NEW CHARGES, ADMISSION ON WALDHEIM'S RECORD

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-01208R000100130002-7
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RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
2
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
March 2, 2011
Sequence Number: 
2
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Publication Date: 
October 30, 1986
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OPEN SOURCE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP90-01208R000100130002-7.pdf274.45 KB
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1. _.lll_ _ U I I Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100130002-7 AMR WASHINGTON POST 30 October 1986, New Charges,: Admission On Waldheim's Record He Now Concedes. Link to Germans' Kozara 'Pacifi'cation .? By Dusko Doder Washington Post Staff Writer After denying for months that he had anything to do with a 1942 Nazi operation that resulted in the mas- sacre of Yugoslav civilians in a mountainous area called Kozara, Kurt Waldheim has acknowledged that he did take part in the opera- tion, a brutal "pacification" effort at- the height of World War H. A spokesman for Waldheim said' in the course of several telephone, interviews that the Austrian pres- ident did serve in the Kozara. area,.. in the western part of Yugoslavia's province of Bosnia, in. the spring and summer of 1942, but that he. was a "supply officer not engaged in the fighting. In a 13-page memo Waldheim's son presented to The Washington Post last April, Waldheim emphat- ically denied that he was in the Ko- zara area during the spring and summer of 1942. He said he had been transferred to the command staff of the Wehrmacht's Combat . Group West Bosnia, which planned and conducted the operation. But he . contended that this was only a pa- per assignment for record-keeping purposes and that he was sent al- most immediately to be a liaison officer with an Italian. infaptry di- vision located 180 miles away. Waldheim's. spokesman, . Gerold Christian, said- that "additional re- search" has . now. revealed . that Waldheim's earlier statement was incorrect.Accusations of war crimes brought against Waldheim after the war by the Yugoslav, government, first disclosed publicly last spring, involved later episodes in 1944 and 1945. In recent interviews in Yu- oslavial, retire Yugoslav intelli- gence officers ' said those orma charges were drawn up largely to try to blackmail Waldheim into-be- coming a ugos av or So 2e agen , an were no ega Y persuasive. The formal indictment of Wald- heim, obtained by The Post, was based on charges by other Austr- ians who fought with the Nazis, sev- eral of whom were later executed as war criminals themselves. Waldheim's acknowledged par- ticipation in the Kozara operation raises new questions about hiswar- time role. Though his spokesman, Christian, said that during the Ko- zara. campaign Wakiheim "was as- signed as a special missions staff officer to the staff of the quarter- master" and "had the duties of a' supply officer," records show that Lt. Kurt Waldheim was a member of the command staff of 29 men under Gen. Friedrich von Stahl, the Nazi commander at Kozara. German reports list Waldheim among 34'men in the German army singled out for meritorious service in the Kozara campaign. Documents show that Stahl recommended Waldheim and seven other officers for the King Zvonimir Medal.of the puppet Croatian government for "heroic bravery in the battle against the insurgents in the spring and summer of 1942:" Waldheim re- ceived the medal with an oak leaf decoration that was reserved for those who distingushed themselves "under enemy fire," according to an official Nazi description of the med- al. Three months later Waldheim was promoted to first lieutenant. An Austrian Foreign Ministry document issued at the time of his retirement in .1983 shows that Waldheim had listed the 1942 award of the King Zvonimir Medal in his personnel file. In his earlier statements, Wald= heim had insisted that the Kozara operation did not involve a massa- cre of the local population. "That's nonsense," he was quoted by the Belgrade newspaper Vecernje Novosti as saying. "There was no massacre, there were fierce bat- tles." An order issued by the German command staff at the start of the Kozara operation on June 4 said that "all males over the age of 14, except the very old men, have to be arrested. They should-under the threat of summary execution-be forced to provide information about the enemy, in order to obtain data for pursuing further military oper- ations." The objective of the operation, according to Stahl's order outlining it, was to remove the entire pop- ulation of the region and eventually resettle it with a "reliable" popula- tion ' . The total number of