German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has become embroiled in an angry confrontation with Jewish leaders here and abroad after a meeting Friday with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim.
Not only did Kohl hotly defend the meeting, he went on to assail the World Jewish Congress as an enemy of German unification.
Heinz Galinski, chairman of Germany’s Jewish community, warned that the chancellor was fostering anti-Jewish sentiments in Germany.
The meeting and luncheon with Waldheim in Munich also drew criticism from the opposition Social Democrats and the Free Democratic Party, which is the junior partner in the governing coalition led by Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union.
It was widely seen as an attempt to rehabilitate the controversial Austrian head of state and two-term U.N. secretary-general, who has not been received by any Western leader since his Nazi past was exposed by the WJC during the Austrian election campaign in 1986.
Kohl “brought dishonor to Germany,” the WJC’s executive director, Elan Steinberg, declared in New York on Friday. He contrasted the chancellor’s behavior with that of Germany’s President Richard von Weizsacker, who “by not meeting with Mr. Waldheim defended Germany’s honor.”
Kohl retorted by charging that the WJC actively opposed German unification after the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989 and propagandized against it.
He made the charge in Waldheim’s presence during a brief meeting with journalists, also attended by Max Streibl, the prime minister of Bavaria, who co-hosted the luncheon.
Visibly angry, Kohl said the WJC argued against German unification “in an outrageous manner” when sentiment for a united Germany peaked after the collapse of communism in East Germany.
He accused the WJC of sending a mission to East Berlin in 1989 to “polemicize against Germany’s unity and therefore against the right of the German people for self-determination.”
German media reports said Kohl was referring to a meeting in East Berlin in November 1989 between a WJC official, Maram Stern, and Oskar Fischer, then foreign minister of East Germany.
The WJC’s emissary reportedly said his organization opposed unification and would do anything to forestall it. German Jewish activists insist their community’s attitude was in total variance with the WJC on that subject.
‘I DO NOT NEED ANY ADVICE’
Of his lunch with Waldheim, Kohl declared: “Whom I meet here in Munich, I as chancellor will decide. I do not need any advice on that.”
Streibl told reporters he did not understand the criticism. “What is all this nonsense about?” the Bavarian prime minister asked. “Waldheim was a respected and successful United Nations secretary-general and was elected president of Austria by a comfortable majority.”
In further remarks, Kohl said the WJC had never responded to a letter he sent it in 1989 asking for an explanation of its alleged propagandizing efforts against German unification.
In New York, Steinberg said that WJC President Edgar Bronfman had sent a letter denying the charges to Kohl in October.
The Chancellor’s Office in Bonn confirmed Saturday that a letter was received “a few months ago” from the WJC in New York explaining its attitude toward German unity.
But the letter was “wholly unsatisfactory,” the chancellor’s spokesman said. He maintained that Kohl never got a reply to his criticism of the WJC’s behavior.
Simon Snopkowski, chairman of Munich’s Jewish community, said that Kohl’s meeting with Waldheim was “outrageous and disappointing.”
Galinski expressed his views on the meeting in an interview published Sunday in the weekly Welt am Sonntag.
While it is the chancellor’s right to meet with whomever he chooses, he “should be ready to accept criticism when he chooses to meet a highly controversial politician,” the German Jewish leader said. “I would expect the chancellor to demonstrate more responsibility and sensitivity,” he added.
MAY HEIGHTEN ‘ANTI-JEWISH RESENTMENTS’
With respect to Kohl’s comments about the WJC, Galinski said such remarks were likely “to give rise to certain anti-Jewish resentments in this country,” at a time when anti-Semitism is increasing in Germany and all over Europe.
He stressed that German Jewry never opposed unification and in fact welcomed the process by which it was achieved.
Apart from Galinski, German Jewish leaders maintained a low profile on the affair, leaving the criticism mainly to Jewish organizations in the United States.
Steinberg recalled Kohl’s 1985 visit with President Reagan to the Bitburg military cemetery, where members of the Nazi Waffen SS are buried. He maintained that episode, like Kohl’s meeting with Waldheim, “showed shocking insensitivity to the moral concerns of the Jewish people.”
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who was in Germany, said Jewish leaders were “deeply disturbed that Mr. Waldheim is being received by Chancellor Kohl.”
He added: “Given Mr. Waldheim’s record, we believe this meeting to be inappropriate, insensitive and inconsistent with the very positive developments and achievements we have seen during our visit to Germany, and with Mr. Kohl’s own record in confronting Germany’s past.”
Waldheim’s long-concealed record, which the WJC unearthed from U.N. war crimes archives and other sources, included service as an intelligence officer in a German army unit involved in the deportation of Greek Jews and in atrocities against civilians and partisan fighters in the occupied Balkan countries during World War II.
In 1987, the United States banned Waldheim from entering the country for participating in “acts of Nazi persecution.”
In New York, the Anti-Defamation League condemned Kohl’s decision to “dignify” Waldheim. It “sends the wrong signal” at a time when neo-Nazis are active in Germany and Austria, the group said.
Similarly, the American Jewish Committee observed that “at a time when united Germany’s new assertiveness is the focus of intense international discussion,” Kohl’s meeting with Waldheim “was particularly unfortunate and conveys the very wrong message.”
Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said Kohl’s behavior was “incongruous with efforts to educate the German populace about the Holocaust.”
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.
