The menu fit the day. While the main course — Kurt Waldheim’s inauguration as Austria’s new president–was served in Vienna, Jewish student protestors outside the Austrian Consulate in New York served up “just desserts:” strawberry short-memory cake, fudged dates, I Scream and Clean-up Operations Sponge Cake to commemorate the day.
Elsewhere in New York Tuesday, Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman continued her campaign urging the U.S. government to bar Waldheim from entering the U.S. during a protest at the Isaiah Wall opposite the United Nations.
About a dozen students from the Jewish Students Network shirked the near-100 degree afternoon heat in midtown Manhattan and gathered around a table with lavish desserts facing the Austrian Consulate.
Among the literature spread across the protestors’ table were menus entitled “Following Orders and Selections.” The desserts baked by the student protestors included Talk-late-tip cookies, Morality Upside Down Cake, Impeach Pie A La Mode with Wald-Naz, Seven Liar Cake and Blackout Cake.
Alan Orlich, one of the protest organizers, said the demonstrators wanted “to show how they’ve (Austrians) perverted culture. We want people to understand that they’ve made a mockery of a great culture,” Orlich said.
After the protestors delivered a “menu” to the Austrian Consulate, a curious clerk came out to survey the sweet table. The clerk, who said he knew Waldheim personally, said Austrian Jews are in a “sandwich.” He conceded that “there is anti-Semitism” in Austria but added that two Jews worked in the consulate here.
The man, who asked not to be identified and stressed that he was offering his personal opinions only, said Waldheim’s best political strategy was to make people feel “if he is guilty, we are guilty.” He cited a speech in which Waldheim told an Austrian audience ‘When I am a Nazi, you are a Nazi.’
PROTEST RALLY AT THE UN
Meanwhile, Holtzman told a crowd of about 200 people, including Holocaust survivors and their children, that “Waldheim’s election and inauguration are an affront to those who sacrificed to defeat Hitler and his Nazi cohorts and those who were the victims of their murderous rage as well as those every where who are committed to justice and decency.”
She was referring to a growing body of documentary evidence recently brought to light that Waldheim was involved in atrocities against civilians and the deportation of Greek Jews when he served as a Wehrmacht intelligence officer in the Balkans during World War II.
“Although the Austrian people have gathered today to honor the former Nazi, Waldheim, the rest of the world must condemn him, “Holtzman said.
She explained that “the President of the United States must bar Waldheim from entering this country” because “both U.S. law and international conventions and treaties allow this. Morality mandates this. Our country should not welcome any person, whatever his or her office, who assisted in Nazi atrocities, ” Holtzman said.
Members of various Jewish and religious groups participating in the rally included the American Jewish Congress, the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Survivors U.S.A., The Generation After, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the New Jewish Agenda, American Gathering and Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and East Brooklyn Churches.
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.
