Austria Faces Quandary Over Waldheim Past

Kurt Waldheim once seemed the ideal candidate for the largely ceremonial post of president of Austria.

A decade as U.N. secretary general, plus two years as Austria’s foreign minister, gave him international prominence rare for the native son of such a small country. His prolonged absence from home also meant he had few domestic enemies.

Consequently, there was little surprise when the 67-year-old Waldheim topped the early opinion polls last November after kicking off his campaign for the May 4 election. His slogan: “A man the world trusts.”

Then, the unthinkable happened.

Twilight of Career

Waldheim, in the twilight years of a career that made him one of the most senior, visible diplomats of the post-World War II era, was suddenly accused of concealing a Nazi past. He was charged with complicity in atrocities against Yugoslav partisans and in the deportation of Greek Jews to death camps in 1942-43 while serving in the German Wehrmacht.

The charges, printed simultaneously last March 3 in the Austrian news weekly Profil and the New York Times, exploded over Austria like a bombshell, stunning Waldheim, throwing the campaign into chaos and traumatizing a country that has never squarely faced its own role as a part of Hitler’s Third Reich.

A string of more detailed charges, leveled mainly by the World Jewish Congress, have kept emotions high in Austria. And the issue of what Waldheim knew or did more than 40 years ago has aroused international interest.

Heated denials by Waldheim of all the charges against him and his assertion that the accusations are part of a smear campaign by the opposing Socialist Party, fearful of losing its first presidential election, have so far failed to clear the air.

“It is all a vicious campaign of defamation against me, started by those people who don’t want me to be president,” Waldheim said in an interview Friday. “It was started here in Austria and it is being steered now from New York.”

Compiling a ‘Dossier’

New York is the U.S. headquarters for the World Jewish Congress.

Waldheim said he would eventually name those who started the campaign. “We’re in the process of putting together a dossier, but for now it would not be good to name them,” he said.

To specific accusations, Waldheim has stated:

--As a teen-ager, he was never a member of the Nazi student union at the Vienna Consular Academy, a prep school, and has no idea how his name got onto its 1938 membership list.

--He belonged to a riding group that at some point established links with the infamous Sturmabteilung, Hitler’s paramilitary guard (also known as the Brown Shirts), but that a wide variety of apolitical organizations were absorbed into the Sturmabteilung (SA) after Austria’s annexation--or Anschluss--by Nazi Germany in March, 1938, and he was never a member of the SA.

“I participated in these (recreation) activities, but never in any political activities,” he stated. “Is there any document that contains my signature or a membership number?”

--He was neither involved in nor aware of the deportation of about 40,000 Jews from the Greek city of Salonika to death camps at Auschwitz and Treblinka in March, 1943, even though he was billeted four miles from the town at the time and his unit, German Army Group E, was ordered to assist those preparing the deportation, if requested.

--He was neither involved in nor knew about massacres of Yugoslav civilians by German forces although he was attached to an army command linked to them, and his commanding officer, Gen. Alexander Loehr, was later executed as a war criminal.

The World Jewish Congress has charged that, in Yugoslavia, Waldheim was “a major intelligence figure in an army of 300,000” and the head of a division responsible for interrogating prisoners. Waldheim said that, as a staff officer throughout the bitter guerrilla campaign in the mountains of Yugoslavia, he was serving as an interpreter in Pljevlje, which he said was 150 miles away from the action.

--He was aware that the Yugoslav government had sought his extradition as a war criminal in December, 1947, at a time when he was already working as the private secretary to Austria’s foreign minister, Karl Gruber, but never worried about it because he knew there was no incriminating evidence against him.

2 Villages Burned

The extradition statement, lodged with the War Crimes Commission, charged that Waldheim was involved in deciding punishments for prisoners of war and civilians in Yugoslavia and helped burn down two villages in Greece.

