In The Waltz of Waldheim, which had its world premiere at the Berlinale, Austrian-Jewish documentarian Ruth Beckermann probes her country’s unhealthy relationship with its past as manifested in the scandal that arose around former UN Secretary-General and presidential candidate Kurt Waldheim in 1985. The only real misstep occurs at the very start, when she ascribes to Abraham Lincoln the famed quote “You can fool all the people some of the time….” Someone should have told her that it’s highly unlikely Lincoln was the source.The Waltz of Waldheim poses the question whether a fascist threat suppressed and unexamined on a national scale has ever really been defeated. Kurt waldheim gave the hider fascist party movie#Earlier in her narration, she addresses the dilemma of all activist filmmakers who wonder when to pick up the protest banner instead of the movie camera with great satisfaction to all, she manages both.Ībout the only thing missing from “The Waldheim Waltz” is a brief discussion of Waldheim’s legacy at the UN apart from Arafat’s presence in the chamber otherwise, she picks apart the man and the machine that supported him, and along the way inculpates the Austrian delusion of victimhood. Less skilled directors would have edited the sequence down, but in the style of the best legal dramas, Beckermann lets it all play out to devastating effectiveness. Tom Lantos questions Waldheim’s New York-based son Gerhard, refusing to tolerate any obfuscation or unsupportable denials. Congressional hearing looking into the allegations, during which Rep. Most devastating is footage from a highly unusual U.S. Resorting to the standard line from all crackpots on the right, including one currently in the White House, Waldheim declared he was the most slandered candidate in his nation’s history.īeckermann (“The Dreamed Ones”) counts down the days leading to the election, ticking off each one as new revelations come to light. Some even suggested it was a Jewish plot to get back at the ex-Secretary General for welcoming Yasser Arafat at the UN. The candidate and his party hit back, denying any culpability in the Nazi war machine, using veiled anti-Semitic language in their appeal to true Austrians and their historic assertion of collective victimhood. The WJC’s evidence was devastating, and it kept on coming, effectively proving that Waldheim was involved in murderous anti-partisan activities and throwing ridicule on his claim that he wasn’t aware of the 60,000 Jews from Thessaloniki deported to extermination camps. But the case against Waldheim really picked up steam in March 1986, when the World Jewish Congress in New York gave a press conference presenting documents together with a now infamous photo of the former head of the UN in Nazi uniform in 1943. Like most politicians after the War, he coddled voters with talk of the hard-won ethical and moral rebuilding of Austria following its liberation, ignoring the fact that so many Austrians, still smarting from the country’s humiliating diminishment after the first World War, welcomed the Anschluss. When Czernin’s article came out, Waldheim labeled it a smear campaign, taking refuge in the popular argument that Austria was the first victim of Nazi aggression. Only when he declared his candidacy for president in 1985 did investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin begin digging into the records, where he discovered that Waldheim’s claims didn’t hold water. There were a few at the time quietly questioning his record during World War 2, but Waldheim stuck to the story that he was drafted into the Nazi army like tens of thousands of other Austrians, was wounded in 1941, and sat out the rest of the War focusing on his studies. While Secretary General between 19, Waldheim was “the man who the world trusts,” whose broad smile and expressive hands made people watching feel like he was embracing their causes.
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