5 Protesting Waldheim Visit Detained in Italy

VATICAN CITY — Famed Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld and four American Jewish protesters were detained and turned over to Italian anti-terrorist police Wednesday as they attempted to demonstrate at the airport against the arrival of Austrian President Kurt Waldheim for a controversial state meeting with Pope John Paul II.

The special anti-terrorist police questioned them for several hours about a suspicious fire earlier in the evening that brought emergency crews to Klarsfeld’s hotel room near the Vatican where investigators found six smoke bombs and leaflets protesting the Waldheim visit. The five were released shortly after midnight but could not be reached for comment.

Barred by U.S.

Waldheim, a former secretary general of the United Nations who has been shunned by most countries and barred from the United States after allegations of complicity in Nazi war crimes, is to meet the Pope today in the full ceremony of a state visit. Jewish groups throughout the world and the government of Israel have protested the papal reception, and the United States has pointedly downgraded its diplomatic representation at the formal ceremony.

Klarsfeld and the four Americans, led by Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute in Riverdale, N.Y., had earlier protested the Vatican’s invitation to Waldheim by walking slowly up the broad stairs of St. Peter’s Basilica dressed in striped concentration camp uniforms bearing the yellow Star of David, reading Jewish prayers and singing Hebrew songs, including the national anthem of Israel.

“What the Pope is doing is whitewashing Waldheim; it’s a terrible thing,” Klarsfeld said as she joined Weiss and his three companions under the portico of the world’s largest Christian church. “We are all very upset that at a time when virtually all democratic leaders of the West have shunned Waldheim because of his Nazi past, the Pope has chosen to meet him.”

As about a hundred tourists and almost as many journalists looked on, Weiss said: “It is morally reprehensible to embrace an unrepentant Nazi war criminal. We are here to speak out for the 6 million people who can no longer speak out for themselves.”

He referred to the 6 million Jews who died in Nazi death camps during World War II.

Weiss and others, including Austrian and Italian protesters, promised to demonstrate again during Waldheim’s meeting with the pontiff by marching from Rome’s central synagogue to the Vatican. A Rome vigil protesting the meeting will continue until Waldheim returns to Vienna, probably sometime Friday, the organizers said.

Trackers of Barbie

Klarsfeld and her husband, Serge, are Paris-based Nazi hunters given credit for tracking down Klaus Barbie, now on trial for war crimes in Lyon, France. Detained along with her and Weiss on Wednesday were Glenn Richter, Robert Frauenglass and Bernard Glickman, all from New York.

A journalist who was briefly detained with them said Klarsfeld described the fire in her hotel room as not serious, saying it started by accident, apparently from a cigarette she was smoking. Police said they believed that the six smoke bombs found in Klarsfeld’s room were intended for use during today’s demonstration.

The papal meeting marks Waldheim’s first official trip outside Austria since his election as president last year amid allegations that he was involved as a German army officer in the deaths of Yugoslav partisans and the deportation of 40,000 Jews from Greece during World War II. Waldheim has denied the charges, but the United States put him on its “watch list” of undesirable visitors after a Justice Department inquiry in April.

Despite an international outcry over the Pope’s invitation--granted at the request of Austria, a predominantly Roman Catholic country--the Vatican has treated Waldheim’s meeting with the pontiff as no different from that of any other head of state.

‘Greeting’ Published

In keeping with the church’s effort to maintain an air of normalcy about the trip, the Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano, published a “greeting” to Waldheim in its Wednesday edition, similar to the commentaries it has published before the arrival of important foreign visitors in the past.

Headlined “Greetings to the President of Austria,” the commentary expressed hope that the visit would “further progress in construction of common and international good and promotion of moral progress.”