Austria`s consul general, Clemens Coreth, seeking to deny Kurt Waldheim`s Nazi affiliations, conveniently ignores the findings of Austria`s own Commission of Historians, whose report in 1988 concluded there was no doubt of Waldheim`s membership in Nazi organizations (letter, May 10).
The Commission of International Historians, impaneled by the government of Austria, concluded that Waldheim was ”unquestionably” a member of a mounted unit of the Nazi Brownshirts. The commission also stated that documents ”prove Kurt Waldheim`s membership in the Nazi Student Federation,” noting that he joined at his own personal initiative.
Mr. Coreth cites ”Sir George Weidenfeld,” a British publisher, as speaking out in support of Waldheim. Actually, it`s ”Lord” George Weidenfeld, who is known as the publisher of Waldheim`s now-discredited autobiography in which he lied about having been a law student in Vienna during most of the second World War.
If Mr. Coreth and his government cannot abide by the findings of a commission they established, they should never have appointed it in the first place.