people in the Kozara area was about 80,000, including 3,500 armed partisans. - The ferocity of the final" days of the operation, after the Axis forces-33,000 strong-had bro- ken the resistance of Tito's parti- sans and encircled tens of thou- sands of civilians hiding in the forest of Mt. Kozara, was captured by German war correspondent Kurt Neher: "And then came the most horri-. fying part of-all," he wrote in a,eon- temporary dispatch, "that made ev- eryone's blood run cold--a woman started screaming hard and long and hundreds took up her call. Men, women and children threw them-. selves with beastly intensity upon our lines. It seemed to us as if we were present at the instant of the forming of the primal human horde, with men rushing us in human waves, intent on self-destruction and mindless of all fear. Their faces were bestial, belonging to a truly lower race." When the operation ended on July 18, Stahl proclaimed it "a great success." "The enemy has been annihilated or captured, and the entire popu- lation of the encircled area have been removed, thus effecting a thorough pacification of the terri- tory," Stahl said in his order of the day. Yugoslav figures show that of the 3,500 armed partisans, 1,900 sur- vived the battle after they managed to break through the encirclement at Patria on July 4. Of more than 81,000 unarmed people in the area at the time of the encirclement, STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100130002-7 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/02 CIA-RDP90-01208R000100130002-7 13,000 were killed and 68,000. were evacuated to concentration camps or sent to forced labor in Germany and Norway. Many per- sons perished in long marches to concentration camps. In the camps, 23,000 children under the age of 14 were separated from their parents and sent to spe- cial children's camps where 11,000 died of starvation and disease. His- torian Dragoje Lukic, 53, one of the children who survived, had to look 12 years for his younger brother, who was taken to a different camp. Another camp survivor, journalist Jovan Kesar, 49, has been one of the most aggressive Yugoslav re- porters investigating Waldheim's, past. The Germans decided to pacify the Kozara and Podgrmec territo- ry-an area of western- Bosnia- flanked by the rivers Sava, Vrbas and Sana-after its predominantly Serb population mounted an open rebellion in early 1942, according to Yugsolav accounts. It was a spon- taneous revolt in response to atroc- ities committed in the area against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies by the Us- tashi, as the Croat fascists were known. The Yugoslav Communists used the rebellion to establish a strong foothold in the area and es- tablish their political control. Kozara was the largest section of liberated territory under Marshal Tito's. control: More important, it was located near Zagreb, the capital of the Croatian puppet state, and. the main German communication lines running from Zagreb via Bel- grade to Athens. Moreover, the rebels had taken over a major iron ore mine at Ljubija, and controlled rail and road communications. At a meeting of the German High Command for the South-East at Ar- sakli, near Salonica, on May 20, a decision was made to. "clear and pacify" the West Bosnian region around the Kozara mountain. The Combat Group West Bosnia was formed on May 23 under Stahl. Documents exist that might be able to clear up questions about' Waldheim's role at Kozara..An ex planation. of the King Zvonimir Medal he was awarded is thought to be located in the Croatian fascist state archives, which are currently in Zagreb. However, Croatian com- munist leaders have resisted efforts to open these files to historians and researchers. The Yugoslav government decid- ed earlier this year not to cooperate with any research into Waldheim's past. Government officials in Bel- grade say directly that they value good relations with Austria and have no interest in the controversy. Historian Vladimir Dedijer-; who. is chairman of the Genocide Com- mission of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, said he has 242 docu- ments about the Kozara operation, some of them implicating Wald heim. Dedijer, Tito's official biog- rapher, also has the late Yugoslav leader's. personal archive. Dedijer said he had turned over the Kozara documents to the Inter- xf, BY CLARICE 00R10 -THE WASHINGTON POST national War Crimes Tribunal, founded by the late British philos- opher Bertrand Russell. The tribu- nal has formed an Executive Com- mittee on Kurt Waldheim in Lon- don, and has formally asked the Austrian government for permis. sion to hold a public tribunal in Vi- enna. The tribunal declined to make the documents available to The Washington Post. Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100130002-7