The Austrian government, hoping to put the matter to rest, appointed a special historical commission to review the evidence against Waldheim. With Kurt Waldheim, Ruth Beckermann, Yasser Arafat, Hubertus Czernin. They were sure that this decision had more to with American domestic politics than it did with Waldheim. We have many differences with him, but that isn't one of them. After he was elected President, groups in the U.S. began a campaign to put him on the list of people who were banned from entering the U.S. During his tenure, he won praise for his handling of negotiations to establish a U.N. peacekeeping mission after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and during an unsuccessful attempt to mediate the U.S. hostage crisis in Tehran in 1980, he braved an angry mob of Iranians waving wooden legs and arm stumps (supposed victims of torture under the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi). On 27 April 1987, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that former UN Secretary-General and Austrian President Kurt Waldheim would not be allowed to enter the United States after it was conclusively determined that he participated in Nazi war crimes during World War II. However, he was vetoed by China in the second round. [7] Following the annexation, Waldheim's father was briefly arrested by the Gestapo and dismissed from his post, while Waldheim's scholarship was cancelled. Despite that, I tried to the best of my ability to remain loyal to my values and to serve my homeland.. But for most of the world, Waldheim was ruined and discredited. Politics portal; Kurt Josef Waldheim (German: [kt valtham] (); 21 December 1918 - 14 June 2007) was an Austrian politician and diplomat.Waldheim was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981 and president of Austria from 1986 to 1992. Kurt Waldheim was born in a village outside Vienna on Dec. 21, 1918, the eldest son of a conservative Roman Catholic school inspector. More posts from the howardstern community. Waldheim also took a special interest in the future of Namibia and South Africa. then Kurt Waldheim tried to seduce me when I was just 14.' Small . BODDE: Kurt Waldheim was President of Austria. But what could I do? However, there was a clause in the displaced persons legislation that stated if you lied on your application to come to the U.S., you could be deported back to the country from where you emigrated. Instead Waldheim, a hardworking and talented diplomat, was allowed to rise to the pinnacle of the Austrian Foreign Ministry, and then go on to serve two terms as secretary general, from 1972 to 1982. Many years later when I was a senior member of the Policy Planning Staff, we were asked whether the U.S. should support Waldheim for a second term as Secretary General of the United Nations. He was 88. "[35], A short time later, beginning on 4 March 1986, the World Jewish Congress alleged that Waldheim had lied about his service in the mounted corps of the SA and had concealed his service as a special missions staff officer (Ordonnanzoffizier) for Germany's Army Group E in Yugoslavia and Greece, from 1942 to 1944, based primarily on captured German wartime records held at the United States National Archives in Washington, DC, and in other archives. For two years beginning in 1968, he was the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs for the Austrian People's Party, before going back as Permanent Representative to the U.N. in 1970. In the meantime, Congress passed a law, the Holtzman Act, named after a Congresswoman who introduced it. They would pull in some 70- or 80-year-old man and tell him he had two choices: He could go on trial and face the likely possibility of spending the rest of his life in jail, or he could renounce his U.S. citizenship and be deported to Austria. Get out! and we went out. Kurt Waldheim. Kurt Josef Waldheim, fdd 21 december 1918 i Sankt Andr-Wrdern, Niedersterreich, dd 14 juni 2007 i Wien, var en sterrikisk politiker och diplomat. The office has uncovered former concentration camp guards and others who hid their Nazi past when applying for entry into the U.S. Waldheim was the biggest case that they had handled to date. Waldheim's father, a Czech by ethnic origin, changed his name from Waclawik to Waldheim. However, this knowledge was not used against Waldheim, because the Finns believed he would not be chosen anyway due to the United States having promised to veto him. 463. Foreign Affairs magazine, SeptemberOctober, 1995 (Volume 74 No. At one point, years later, Waldheim told an interviewer that he had joined merely to shield his family, a tactic adopted by many living under Nazi occupation. In the telegram, Amin "applauded the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich and said Germany was the most appropriate locale for this because it was where Hitler burned more than six million Jews". Knfel, Ulrike and Kraske, Marion (4 April 2008), Wiesenthal, Simon (1999) "The Waldheim Case" in. With Howard Stern, Dominic Barbara, Richard Belzer, Downtown Julie Brown. WALDHEIM AFFAIR. He did lie about his military service. Austrian political figure and diplomat. Chinas opposition aside, Waldheim had appeal for rival superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union, which viewed him as nonideological and noncontroversial. While