vandalised -- the only one in Europe known to have been left untouched by the Nazis. A number of masons were murdered. When he was tried after the war his trial, ironically, took place in a former Masonic temple before he was convicted and shot. 

“I was personally involved in identifying some of the books. Many of them belonged to the central Norwegian Order of Freemasons library in Oslo,” Bjørn Helge Horrisland, a Norwegian Freemason historian, told VG.