Former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim served on the staff of a German army general in 1943 who was described as “perhaps more implicated in Jewish deportations than any other Wehrmacht commander,” the World Jewish Congress revealed Tuesday.
The documents follow the disclosure in Vienna that Waldheim, now a conservative candidate for the Presidency of Austria, had an active Nazi past. Documents published in Vienna show Waldheim in his youth was a member of the Nazi SA and the National Socialist Student Organization. (See March 4 Bulletin.)
Waldheim had denied membership in either, but later conceded that he had in fact joined the groups in order to protect his family. Waldheim’s association with the SA was in his pursuit of horseback riding. The records of Waldheim’s de-Nazification process in 1946 confirmed that his association with the SA was solely in pursuit of his passion for horseback riding.
The WJC documents disclose that Waldheim served on Gen. Alexander Loehr’s staff at Salonika, Greece, in March, 1943 when at the same time Wehrmacht trains were carrying 2,000-2,500 Jews to Auschwitz nearly every day. Waldheim has denied knowing of any deportations.
“I regret these things most deeply, but I have to repeat that it is really the first time that I hear such things happened,” Waldheim told The New York Times. “I never heard or learned anything of this while I was there. I hear for the first time that there were deportations of Jews from there.”
According to the WJC, documents and testimony at the Nuremberg trials established that Loehr and personnel under his command supervised the 1943 deportations to Auschwitz of the large Jewish community in Salonika. The operation, conducted with SS assistance, began in mid-March 1943 and was largely over by mid-May, by which time more than 42,000 men, women and children had been transported to Poland, where most were gassed shortly after arrival at the death camp.
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