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Austria hails Waldheim;
Jewish dissent to continue
by Joseph Polakoff
TSI’s Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON —Austria’s
media, supportive of Kurt Wald
heim, hailed his election to the pre
sidency over his Socialist rival,
Kurt Steyrer. as a victory for Aus
trian democracy and urged Austri
ans to put out of their minds the
matter of his Nazi past.
Exemplifying a general view, the
mass circulation newspaper, Neue
Kronen Zeitung, said Austrians
should “forget the unpleasant
campaign as quickly as possible,”
and declared editorially that Aus
tria should never again allow for
eigners to intrude in the country’s
national affairs.
But the ascendancy of the 67-
year-old former secretary general
of the United Nations to the post of
Austria’s head of state for six years
is not being put into limbo either
by Jewish organizations and oth
ers who protested his participatory
role in Nazi atrocities in World
War II that he sought to hide.
Waldheim’s election is not “the
end of the affair,” said Edgar
Bronfman, president of the World
Jewish Congress, which first ex
posed the Austrian's Nazi war
record. Noting the observation of
Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D-N.Y.)
tnat Waldheim's “election amounts
to an act of symbolic amnesty for
the Holocaust,” Bronfman said,
“Whatever the margin of electoral
victory, the stream of disclosures
about the wartime past and subse
quent cover-up by this amoral,
unrepentant man represents a fresh
assault of the conscience of man
kind.”
Even though Waldheim will take
office, “the world cannot remain
silent,” Bronfman said. “The rep
resentatives of moral conscience
will continue,” he said, “to bring to
public attention everything that
warrants attention,” for “otherwise
the motto ‘never again’—not only
as it applies to Jews but to all vic
tims of totalitarianism—will be
come meaningless as such horrors
may well recur.”
Gerald Kraft, B’nai B’rith presi
dent, said, “Now that he (Wald-
Kurt Waldheim
heim) has been elected, the Aus
trian people have to deal with the
consequences.”
Abraham Foxman, a Holocaust
survivor who is the Anti-Defama
tion League’s associate national
director, reminded Austrians that
Austria produced a half-million
“card-carrying members of the Nazi
party”—10 percent of the Austri
ans compared to seven percent of
Germans. “How can one forget the
500.000 Austrians (who) gave an
hysterical welcome to Hitler at the
‘Heroes’ Square in Vienna. Never
in history have so many Austrians
assembled in one place.” Foxman
pointed out that of 220,000 Aus
trian Jews “before Austria’s enthu
siasm for Hitler,” there were 200
left when the war ended—one in a
thousand. The world, Foxman said,
“wants to hear an end to the lies
that Austria was a victim of Hitler.”
Former Supreme Court Justice
Arthur Goldberg, who was the
United States ambassador to the
U.N. in the mid-1960s when Wald
heim was Austria’s ambassador
there, told Waldheim by telephone
four days before the election to “do
the honorable thing in the interest
of your country” and re
nounce his candidacy. Waldheim
replied he would not do that.
Goldberg said to him, “I am not
happy that I served for three years
with a Nazi.” When Waldheim said
f Human rights adviser named
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Prime Minister Shimon Peres has
appointed Anette Dulzin to be his adviser on human rights, a
voluntary position with an honorarium of one shekel a year. She is
the wife of Leon Dulzin, chairman of the World Zionist Organiza
tion and Jewish Agency Executives.
Mrs. Dulzin was born in France and studied in the United
States, where she received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a
master’s degree in English literature from New York University.
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he did not know about the atroci
ties, Goldberg replied: “Don’t be
asinine.”
Bruno Kreisky, Jewish-born
former Socialist chancellor of Aus
tria who was a friend of Waldheim
although politically opposed to him,
first rejected the charges against
Waldheim but later attacked his
record. Foxman noted that Kreisky
“went to great lengths to conform
to standards he thought were neces
sary to be met” in Austria. At one
time, while leading the Socialist
party, Kreisky called Jews “ein
mieses volk” (a miserable nation).
Simon Wiesenthal, who has
devoted his life to documenting
Nazi war crimes and has been
honored with a congressional
medal, said, “There are two losers
in this election. One is the national
image of Austria. The other is Aus
trian Jews.” Referring to the return
of open anti-Semitism, Wiesenthal
said that threats against his Holo
caust Center in Vienna had in
creased from around two a week
before the election campaign to
four or five daily.
Anti-Semitic signs were found
throughout Austria. Many Austri
ans saw the election as a vote for or
against the World Jewish Congress
rather than for or against Wald
heim, Wiesenthal said.
In Cleveland, Milton Wolf, who
served as President Carter’s am
bassador to Austria, told the
Cleveland Jewish News, “I don’t
believe Waldheim ideologically is a
Nazi or an anti-Semite.” The
newspaper reported Wolf, who is
president of Cleveland’s Jewish
Community Federation, as saying,
“The Austrian (Waldheim) is ‘a
professional bureaucrat’ who is not
strongly committed to any particu
lar ideology ‘but can take on the
coloration of his environment. He’s
naturally interested in surviving.’ ”
Wolf said, “The most obvious shock
is that a man could serve in the
highest U.N. post for a decade
without this information being
made public. I would have thought
there would be a surgical approach
to investigation of him at that
time."
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PAGE 3 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE June 13, 1986