The Yugoslavs never followed up this request, for reasons that are unclear. Some argue that the Yugoslav government might have seen it as a potentially useful tool for political blackmail. Others maintain that the principal evidence against Waldheim came from a captured German POW who followed a common practice of denouncing as war criminals only those known to be beyond reach of the Yugoslavs--either dead or safely at home.

Waldheim says that the Yugoslavs dropped the extradition request because they “knew of the incorrectness of the information.” He noted that he was hundreds of miles away when the two Greek villages were destroyed. Observing that he often visited Yugoslavia after the war and was received--and even decorated--by the late President Josip Broz Tito, Waldheim also contends that the Yugoslavs would have objected to his visits if there were suspicions that he was a war criminal.

Premier Refuses Comment

On a visit here earlier this month, Yugoslav Premier Milka Planinc refused to enter the controversy, saying it was an internal Austrian affair.

Some of Waldheim’s explanations have been confirmed. Karl Marschall, who heads the department of the Austrian Justice Ministry responsible for political crimes and who is an expert on Austria’s de-Nazification period, confirmed that, as Waldheim asserts, a wide variety of organizations, including the volunteer fire department and recreational groups, were absorbed into the Sturmabteilung immediately after the German annexation, but they were not considered active political bodies.

Marschall also said Waldheim was screened by the Justice Ministry in 1946 and found not to be a Nazi activist. He said recent revelations had not changed that assessment.

Several of Waldheim’s former army comrades held a news conference recently to say that they, too, were unaware of the deportations of Jews from Salonika. But Salonika residents interviewed by Profil magazine insist that it would have been impossible for any German officer stationed in the area not to have noticed the disappearance of a third of the city’s population.

Waldheim on Friday repeated an explanation first offered during a national television debate Thursday, that he had been unaware of the deportations because he was not in Salonika at the time.

He said he had been sent to Salonika briefly in April, 1943, but was then ordered immediately to the Albanian capital of Tirana for duties as an interpreter and liaison officer with Italian forces there.

Waldheim said that in the summer of that year he was transferred to Athens for similar liaison duties, passing through Salonika only briefly.

He said that he returned to Salonika in the late autumn, after the deportations were complete. Waldheim said he had been able to recall his movement in detail only after reading two books on the Jewish deportations from the city.

“When I compared these accounts with my stay in the neighborhood, I wasn’t even present during the time of the deportations,” he said.

Waldheim also said that a copy of a German Army newspaper containing a prominent photo of Jews lining up for deportation had not originated in Salonika, as stated by the World Jewish Congress, but in Bratislava, where he would not have seen it.

A campaign aide later said there were no documents available to confirm Waldheim’s account.

“We’re running a presidential campaign, not a historical investigation,” he snapped.

Less Than Forthright

Waldheim’s inability to silence his accusers stems mainly from the fact that, in the past, he was less than forthright about his wartime service in Yugoslavia and Greece.

“I doubt if many of his close friends even knew he was there,” said a Waldheim acquaintance of 20 years, who requested anonymity.

Waldheim’s memoirs, published here last year, imply that he spent the rest of the war studying law in Vienna after being wounded in December, 1941, on the Russian front and could not have left Austria because the borders were closed. The 400-page book carries no reference to service in either Greece or Yugoslavia.

When asked if he now regrets not being more open in the past about his service in the Balkans, Waldheim maintained that he had not considered it an important part of his life.

“I never thought that honest service in staff units would have created a problem,” he said.

Waldheim’s insistence that he never knew of either civilian massacres or of Jewish deportations despite serving with units linked to the incidents has brought derisive responses from the World Jewish Congress.

‘Unrepentant Nazi’

“Had he come out and apologized for his actions, we might have forgiven him because we would have known he was a sleazeball, a cheat and a liar,” said Israel Singer, director general of the World Jewish Congress, earlier last week in London. “Now we know he’s an unrepentant Nazi.”

Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who resides here, has said he cannot believe Waldheim’s statement that he never knew about the atrocities.

