As a gymnasium student in Klosterneuburg, he excelled at languages and was a competent violinist in the school orchestra, also enjoying swimming, boating and tennis. When they emigrated to the United States they hid their Nazi past. Anyone can read what you share. What the U.N. needs is a quiet approach, he said. In 1939, Waldheim was drafted into the German Wehrmacht. [31] In 1980, Waldheim flew to Iran in an attempt to negotiate the release of the American hostages held in Tehran, but Ayatollah Khomeini refused to see him. Janks go on a date with John DeBella's wife (which Howard predicted would happen in his battle with DeBella in Philadelphia), the "Gross Video Contest" winners, Boy-Gary dressed as an ape and . His intelligence regarding work in Greece during World War II raised more questions than answers. He went through my fingers. In 1971 he ran for president on the Peoples Party ticket but lost. He came in and appealed. At Waldheim's own request, no foreign heads of states or governments were invited to attend his funeral except Hans-Adam II, the Prince of Liechtenstein. Kurt Waldheim was born on Dec. 21, 1918, in St. Andr-Wrdern, a village near Vienna. [6] In the autumn of 1937, now an army reservist, Waldheim entered the prestigious Consular Academy in Vienna on a scholarship, where he began his studies in law and diplomacy. Many years later when I was a senior member of the Policy Planning Staff, we were asked whether the U.S. should support Waldheim for a second term as Secretary General of the United Nations. SPIRO: My job was to track down members of the former German intelligence services in Austria. Other pieces of evidence included logs and intelligence reports, purportedly bearing his signature, describing mass deportations of Greek Jews to death camps. [3] Watzlawick (original Czech spelling Vclavk) changed his name to "Waldheim" that year as the Habsburg monarchy collapsed and eventually rose to become superintendent of schools for the Tulln District, attaining the rank of Regierungsrat (government councillor). Klestils friendships didnt do him much good. But, in fact, at the age of 19 he joined the National Socialist German Students League - a Nazi youth organization - just a month after the Anschluss. After the electoral defeat of the Austrian Peoples Party, Waldheim was elected chairman of the Safeguards Committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Negligee and Underpants Party: Directed by Jim Fitzgerald, Wendy Scatloni, Brad Mays. Waldheim entered the diplomatic service in 1945. The rest of the delegation waited a day to catch a direct flight to Washington. His candidacy became controversial, however, with the dissemination of wartime and postwar documents that pointed to his having been an interpreter and intelligence officer for a German army unit that engaged in brutal reprisals against Yugoslav Partisans and civilians and deported most of the Jewish population of Salonika (Thessalonki), Greece, to Nazi death camps in 1943. [22] His diplomatic efforts particularly in the Middle East were overshadowed by the diplomacy of then U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Under U.S. law the Justice Department makes the decision. He died of heart failure, the state broadcaster ORF reported. International uproar surged, especially as the World Jewish Congress and American and European media continued to air new revelations about Waldheims past. On 19 August 1944, he married Elisabeth Ritschel in Vienna; their first daughter, Lieselotte, was born the following year. It was a complicated situation because some years earlier the United States had supported . [17] According to Eli Rosenbaum, in 1944, Waldheim reviewed and approved a packet of antisemitic propaganda leaflets to be dropped behind Soviet lines, one of which ended: "Enough of the Jewish war, kill the Jews, come over. He served in Paris (194851) and was head of the personnel department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna from 1951 to 1955. They told us that they didnt know about these peoples past and why should they be saddled with former Romanians or Yugoslavs. Among the deeds in which he was implicated, U.S. officials said, were the transport of civilians to Nazi slave labor camps; the deportation of Jews from the Greek islands and from Banja Luka, in Serbian Bosnia, to death camps; reprisal executions of hostages; and the approval and dissemination of propaganda calling for the elimination of the Jews. VIENNA, Austria - Kurt Waldheim, whose legacy as U.N. secretary-general was overshadowed by revelations that he belonged to a German army unit that . On June 8th, 1986, Kurt Waldheim was elected President of Austria. Waldheim was born in Sankt Andr-Wrdern, near Vienna, on 21 December 1918. He, and by extension, Austria, were ostracized and isolated. A close political ally of Waldheim dismissed the commission as being full of Waldheims enemies -- Jews and Socialists -- and thus not credible. Once I went to see him when I was in Austria for these COCOM [Coordinating Commission on Multilateral Export Controls] negotiations. An international commission of historians has found "no proof" that Kurt Waldheim committed war crimes, according to the 200-page report it submitted to Chancellor Franz Vranitzky here Monday . (Croatia and Bosnia were part of Yugoslavia at the time.). In 1986, four years after his tenure as the UN Secretary General, Kurt Waldheim made a bid to lead his native Austria. Thomas Klestil, Waldheims successor