Pope to Begin 5-Day Visit to Austria Today : Will Meet Twice With Waldheim and Go to a Former Concentration Camp

Pope John Paul II flies anew into public controversy and private anguish today on a five-day visit to Austria, where he will meet President Kurt Waldheim and visit a former concentration camp.

Jewish activists in Austria say they will protest the Pope’s meeting with the Austrian president, whom they accuse of aiding the deportation of 40,000 Jews from Greece, of complicity in the death of Yugoslav partisans and of the mistreatment of Allied war prisoners while a German army officer during World War II.

The Vatican, however, expects that the pontiff’s second trip to Austria will prove less controversial than Waldheim’s visit to the Vatican a year ago, which provoked angry Jewish protests.

“Both the protocolary meetings with Waldheim and the visit to the Mauthausen concentration camp are peripheral. The essence of this trip is the pastoral visit the Pope is making to the most Catholic part of Austria,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro said Wednesday.

Starting today in Vienna, John Paul will celebrate Masses in Austrian cities close to the Czechoslovakian, Hungarian and Yugoslav borders.

The papal visit will mark the first time since World War II that “a bridge is closed between East and West,” Bishop Johann Weber, who helped organize the trip, told reporters in Vienna on Wednesday.

Hungarian officials said they expect more than 100,000 Hungarians to enter Austria to attend a papal mass at Eisenstadt on Friday. Tens of thousands of Yugoslavs are expected to cross the border for a Mass in the city of Gurk on Saturday. Czechoslovak authorities, by contrast, will allow only 200 pilgrims to visit Austria, Vatican sources said.

Invited by Bishops

For a visit made at the invitation of Austria’s 19 bishops, John Paul’s contacts with Waldheim will be largely formalities. The Austrian president will receive him today and bid him farewell Monday in Innsbruck.

Waldheim, who denies involvement in any war crimes and has withstood calls for his resignation, will also be present tonight at the presidential palace for a papal speech to diplomats accredited to the Austrian government.

“The Pope’s presence in a country is not political and does not imply support for a person or a political system,” Navarro said.

Mauthausen, which is on the north bank of the Danube near the city of Enns, “was to achieve the dubious record as the German concentration camp with the largest number of officially listed executions--35,318--in the 6 1/2 years of its existence,” according to historian William L. Shirer.

The Pope will visit the camp Friday afternoon after meeting with Austrian Jews that morning, when he will likely hear their complaints about his appearances with Waldheim. American and French Jewish activists say they will also protest in Vienna and at Mauthausen.

“All signs show the Pope is displaying his will and going out of his way to legitimize Waldheim . . . that he is actually trying to penetrate public opinion, in effect challenging the information campaign conducted by Jewish groups,” Avi Beker of the World Jewish Congress told reporters in Jerusalem this week. He said the pontiff’s planned prayer service at Mauthausen a day after being received by Waldheim was in “bad taste.”

According to Navarro, for the Pope, a visit to the site of a concentration camp is a painful obligation.

“It is a personal pilgrimage, a gesture to express his horror at the Holocaust. The Holy Father lost nearly all of his Jewish friends during World War II,” he said.

The visit will be the 38th foreign journey of John Paul’s nearly 10-year reign.