Waldheim Ally Raps Panel as Leftists or Jews

Fresh controversy flared over Kurt Waldheim’s war record today when a former minister challenged the impartiality of a historians’ panel that investigated his past, saying its members are left-wing or Jewish.

The controversy erupted when former Foreign Minister Karl Gruber, one of Waldheim’s staunchest supporters, criticized the commission that was named by the Austrian government.

Gruber, a former resistance fighter who was foreign minister in 1945-53, said of the panel in an interview on Italian radio today: “You mustn’t forget, they weren’t his friends, they were his enemies. The German is a Socialist, the others are of Jewish extraction.” Excerpts from the interview were broadcast on Austrian radio and television.

Gruber, who has visited other countries as a roving ambassador in support of Waldheim, also said that if Waldheim were forcibly removed from office, he would run again and be reelected, “probably by an even greater majority.”

‘Scandalous, Shameful’

Gruber’s remarks drew protests from across the political spectrum, with leading Socialist Deputy Ewald Nowotny calling them “scandalous and shameful.”

The Jewish community in Vienna said in a statement the remarks were an attempt “to discredit the findings of the commission and divert attention from their shocking contents by whipping up anti-Semitic feelings in the population.”

Chancellor Franz Vranitzky quickly sent telegrams to the six members of the commission apologizing for the remarks and saying that they in no way represented the government’s view of their work, a chancellery spokesman announced.

Members of the commission came from West Germany, Britain, the United States, Switzerland, Israel and Belgium.

Their 202-page report concluded that Waldheim, while a German army officer in Yugoslavia during World War II, had not personally committed war crimes but knew of them and helped pave the way for others to commit them. It also said he hid the fact that he had known war crimes were committed.