as President, was just completing his tour as Ambassador to the U.S. when the decision was made and he was crushed. Despite that, I tried to the best of my ability to remain loyal to my values and to serve my homeland.. The aristocratic poseur, Waldheim, was the grandson of a Czech blacksmith surnamed Vaclavik. In the first round of voting, Waldheim lost to Salim by one vote. Waldheim had risen to the pinnacle of international diplomacy and was running for president of Austria when his past caught up with him. [24] Amin also called "to expel Israel from the United Nations and to send all the Israelis to Britain, which bore the guilt for creating the Jewish state". The U.S. ban was never lifted. Ron Lauder, a political appointee, was Ambassador to Austria at the time. But he was an important guy. A son, Gerhard, and another daughter, Christa, followed. He was secretary-general of the United Nations (1972-81) and . When defending himself against assertions that he had links to the Nazis, Waldheim always asserted that he never had belonged to a Nazi-affiliated group. [5], Although his father wanted him to study medicine, Waldheim had an aversion to the sight of blood, and had already decided to enter the foreign service. He served as First Secretary of the Legation in Paris from 1948, and in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna from 1951 to 1956. BODDE: Kurt Waldheim was President of Austria. 4 Min Read. Waldheims father, a Czech by ethnic origin, changed his name from Waclawik to Waldheim. Politics portal; Kurt Josef Waldheim (German: [kt valtham] (); 21 December 1918 - 14 June 2007) was an Austrian politician and diplomat.Waldheim was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981 and president of Austria from 1986 to 1992. It took hundreds of thousands of ordinary men - well-meaning but ambitious men like Kurt Waldheim - to make the Third Reich possible. 450. But more than four decades later, his assertions were disputed by witnesses, photographs, medals and commendations given to Waldheim, and by his own signature on documents linked to massacres and deportations. He is a figurehead and spends a great amount of time visiting other countries. . During his campaign for the presidency in 1985, what became known internationally as the "Waldheim affair" began. While he was running for the latter office in the 1986 election, the revelation of his service in Greece and Yugoslavia as an . Japan and Syria were the only two countries that laid wreaths on his grave. Kurt Waldheim . Consequently, he chose not to run for a second term in 1992. [15] Decades later, during the lobbying for his election as U.N. Secretary General, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, who had led the Yugoslav Partisans during the war, awarded Waldheim one of the highest Yugoslav orders, not knowing the details of his prior military service. Kurt Waldheim dies at 88; ex-UN chief hid Nazi past Kurt Waldheim, the former UN secretary general and president of Austria whose hidden complicity in Nazi war crimes was exposed late in his career, died Thursday in Vienna, Austrian media reported. Kurt Waldheim was appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations for a five-year term beginning on 1 January 1972. In the telegram, Amin "applauded the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich and said Germany was the most appropriate locale for this because it was where Hitler burned more than six million Jews". The World Jewish Congress and an Austrian investigative magazine produced documents detailing his membership in Nazi organizations and his military service in the Balkans. Childhood & Early Life. [10], Much historical interest has centred on Waldheim's role in Operation Kozara in 1942. "[25], After Operation Entebbe on 7 July 1976 in which Israeli commandos freed more than 100 Israeli and Jewish passengers held captive in Entebbe Airport (Uganda's main airport) by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and German Revolutionary Cells fighters protected by forces of dictator Idi Amin, and where all the hijackers, three hostages, and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed Waldheim described the raid as a "serious violation of the national sovereignty of a United Nations member state". When I met Kurt Waldheim in Vienna in 1994, the Balkans were doubly at issue, a generation apart. Waldheim je bil generalni sekretar OZN (1972-1981) in predsednik Avstrije (1986-1992). Though I lived in the Austrian capital, I was spending most of my time covering the brutal fighting and ethnic displacements then racking a disintegrating Yugoslavia. He managed to continue his studies by working as a Latin and Greek tutor and borrowing funds from relatives.[8]. Welfia Klosterneuburg, a Roman Catholic student fraternity part of the Austrian Cartellverband. Shortly before his birth the Habsburg monarchy had collapsed, and his father, whose Czech family had been called Watzlawick . His aides at the United Nations even accused the Israeli mission of spreading rumors that he supported the Nazis. He was Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and President of Austria from 1986 to 1992. Donald Trump Jr. claims US train network is being sabotaged as revenge for Nord Stream 2 after derailments in Ohio and Michigan . Four years after returning from New York to Austria, Waldheim was hot on the campaign trail, all but certain of an . Many were displaced persons at the end of the war and ended up in Austria. