WJC Claim That Waldheim’s Nazi Creed Formed Early Denied by School Chum

The World Jewish Congress, in pursuit of what it calls "the moral case" against Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, alleged this week that he held strong Nazi convictions during his teen-age years.

WJC’s new information about Waldheim is based on information that Waldheim, in applying for a scholarship from the Austrian Chamber of Commerce to help pay for his studies at the Consular Academy, said he had four Aryan grandparents.

In addition, the academy’s director wrote in a letter to the Chamber of Commerce that Waldheim "has been a convinced Nazi for years (but) has not been able to be politically active since 1936, as he was doing military service."

The letter by the academy’s director was found by a U.S. graduate student studying in Vienna, said Elan Steinberg, executive director of the WJC.

If Waldheim had "feigned being a Nazi, that would be one thing," Steinberg said. But Waldheim has maintained that he was "stridently anti-Nazi in college," said Steinberg.

However, a prominent British Jew maintains that Waldheim was a friend of Jews and antiracist.

Lord George Weidenfeld, a publisher of Waldheim’s memoirs, said, in a statement released by the Austrian Embassy here, that he and Waldheim had been classmates at the Consular Academy, and that Waldheim "voiced definitely anti-racist views and had many Jewish friends" there.

LINK TO DEPORTATION OF ITALIANS?

Steinberg concedes there is no possibility of any legal action against Waldheim, beyond the April 1987 U.S. decision to place him on the "watch list" of persons barred from U.S. soil because of probable involvement in Nazi crimes.

Austria, which has not tried alleged Nazis for decades, has said it will not try Waldheim for any possible war crimes.

An Austrian Embassy official said Waldheim came from a Christian socialist and conservative Catholic background, which did not strongly back the Nazi cause.

"One really cannot say that Waldheim was a Nazi or that he held Nazi convictions," the official said.

The official said that the academy director who assisted Waldheim "wanted to do him good" and that such recommendations were written to help those students who were not "outright Nazis" gain scholarships.

The WJC made another accusation, that Waldheim, as a German army officer in Greece during World War II, transmitted an order conveying a covert Nazi plan for rounding up Italians for movement to German slave labor camps.

A document supporting this was obtained by a WJC researcher rummaging through the U.S. National Archives.

Waldheim has previously denied any involvement in the deportation of Italian soldiers. Rather, he has said he believed those Italians were being sent home to freedom.

Ulf Pacher, a spokesman at the Austrian Embassy, dismissed what Waldheim may have done in Italy as minor, because he was only "a second lieutenant" at the time.