“I say to Mr. Waldheim, ‘I’m sorry, I cannot believe you,’ ” Wiesenthal said in a British television interview last week. “ ‘I can’t say you lie; for that, I need two witnesses.’ ”

Austrians Sympathetic

In Austria, such assaults on Waldheim’s character have generated more sympathy than outrage.

Charges of a Nazi past have actually boosted his campaign for the presidency, a position he unsuccessfully sought in 1971, a year before he became U.N. secretary general. Recent polls show that his initial lead of roughly three percentage points over his principal opponent, Socialist Kurt Steyrer, widened to between six and eight points in recent weeks. Many voters, however, remain undecided.

“Between 70% and 80% of the voters believe this is all part of an election smear (by the Socialists) and not a search for truth,” said Rudolf Bretschneider, managing director of the Fessl polling institute here.

Foreign Meddling Seen

Anger among Austrians that foreigners seem to be meddling in their election and that if Waldheim is guilty, then so are many of them, has also brought him support.

“This is all the work of the Socialists and the Jews,” said Ludwig Meckener, who runs a magazine and newspaper stall here. Others, using different language, expressed similar views.

Waldheim’s campaign organizers have begun papering over posters of Waldheim’s smiling face under his old slogan, “A man the world trusts,” with a defiant and rather different message: “We Austrians elect whom we want.”

Immediately, a noted Viennese psychiatrist suggested on national television that there was a connection between the new poster’s yellow backdrop and the yellow color of the star Jews were forced to wear after the Anschluss.

“Yellow was the only color paper available at the printers,” said Josef Antos, director of the Vienna branch of the New York advertising firm Young & Rubicam, which organized the Waldheim ad campaign.

Dropped by Ad Agency

The new slogan, however, came from Waldheim’s own office, according to Antos. The firm dropped Waldheim shortly after the accusations against him were made public.

Antos said that the six Young & Rubicam employees working on the campaign now work independently but will rejoin the firm after the election.

Socialist Party officials, who say they only began to attack the issue of Waldheim’s past after it became clear it was benefiting him, have completely repackaged their own candidate, stressing his credibility and non-controversial image.

So far, they have not challenged Waldheim on the specific issue of his Nazi involvement.

“To be accused of being a Nazi helps him more than hurts him,” said Socialist Party spokesman Robert Sterk. “The fear is that it is no longer an electoral race but a plebiscite on Waldheim.”

Credibility at Issue

Instead, the Socialists are focusing on Waldheim’s credibility, suggesting that someone who concealed part of his war record can neither be believed on other issues nor respected as a president. (The Austrian president serves as a symbol of continuity and presides at state occasions, but also is empowered to dissolve Parliament and can occasionally challenge the government).

“He’s dancing around the truth,” Socialist Chancellor Fred Sinowatz said of Waldheim. “The Austrian head of state, not the head of some club, is being elected, and he must not be tainted in the slightest degree.”

Added party spokesman Sterk, “Anyone who has trouble with the truth isn’t fit to be president.”

This theme is captured in the revised campaign of Socialist candidate Steyrer, a former health minister who is hardly a household name even in his own country.

“A president as he should be,” reads the message on his new posters. “At home and abroad, uncontroversial.”

Debate Has Little Impact

Although a major television debate took place Thursday night, it was clear that the contents of a three-page file on Waldheim from the archives of the War Crimes Commission, which had been stored at the United Nations in New York, would have a far greater impact on the election outcome.

That document is believed to contain many of the accusations initially made by the Yugoslav government 39 years ago. The contents of the file are confidential but were shown to Austrian and Israeli ambassadors in New York on Wednesday.

Two Austrian envoys, who reportedly viewed the file for 17 minutes, indicated that it shed no new light on the controversy. The Israeli, who spent 80 minutes with the file, said it made further investigations necessary.

Incumbent Austrian President Rudolf Kirschlaeger also has promised to read the file and to pass some form of public judgment on it. His reaction could be critical to the election’s outcome.