NEW CHARGES, ADMISSION ON WALDHEIM'S RECORD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100130002-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: October 30, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

1. _.lll_ _ U I I
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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
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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.
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