Justice Department Urged to Search U.S. Files for Documents About Waldheim’s War-time Activities

U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese has been urged by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations to search “all archives to which our country has access” for documents that would determine the role of former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim during his war-time service as a German army officer.

In a letter to Meese, UAHC president Rabbi Alexander Schindler wrote: “Such a determination is of special importance because it was during Mr. Waldheim’s term in office at the UN that the PLO terrorist chief Yasir Arafat was invited to speak from its rostrum, that the infamous ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution was adopted and that the UN itself was turned into an instrument of anti-American bigotry and bias.”

Schindler’s letter followed reports that the United Nations had agreed to provide Israel access to documents on Waldheim contained in the archives of the War Crimes Commission of the UN. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Binyamin Netanyahu, filed a formal request last Friday with Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar for access to the Waldheim file in the long-defunct commission.

The UN decision was immediately welcomed by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. In a statement Sunday, Conference chairman Kenneth Bialkin said: “Only in this way will the truth be known. Only in this way will the United Nations be able to purge itself of the accusations that have injured its reputation and its effectiveness in the cause of world peace and understanding.”

WALDHEIM VEHEMENTLY DENIES ALLEGATIONS

Waldheim, nevertheless, has vehemently denied allegations against him, and said at a news conference in Linz, Austria, last Friday that the effort against him had finally collapsed, proving only that “I was a soldier in the Wehrmacht like 100,000 other Austrians.”

He reiterated earlier denials of participation in either the SA or the National Socialist Student Organization, saying that his only link to these groups was through riding tournaments and discussion. Furthermore, Waldheim repeated that he did not know anything about the deportation of thousands of Greek Jews from Salonika during the time when he was stationed near that city.

The World Jewish Congress, in documents released to the media, has asserted that Waldheim was involved in various war crimes, including that the former UN leader was on the operations staff of the military unit which carried out the Kozara massacres in war-time Yugoslavia. Other captured Nazi documents suggest Waldheim was an intelligence officer who delivered daily briefings to Chief of the General Staff of Army Group E, commanded by Gen. Alexander Loehr.

But Waldheim reiterated at the news conference that “I did know that the Nazis deported Jews. I knew about the general facts from about 1942. But I never saw anything in Greece.” About 40,000 Greek Jews were deported to death camps from Salonika.

Schindler, whose UAHC is composed of 791 Reform synagogues in the U.S. and Canada with a membership of some 1.3 million persons, urged in his letter to Meese that the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations “inaugurate a full and comprehensive search” of war-time files that would shed light on Waldheim’s alleged Nazi past.

“It would be a grave miscarriage of justice, and an offense to the memory of all those — Jews and non-Jews alike — who perished at the hands of the Nazis, to ignore the charges against Mr. Waldheim,” Schindler wrote to Meese.

“Such findings may also place into proper perspective the events at the United Nations during his tenure — events that served to embarrass our country and make it the target of obloquy and scorn.”