Language:
English
Year of publication:
1989
Titel der Quelle:
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
4,1 (1989) 1-13
Keywords:
Waldheim, Kurt
;
John Paul
;
Holocaust (Jewish theology)
Abstract:
A paper presented at the 18th annual Scholars' Conference on the Church Struggle and the Holocaust, Washington, DC, March 1988. Discusses issues raised by Pope John Paul II's reception of Kurt Waldheim (then president of Austria) at the Vatican in June 1987, regarding the Church, Waldheim's wartime career, Austria and the Holocaust. The meeting triggered memories of the war period when the Vatican assigned high priority to the struggle against Bolshevism (in which the Nazis were engaged) and much lower priority to the fate of the Jews. Waldheim's role in the war was that of a bureaucratic accessory to war crimes, the majority of them not against Jews. His fault lies in the denial and evasion of responsibility for that role. But, in the deepest sense, the Waldheim affair is not about Waldheim but about Austria and its failure to face its past - its willing collaboration with Nazi Germany.
Note:
Appeared also in "Burning Memory; Times of Testing and Reckoning", 1993.
URL:
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