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. 21 June 2007. VIENNA (Reuters) - Former U.N. chief and Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, whose career was tainted by disclosures of his Nazi past, was buried in a state funeral on Saturday. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. With Howard Stern, Dominic Barbara, Richard Belzer, Downtown Julie Brown. Waldheim had served a painful term as Austrian President, marked from beginning . As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Waldheim later stated that "he did not know about the murder of civilians there". Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, accused by Jewish groups of participating in Nazi war crimes, today was barred from entering the United States because of evidence that he persecuted people . [25] Amidst international protest, "the UN spokesman said [in his daily press conference] it was not the secretary-general's practice to comment on telegrams sent him by heads of government. He won election to the Austrian presidency in June 1986 for a six-year term. On the Policy Planning Staff several of the other members and I, who was supposed to know something about Austria, we all had access to all the intelligence that anybody else did. The film "Waldheim's Waltz" shows exactly the opposite. Butthe Pope has his own foreign policy. Unable to win a third term as secretary-general, Waldheim left the U.N. in 1982 and served as a visiting professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University in Washington for the next two years. Both were interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy. Thu 14 Jun 2007 19.08 EDT. [41] Stolen Jewish art remained public property a generation after the Waldheim affair. Cardinal . 100 comments. Kurt Josef Waldheim was born on December 21 1918 at Tulln, near Vienna. [44], In view of the ongoing international controversy, the Austrian government decided to appoint an international committee of historians to examine Waldheim's life between 1938 and 1945. After all, Waldheim was their democratically elected President whom the U.S. had supported for the UN Secretary General and now we were banning him as a war criminal. The commission did not say Waldheim personally participated in the bloodshed, and he seized on that to claim that he had essentially been exonerated. The official . We soon found that we couldnt get Germany back on its feet without tapping the expertise of people who had been party members. 1989 Vol. Kurt Josef Waldheim (Sankt Andr-Wrdern, 21 dcembre 1918 - Vienne, 14 juin 2007) . Eventually, though, he was forced to acknowledge that he continued in the military as an intelligence officer, stationed from 1942 to 1945 in Greece and Yugoslavia -- sites of some of the most horrendous massacres of the war. That we were perfectly honest is another question. There had been a lot of political pressure on the Administration to ban Waldheim, especially from the World Jewish Congress and other people to do this. During the later, UN Resolution 3379, which considered Zionism as a form of racism and equated it with South African Apartheid, was approved by impulse of Arab countries, the Soviet bloc, and Non-Aligned Movement countries. In December, he was wounded but returned to service in 1942. I find it interesting that the Holocaust has become much more prominent fifty years after the War than it was 20 years after the War, or even right after the War. He led Austrias first delegation to the UN (1955) and subsequently represented the country in Canada (195660), first as minister plenipotentiary and then as ambassador. In the immediate aftermath of the fighting, an Allied war crimes commission recommended that he be tried as a war criminal. president of Austria and secretary-general of the United Nations. [59] "Our family was under constant surveillance," Waldheim wrote. In March 1936, the Schuschnigg government passed a law mandating a period of military service for prospective civil servants. [4] Talented and ambitious, he rose rapidly through the ranks, and by 1955, when Allied occupation of Austria ended, was dispatched to the United Nations, taking a seat in an institution to which he would be repeatedly assigned in a long diplomatic career that included a two-year stint as Austrian foreign minister. ", Kurt Waldheim dies at 88; ex-UN chief hid Nazi past, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/world/europe/14iht-waldheim.3.6141106.html. Some Germans had stayed in Austria partly because they thought that the Occupation, which was not called Occupation, would be less rigorous and less de-Nazifying than it was in Germany. Waldheims initial denial of his Nazi past and obfuscation mirrored that of a nation. D uring Kurt Waldheim's Austrian presidential campaign in the spring of 1986, that nation's collective consciousness experienced a painful return of the repressed, a psychological agony . Many of them were Yugoslavs or Romanians and all of them were old. Despite his humble beginnings, Waldheim was able to pursue university studies in law and diplomacy in Vienna. [53] In a letter to the editor published in Foreign Affairs magazine two years after Rosenbaum's book was released, former Finnish ambassador to the U.N. Max Jakobson (one of the candidates whom the USSR had vetoed) wrote, "The Soviets knew everything about Waldheim. - Date based on span of years Waldheim served as Secretary General of the United Nations. 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