The Senate passed a resolution last Thursday calling on the Justice Department to consider barring Austrian Presidential candidate Kurt Waldheim from the United States. The resolution, introduced last March by Sen. Pete Wilson (R. Calif.) after the World Jewish Congress publicized findings about Waldheim’s activities as a Wehrmacht officer in World War II, was passed by a voice vote Thursday night.
Its passage coincided with the disclosure of new findings related to Waldheim’s war-time activities. A war record written by Waldheim for his army unit in northwest Greece from July 19 to August 21, 1943, included an order by Hitler to kill captured partisans in Greece and send suspected resistance fighters to labor camps. The diary was maintained while Waldheim was assigned to the German general staff liaison attached to the Italian 11th Army. The documents were discovered in Washington’s National Archives by Robert Herztein, professor of history at the University of South Carolina.
Waldheim has conceded that he was aware of atrocities against partisans but has consistently maintained that he had no part in them, and that he knew nothing about deportations of Jews from Salonika.
TIME TO RESPOND
The Senate resolution called on the Justice Department to “carefully and expeditiously review the documents brought forward by the World Jewish Congress concerning former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, to ascertain his role, if any, in Nazi war crimes, and treat appropriately.”
Speaking on the resolution he had introduced, Wilson said it was time “to respond” to the “apparent deception” by Waldheim about his wartime activities, which he had earlier indicated came to an end in 1941, after he was wounded on the Eastern front.
“It is my intention to ensure that the American justice system is upheld with full and deliberate speed. It is imperative that the Attorney General act promptly on the question of barring Mr. Waldheim on the basis of the documented evidence which the (Justice Department’s) Office of Special Investigations has already examined.”
Passage of the resolution followed the disclosure a week earlier that Neal Sher, director of the Office of Special Investigations, had recommended that Waldheim be barred from the country under a 1978 law forbidding entry to aliens who took part in Nazi war crimes.
In a news conference last Monday, Attorney General Edwin Meese said it was unlikely that any decision on Waldheim’s status would be reached before the Austrian Presidential elections on May 4.
Justice Department spokesman Patrick Korten told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday that the issue had not yet reached the level of Assistant Attorney General and that he had no idea when it would.
“We are always interested in what members of Congress have to say about something that may be in our area of responsibility,” Korten said of the Senate resolution.
“But ultimately, our responsibility is to the law, and we do not speed things up or slow things down in response to outside pressure of any sort.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
