AFTER LEARNING THAT Kurt Waldheim, the Austrian presidential candidate, had lied about his past, the World Jewish Congress that gathered in New York in 1986 had put together a thick dossier on him. For ten years secretary-general of the United Nations in New York, Waldheim also featured in the archives kept in the basement of that building as a Nazi war criminal classified in the same category as Klaus Barbie.
If Israel had failed to check Waldheim’s past in 1972, it was probably because Simon Wiesenthal, another Austrian living in Vienna, did not object. Why was that? Either his investigation was a complete failure, or he never conducted an investigation out of sympathy for Waldheim or for the political party he supported.
Serge and I had revealed that, after the deportation of forty-two thousand Jews from German-occupied Thessalonikí, General Löhr and his general staff—which included Waldheim—had pressured the Italian army in Greece to deport the Jews from their zone of occupation, too.
In cooperation with the World Jewish Congress, we helped search for documents that would show Waldheim’s involvement in the Yugoslavian repression and in the Greek deportations. But my main objective was to prevent him from getting elected.
I left for Vienna in May 1986 and organized several protests, aided by some young Austrians, in the capital and then in Graz and Amstetten. I was manhandled and insulted, but at least I was able to help the opposition to Waldheim be heard.
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ON JUNE 25, 1987, while Serge was taking part in the thirtieth hearing of the Barbie trial, I tried to mobilize public opinion in Rome, raising awareness of the scandal represented by the Austrian president’s visit to the Vatican, particularly given that the pope, who was Polish, was attempting to improve the Catholic Church’s relationship with Jews. Waldheim was already blacklisted from visiting most Western countries. Four rabbis from New York traveled with me, and many young Jews from Rome joined us, expressing their disapproval not only of Waldheim but of a pope who would welcome him.
I arrived in Rome the day before Waldheim, armed with everything I needed to put my plan into action. Using the idea that the result of a papal election is marked by the release of white smoke, I decided to set off six black smoke bombs as Waldheim passed in front of the Vatican, symbolizing the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. Unfortunately, I had no knowledge of how to handle a smoke bomb. When we decided to examine one of them, to work out how the pin came out, disaster struck. The smoke bomb went off in the hotel room, which filled with black smoke and caught fire. We set off the fire alarm and fled the room. But this disaster turned out to be a blessing in disguise: the fire brigade and police arrived on the scene, and they initially thought it was an act of terrorism; the media went into a panic, and the incident made headlines the next day.
Our protest of Waldheim’s visit to the Vatican was effective, too, with photographs of the young Jews, dressed in concentration camp uniforms, surrounded by Italian police in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica, printed in newspapers all over the world.
Waldheim’s next official visit was planned for Jordan on July 4. Well, if he was going there, so was I.
King Hussein of Jordan called Waldheim “dear friend”: as UN secretary-general, Waldheim had helped the Arab cause.
I took a room at the Intercontinental in Amman under my maiden name, and on July 2, I went to the Foreign Ministry with the Waldheim dossier. I was warmly received by the Jordanian official until he learned what the document contained. He refused to let me leave it there and escorted me to the exit. At the opportune moment—in other words, just as I was standing under gigantic photographs of Waldheim and King Hussein—I took off my jacket to reveal a black T-shirt bearing the words: WALDHEIM MUSS WEG (Waldheim must go), an image that again made the newspapers. Naturally, I was taken to the police station and questioned before being released and placed under surveillance in my hotel room. I was then invited to leave Jordan—a pressing invitation that I accepted without regret.
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I WENT BACK to Vienna in December 1987 and March 1988, each time to protest Waldheim. For the second of these trips, the pope’s visit to Austria, Serge, Arno, and I came up with the idea that one of us (it would be Arno) would wear the uniform that Waldheim had worn during the war and that someone else (it would be friends of ours, Benjamin Asenhejm and Willy Gruska) would wear papal robes. Our plan was to rent a room with a balcony in the hotel opposite Saint Stephen’s Cathedral: that way, the spectators who had gathered to see Waldheim and the pope would see another pair just like them on our balcony. This part of the protest went off as planned.
The next day, our group went to the nunciature early in the morning. I walked at the front, followed by Arno in his Nazi uniform and Willy dressed as the pope, while the others held up signs. The police descended upon us, and Arno and Willy were arrested. We went to the police station where they had been taken, and I saw a policeman kicking Arno. I slapped his face. He did not dare respond. Arno’s fingerprints were taken, and he wiped the ink onto a policeman’s white shirt. The policeman yelled but did not hit him. We were kept behind bars for more than six hours before being released.
My last protest against Kurt Waldheim took place in Turkey. I flew to Istanbul with Rabbi Weiss, and we stood outside a school with our posters, waiting for the visit of Waldheim and the Turkish president. A group of policemen surrounded us, and then it was the usual routine: police station, interrogation, release. The next day, our protest was front-page news; it had completely overshadowed Waldheim’s visit. Confronted with the loss of prestige that Waldheim’s presidency had inflicted on Austria, the conservative party forced him to abandon his plans to seek reelection.