he was running for President in Austria in 1985, his service as an intelligence officer in the Wehrmacht . They would have the person renounce his or her U.S. citizenship. The veto duel between China and the United States lasted a record 16 rounds. Im happy Im not an intellectual ball of fire, Waldheim told reporters who gathered in his opulently appointed Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan when he was first elected to head the U.N. I dont think you can solve the U.N.'s problems that way. Visitor's guide to United Nations in the time of Kurt Waldheim 1973. by Kurt Waldheim | Jan 1, 1973. To make matters worse, the Justice Department would cut corners. [53] In a letter to the editor published in Foreign Affairs magazine two years after Rosenbaum's book was released, former Finnish ambassador to the U.N. Max Jakobson (one of the candidates whom the USSR had vetoed) wrote, "The Soviets knew everything about Waldheim. [25] Amidst international protest, "the UN spokesman said [in his daily press conference] it was not the secretary-general's practice to comment on telegrams sent him by heads of government. Waldheim affair, controversy concerning the military record of former Austrian diplomat and statesman Kurt Waldheim (1918-2007) and his knowledge about war crimes committed by Austria during World War II. Countries refused to deal with him, and he was disinvited from numerous ceremonial functions. Kurt Waldheim was born on 21 December 1918 in a village named Sankt Andra-Wordern, located close to Vienna, Austria to Watzlawick and his wife. Kurt Waldheim synonyms, Kurt Waldheim pronunciation, Kurt Waldheim translation, English dictionary definition of Kurt Waldheim. The World Jewish Congress also visited the Department to gain support for doing it. Shultz said, Get out! International uproar surged, especially as the World Jewish Congress and American and European media continued to air new revelations about Waldheims past. Among the deeds in which he was implicated, U.S. officials said, were the transport of civilians to Nazi slave labor camps; the deportation of Jews from the Greek islands and from Banja Luka, in Serbian Bosnia, to death camps; reprisal executions of hostages; and the approval and dissemination of propaganda calling for the elimination of the Jews. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. They told us that they didnt know about these peoples past and why should they be saddled with former Romanians or Yugoslavs. Waldheim was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981 and president of Austria from 1986 to 1992. By early 1948, the UN War Crimes Commission listed him as a suspected war criminal subject to trial. After a period as director general for political affairs in the Austrian Foreign Ministry, he became his countrys ambassador to the UN (196468, 197071). When I met Kurt Waldheim in Vienna in 1994, the Balkans were doubly at issue, a generation apart. [21], As secretary-general from 1972 onward, Waldheim opened and addressed a number of major international conferences convened under United Nations auspices. Waldheim had risen to the pinnacle of international diplomacy and was running for president of Austria when his past caught up with him. His father, Walter, the son of an impoverished blacksmith, became the local school superintendent and married a daughter of the mayor. In 1994, Pope John Paul II awarded Waldheim a knighthood in the Order of Pius IX and his wife a papal honor. The controversy surrounding Waldheim was particularly problematic for Austria, forcing a tardy reckoning of the nations complicity in Nazi crimes. All of a sudden, we had this case that involved the President of Austria. A year after the first allegations surfaced, the U.S. Justice Department took the highly unusual step of placing the sitting Austrian presidents name on a watch list, which prohibited him from entering the United States. ONCE, in more glorious times, the empire of Austria stretched from Prague and Cracow to Trent, below the Dolomites . But he was an important guy. [4] president of Austria and secretary-general of the United Nations. The sources, who spoke on . Shit is just hard to watch, his jokes were never funny. Kurt Waldheim, the former UN secretary general and president of Austria whose hidden complicity in Nazi war crimes was exposed late in his career, died Thursday in Vienna, Austrian media reported. During his presidential campaign, the efforts of his political opponents, investigative journalists, historians and the World Jewish Congress uncovered archival evidence of Waldheim's involvement with the Nazi movement as a student and his wartime role in the Balkans. Well, there was never really any good evidence that tied Waldheim directly to atrocities. Ron Lauder, a political appointee, was Ambassador to Austria at the time. This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 18:08. The sad thing was that one of the OSI lawyers on the team was anxious to get home to his family. William Bodde Jr, interviewed in October 1998, reflects on his time as a staff aide in Vienna during this controversy. Report Save Follow. Later investigations showed that Kurt Waldheim, despite claims that he never belonged to any Nazi organization, apparently joined a Nazi student union three weeks after the Anschluss and then