Jews protest against Waldheim-Pope meeting

Press, 26 June 1987, Page 8

Jews protest against Waldheim-Pope meeting

NZPA-Reuter Vatican City

The audience of the 1 Austrian President, Kurt Waldheim, with Pope ; John Paul today breaks a wall of international isolation that has existed since his election a year ago but has whipped up a storm of Jewish protest.

Jewish activists and other groups plan demonstrations at the Vatican when Dr Waldheim meets the Pontiff. The audience has provoked outrage around the world from Jews who accuse the Austrian leader of hiding a Nazi past. Dr Waldheim, a former United Nations secretarygeneral, denies the allegations.

Four United States Jewish activists and a French Nazi-hunter, Beate Klarsfeld, were detained at Rome airport amid heavy security precautions shortly before Waldheim arrived on a scheduled flight from Vienna. After more than two

hours of questioning there, they were taken to central Rome for further inquiries. The police said Ms Klarsfeld and the activists were later released with-, out charges being brought against them.

Ms Klarsfeld told Reuters that she had been questioned about a small fire in her hotel room earlier which was caused by one of six black smoke candles in the room.

She said the group had intended to ignite the candles near the Vatican today in a symbolic gesture of protest against Dr Waldheim’s visit, with each candle representing one million of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, j Protests began in Rome yesterday when the United States activists led by a New York Rabbi, Avi Weiss, donned concentra-tion-camp uniforms with black and white stripes and yellow stars for an emotional demonstration

in St Peter’s Square. They sang songs and said prayers recited by concentration camp victims during the Second World War. Rabbi Weiss said he would get as close as possible today to the Pope’s balcony in the square. “We will tell him ‘you may wish to forget but we will never forget. We are here for six million reasons, here to speak out for the six million (concentration camp victims) who cannot speak for themselves’.”

Italian Jews and other groups plan to march from the Rome synagogue to St Peter’s to protest against the meeting. The Vatican emphasises that the audience is part of the Holy See’s diplomatic relations with predominantly Catholic Austria and should not be seen as a personal meeting between Dr Waldheim and the Pope. It expressed surprise and sadness about the re-

action to the meeting. The Vatican newspaper "L’Osservatore Romano” yesterday welcomed Dr Waldheim in an editorial but also restated the Pope’s past condemnation of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust

The Vatican’s position and a detailed Austrian Embassy denial of the allegations against Dr Waldheim have done little to defuse Jewish protests. An Israeli diplomat at the Rome Embassy yesterday asked the Vatican to explain why the Pope had decided to break the isolation which has surrounded Dr Waldheim. The Israeli Chief Rabbi, Mordechai Eliahu, said yesterday that the meeting would cast a moral stain on the Catholic Church, and the 40,000strong European Union of Jewish students accused the Pope of disregarding Nazi war crimes by seeing Dr Waldheim. Jewish leaders in the United States say the meeting threatens 22 years of steady progress towards reconciliation between Catholics and Jews which reached a high point only last year with a visit by the Pope to the mainßome synagogue.