www.ceepackaging.com twitter @ceepackaging www.facebook.com www.facebook.com These nine films are part of a much larger programme that was aired in 1988 which looks into allegations that the recently elected president of Austria Kurt Waldheim was a Nazi war criminal. Waldheim had previously been the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981. I do not possess any more of this programme which I 'rediscovered' in 2008 on a VHS cassette used some 20 years earlier. Waldheim had unsuccessfully sought election as President of Austria in 1971, but his second attempt on 8 June 1986 proved successful. During his campaign for the presidency in 1985, the events started that marked the beginning of what became known internationally as the "Waldheim Affair". Before the presidential elections, Alfred Worm revealed in the Austrian weekly news magazine Profil that there had been several omissions about Waldheim's life between 1938 and 1945 in his recently-published autobiography. A short time later, the World Jewish Congress alleged that Waldheim had lied about his service as an officer in the mounted corps of the SA, and his time as an ordnance officer for Army Group E in Saloniki, Greece, from 1942 to 1943 based in files from the United Nations War Crimes Commission. Waldheim called the allegations "pure lies and malicious acts". Nevertheless he admitted that he had known about German reprisals against partisans: "Yes, I knew. I was horrified. But what could I do ...
Tags: Kurt, Waldheim, Nazi, Germany, Austria, President, Third, Reich, Balkans, WW2, Greece, Yugoslavia
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