ran with the so-called brownshirts, a Nazi paramilitary group. Following the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy, his father changed the family surname to . I remember one case, hed been back and forth to the United States 25 times, and all of a sudden he didnt qualify. Kurt Waldheim Jr. 27. helmikuuta - Yhdistyneiden kansakuntien psihteeri Kurt Waldheim nimitti varatuomari Helvi Sipiln YK:n sosiaaliasioiden apulaispsihteeriksi. His candidacy became controversial, however, with the dissemination of wartime and postwar documents that pointed to his having been an interpreter and intelligence officer for a German army unit that engaged in brutal reprisals against Yugoslav Partisans and civilians and deported most of the Jewish population of Salonika (Thessalonki), Greece, to Nazi death camps in 1943. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Shortly before his birth the Habsburg monarchy had collapsed, and his father, whose Czech family had been called Watzlawick . He was there when Hitlers forces invaded and annexed Austria in the 1938 Anschluss. I find it interesting that the Holocaust has become much more prominent fifty years after the War than it was 20 years after the War, or even right after the War. He won a second term in 1976 and might well have gone on to a third had China not insisted on a candidate from the Third World, throwing its backing to Waldheims ultimate successor, Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru. Waldheim during a press conference at the, Waldheim's voice recording on the Voyager Golden Record, Report of the International Historical Commission of 8 February 1988, section on "Membership in National Socialist Organizations", as cited, e.g., in, Israeli-Ugandan Relations in the Time of Idi Amin by. When they emigrated to the United States they hid their Nazi past. I dont think any other major country received him. While he was running for the latter office in the 1986 election, the revelation of his service in Greece and Yugoslavia as an intelligence officer in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht . [28], In 1977, Waldheim recorded a greeting for the Voyager Golden Records, a pair of discs containing sounds and images representing the diversity of life and culture on Earth, which were launched into deep space on the Voyager spacecraft. If we had done a little more digging, both 1946 and 1972 or whenever it was, we might have found out about him. Fischer also praised Waldheim for his efforts to solve international crises and for his contributions to world peace. report. It was odd. [45] Although Waldheim had stated that he was unaware of any crimes taking place, the committee cited evidence that Waldheim must have known about war crimes. Entire villages were wiped out by Lohrs men. [34], Waldheim had previously claimed to have received a medical discharge after being wounded in winter 1942. National Socialist German Students' League, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Austria's refusal to address its national role in the Holocaust, Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), "Former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim dies at 88 Haaretz Israel News", "Kurt Waldheim: Austrian head of the UN who as president of his country was later tainted by charges of complicity in Nazi atrocities", "Wir sterreicher whlen, wen wir wollen", "Suomen ulkoministerin johto tiesi Waldheimin natsimenneisyyden jo 1971", Israeli Ugandan Relations in the Time of Idi Amin, "July 4, Day of Operation Entebbe, Israel Upgrades Uganda Airport", "It's Election Year at U.N., With Waldheim Post Open", "Waldheim is Backed by Security Council for Five Years More", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY_mJLwBgrc&t=45s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxXE_4nyxUg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R97kxi1InWc&t=13s, Stealing Beauty: Dispute Rages Over Austria's Looted Art, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency (RG 263), Bericht der internationalen Historikerkommission, Schlussbetrachtung, "WALDHEIM BARRED FROM ENTERING U.S. OVER ROLE IN WAR", https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-hrsp/legacy/2011/02/04/04-09-87waldheim-rpt.pdf, "Waldheim, ex-UN leader and Nazi, buried in Austria", "Kurt Waldheim dies at 88; ex-UN chief hid Nazi past", "Former Austrian president whose term was marred by wartime service buried", Trauerfeier fr Altbundesprsident Dr. Kurt Waldheim im Wiener Stephansdom, 23.06.2007, Ban Ki-moon voices sadness at death of former Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, Austria and Nazism: Owning Up to the Past (A BBC Report), The Waldheim Report: International Commission of Historians, Video of Kurt Waldheim sworn in as UN Secretary-General, GREEK JEWS CHALLENGING WALDHEIM by HENRY KAMM, Ambassador of Austria to the United Nations, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kurt_Waldheim&oldid=1141564433, Permanent Representatives of Austria to the United Nations, Secretaries-General of the United Nations, Recipients of the Iron Cross (1939), 2nd class, Austrian military personnel of World War II, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Interpreter with the liaison staff attached to the Italian. 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