Waldheim was invited speaker Young President's Organization, 10-27 September 1997 YPO [Young Presidents Organization]
In plenary session Kurt Waldheim (father changed the family name from Vaclavek) several times expressed his concern with “human rights” in the Balkans, naming Yugoslavia, and a few times mentioning the Serbs in particular. He applauded the 1995 US bombings of the Serbs “to bring them to the negotiating table”.I asked Waldheim-Vaclavek to tell about his human rights work in the Balkans from 1941 to 1945, especially regarding in role in the round-up and extermination of the Jews of Thessalonica and Serbs at Mount Kozara.?”
Saloniki: “I was absent...” Studying law” and all that.
Kozara: “Oh, this was one of those “unfortunate” things. There were battles between the Croatian Ustashe and Serbian forces, the Chetniks and the Partisans.” But the Chetniks were hundreds of kilometres away in Serbia then. And Serbs had not yet rallied to Tito’s Partisans at this time. Their doing so was a consequence of the Croatian slaughter of defenseless Serb farmers. There were no Serb forces at Kozara, only defenseless farmers.
j p maher
Ex-Nazi Waldheim gives foreign relations prize
By Robert Fisk in Beirut
31 May 2002
A former Wehrmacht lieutenant, a certain Kurt Waldheim, has arrived in Lebanon.Those who enjoy the "where-are-they-now?" school of journalism may be interested to know that the ex-intelligence officer of the Nazi army's Kampfgruppe Westbosnien – for the former UN secretary general and Austrian president spent part of the Second World War in Bosnia – has endowed an annual academic prize in his own name, for a student or researcher at the Lebanese University who wins a contest in international relations.
Mr Waldheim managed, in his own thesis (University of Vienna) to recall only his military service in Russia and omitted his role in the Wehrmacht's Army Group E, whose commander, General Löhr, was executed for war crimes.
Some horrific crimes took place in Yugoslavia, where Bosnia became part of the pro-Nazi Croatian Ustashi's territory. Although he denied knowledge of atrocities against Serbs and Jews in Yugoslavia, one of his intelligence offices was metres away from an execution ground and a few miles from an extermination camp.
In Berlin archives, an Austrian researcher found the account of an interrogation of a British commando captured in the Balkans. It was signed "W" in Mr Waldheim's own hand. He always denied he interrogated the man, who was later killed by the Gestapo.
The first "Waldheim Award" will be granted at the Lebanese University's school of dentistry today. In international relations, of course.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?dir=75&story=300756&host=3&printable=1
