Pope Greets Waldheim, Discusses Controversy : Ex-Prisoners of Nazis Cry ‘Shame!’ as Accused War Criminal Makes State Visit to the Vatican

President Kurt Waldheim of Austria was formally received in a state visit Thursday by Pope John Paul II, and Waldheim said afterward that they had talked about the accusations that he committed World War II crimes.

Earlier, derisive shouts of “Shame!” and “Hangman!” were directed at Waldheim by former concentration camp inmates just outside the Vatican as the Austrian leader arrived for his meeting with the pontiff.

Waldheim told reporters that he and the Pope had talked privately about the furor aroused by the Pope’s reception of Waldheim.

“Yes, I talked with Pope John Paul II this morning about the accusations leveled against me about what I’m alleged to have done during the war, but in a marginal way,” he said.

‘Speaks for Itself’

“The Pope knew from the start the problems that the visit might raise, but he wished it to take place nonetheless,” he said “The fact alone that the Pope did receive me in such a cordial way speaks for itself.”

Waldheim has been accused of aiding the deportation of 40,000 Jews from Greece, of complicity in the deaths of Yugoslav partisans and of mistreatment of Allied war prisoners when he was a German army officer during World War II.

Waldheim’s visit with John Paul began with an elaborate welcoming ceremony, after which the two men met privately in the papal library for 35 minutes. Then, they exchanged prepared speeches in German in which neither acknowledged the outcry that has surrounded their encounter.

Protesters With Signs

About 200 yards from St. Peter’s Square, which was closed to normal traffic by a cordon of Italian police, a small cluster of about 150 protesters raised signs bearing the names of notorious Nazi death camps and a miniature scaffold with a knotted hangman’s noose.

Some of the demonstrators wore concentration camp uniforms bearing yellow Stars of David, and a group of Italian former inmates raised their arms to display the numbers tattooed there in the death camps.

As the Waldheim entourage raced through St. Peter’s Square, the protesters chanted “Assassin!” “Shame!” and “Hangman!” and one demonstrator tossed 30 silver coins onto the flagstone paving to symbolize the betrayal of Jesus by Judas.

One man cried out in Italian, “It’s useless for the Pope to go to Auschwitz to cry for our dead and then receive this Nazi.”

The formal reception for the Austrian president, while elaborate, was identical to that given to other visiting heads of state, including President Reagan when he made a state visit to the Holy See in 1983.

In his formal welcoming address, John Paul praised Waldheim’s career as an Austrian diplomat and as secretary general of the United Nations from 1972 to 1982.

“Your activity to date in international life as a diplomat and foreign minister of your country and also during your term--filled with responsibility--in the United Nations, was always devoted to securing peace among peoples,” the Pope said in German. “Your professional and lifetime experiences in this field can now be of service for your highly regarded country as the highest representative of the Austrian people.”

Praise for Austria

The Pope also praised Austria for accepting thousands of refugees from his native Poland, which he said the country did “because after the end of World War II, Austria has taken a free, democratic and responsible role.”

Waldheim replied that “you, Holy Father, have never stopped tirelessly raising your voice all over the world for the great aim of peace between peoples.”

In a reference to what Vatican aides said was a private discussion of peace and disarmament, Waldheim said that disarmament alone cannot provide peace.

“What matters is spiritual disarmament that leads to the reduction of preconceived enmity between peoples, races and religions,” he said. “Christianity has outlined for us a clear path: the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount.”

‘More Incensed Than Ever’

After reading the formal speeches, one of the leading American Jewish activists among Thursday’s protesters, Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute in Riverdale, N.Y., said, “We are more incensed than ever.”

He said that during Waldheim’s tenure at the United Nations, more anti-Israeli resolutions than ever before were passed, including the resolution equating Zionism with racism. “To applaud Waldheim’s U.N. years is to rub salt in the wounds,” Weiss said.

Predicting an enduring setback in Catholic-Jewish relations, outraged Jews have expressed fear that the papal invitation has had the effect of rehabilitating Waldheim, who had been ostracized by the international community since the war crimes charges surfaced during his campaign for election to the Austrian presidency last year.

The government of Israel and virtually all major Jewish organizations have protested, some threatening to cancel a planned meeting on Sept. 11 when the Pope lands in Miami to begin his second American pilgrimage.

‘No Less Than a Whitewash’

On Thursday, Rabbi Gilbert Klapperman, president of the Synagogue Council of America, echoed dozens of other protests when he said that “this (meeting) is no less than a whitewash of an international figure who has been accused of complicity in the Holocaust.”

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, speaking in Jerusalem, called it “an outrageous act . . . (that) could be interpreted as a justification for crimes of which Waldheim is accused.”

The United States, which put Waldheim on its “watch list” of undesirable visitors, expressed its displeasure within the bounds of diplomatic protocol by sending a low-level diplomat instead of Ambassador Frank Shakespeare as its representative at the diplomatic reception that followed the papal audience. Britain, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Argentina and the Netherlands were among other countries that did not send ambassadors. At least five countries--Costa Rica, Honduras, Monaco, Guatemala and Mexico--shunned the reception entirely.

Expected to Leave Today

Here in Rome, the anti-Waldheim demonstration continued Thursday night, and organizers promised they would go on until the Austrian president leaves Rome, probably sometime today.

About 350 protesters gathered late in the evening at Rome’s central synagogue, which the Pope visited in a precedent-breaking effort at conciliation last year, and marched on the Vatican singing Hebrew songs and chanting against Waldheim’s meeting with John Paul.

“By receiving Waldheim, the Vatican is legitimizing Nazi criminals,” Rabbi Weiss told the crowd, which was preceded by a giant poster that said, “No Waldheim in the Vatican.”

At an Austrian Embassy reception Thursday night, Waldheim told journalists that Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III had conceded last week that the United States had no evidence of wrongdoing against him but put him on the watch list because of congressional pressure.

‘Truth Will Come Through’

“The justice minister of the U.S., the attorney general, told our chancellor that there is not the slightest evidence of any wrongdoing on my side,” Waldheim said. “I can assure you there is nothing behind these stories (about war crimes). I am sure truth will come through and settle the matter.”

He said that Meese, in Vienna for a international drug conference, told Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky that the American action against him was taken because of a congressional “amendment. . , because I was geographically and organizationally near to that unit in the Balkans.”

In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Patrick Korten said of Waldheim’s description of Meese’s position: “That’s simply not true.”

Korten told the Associated Press that the attorney general “never made any such representation” to Vranitzky.

Waldheim’s German army unit was in northwestern Greece and Yugoslavia and has been linked to actions against thousands of Greek Jews and Yugoslav partisans. He has been accused of knowingly taking part in the actions.