More Evidence Against Waldheim

The World Jewish Congress Tuesday provided what they referred to as a “surprise witness” in the Kurt Waldheim affair–Waldheim, himself. The WJC presented captured Nazi documents obtained from the National Archives in Washington which Waldheim himself had signed in the capacity of senior intelligence officer reporting directly to the General Staff of Army C, Group E (“Heeresgruppe E”), the occupying force in Yugoslavia during World War II. It was headed by Gen. Alexander Lour who was extradited to Yugoslavia after the war and executed in 1947 for war crimes.

Tuesday’s disclosures appear to refute Waldheim’s claim he was only an interpreter for the Wehrmacht in Yugoslavia. The evidence produced was discovered and researched by Prof. Robert Herzstein of the University of South Carolina, who recently served as an expert witness for the U.S. Department of Justice.

The photographic documents released show that Waldheim was a senior intelligence officer. The tasks to which he was assigned, according to Herzstein, went beyond responsibility for interrogating prisoners of war and included capturing civilians aged 14 and above from whom information “was extracted by the most brutal methods of torture.”

In the documents he signed, Waldheim reports on what were called “cleansing” (“Sauberung”) operations in Bosnia, Yugoslavia, in 1942, “cleansing” being the Nazi term for mass murders. The documents refer to the killing of about 5,000 “partisans” with a loss to the Germans of 71 dead.

PARTICIPATED IN MASSACRE

Other captured secret Nazi documents signed by Waldheim refer to “Vernehmung,” a euphemism for interrogation under torture. They also indicate Waldheim participated in one of the worst atrocities of the Nazis in the Balkans, the Kozara massacres of 1942 in which 1, 626 partisans were killed, nearly 9,000 captured, and 431 persons shot to death as reprisals. Waldheim’s name appears on a list of 30 honoring Nazi troops for the “annihilation of the enemy,” a reference to the Kozara massacres.

Herzstein and Eli Rosenbaum, WJC legal counsel, commented on the singularity of a 25-year-old lieutenant in charge of such major operations.

The documents detail the organizational structure for Waldheim’s command, including his duties and responsibilities. Waldheim was one of two, and subsequently sole, chief of the intelligence division within unit “03” whose responsibility was the direct briefing to the General Staff of the Army group. The documents indicate that Waldheim was solely in charge of “prisoner interrogation” of Greek, Armenian, British, French and Bulgarian nationals.

DOCUMENTS OF DEVASTATING NATURE

“In all my experience as a federal prosecutor,” said Rosenbaum, “rarely, if ever, have I seen documents of such devastating nature as those made available today.” Elan Steinberg, executive director of the WJC, said that “the Waldheim affair… is now ready to be turned over to official agencies responsible for the investigation of Nazi war criminals.” The WJC sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III on Tuesday asking that Wadheim’s name be placed as soon as possible on the watch-list of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. “We stand ready to make available to the Justice Department all our documents,” Steinberg said.

Rosenbaum, asked by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency why the Jewish communities of Greece and Yugoslavia did not recognize Waldheim’s name as a Nazi responsible for atrocities, said that it was not possible that an operative of such high stature would be known to the general populace.