Uncomfortable Realities: Drs. Erich Petschauer (1907–1977), Gerhard Bast (1911–1947), and Kurt Waldheim (1918–2007)

Abstract

‘Uncomfortable realities’ discusses Drs. Gerhard Bast, Erich Petschauer, and Kurt Waldheim and their different responses to National Socialism. It also highlights briefly the transgenerational effects of such a past, even on persons who understand the process. Bast committed to the Nazi movement early on, joining the SS and Gestapo as soon as possible; later during WWII, he commanded Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe. Although he escaped immediate justice, a local guide in 1946 murdered him during his attempt to escape Italy’s South Tyrol for Latin America. Petschauer joined the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) after his university studies and served as a SS-lieutenant in a relocation office in Northern Italy. While he questioned his role before the end of the war, the follow-up Nuremberg trials judged him a Mitläufer and he never fully moved beyond what he had accepted as a young man. Waldheim never joined the NSDAP nor any of its affiliated organisations. During the war, he served in the Wehrmacht in Yugoslavia and afterward rose to Austrian’s foreign minister, head of the UN, and Austria’s president. During the presidential race in the mid-1980s, the Austrian Socialist party falsely accused him of being a former Nazi, an accusation that was pursued by a leading US Jewish organisation. Even with their attempts to escape this past, their sons found themselves involved in it. While we cannot escape our past, we can attempt to make sense of it.

Keywords:

• Austrian Nazis
• WWII
• transgenerational trauma
• Bast
• Petschauer
• Waldheim

Notes

[1] I have an original copy of the 23 June 1940 photograph of the Archbishop Geisler and Petschauer. Steinacher also mentions (358) my mother in the context of the archbishop’s efforts during and after the war to gain Roman Catholics; but because for a time she used her maiden name, the author did not discover the relationship between her and my father. (In his note [628], Steinacher writes that the information is based on an entry in the Pfarrarchiv Brixen, Taufbuch Brixen, XIV, 1943–1950). I know of the conversion from my mother.

[2] In general, I use more detailed footnotes for Waldheim because his life story attracted such unique attention.

[3] ‘Our opponents were in the majority, and we were lucky that we got home with no more than a few abrasions’ (Author’s translation). Im Glaspalast (p. 38) was written before revelations about Waldheim’s supposed National Socialist affiliations.

[4] This aspect of his life became the beginning of a major controversy in the mid-1980s. One problem was that the English translation of his autobiography did not include the German original note about this service in Yugoslavia. A related problem is that many of the men and women researching Waldheim do not read German and are thus missing some of the most important statements and documents. A deeper concern drove the controversy as well, namely that he had served in the Wehrmacht. New York Times columnist Flora Lewis shouted at Peter Michael Lingens, ‘“But he [Waldheim] wore the uniform of a German officer.” It did not help that I [Lingens] snapped back that my father also had worn that uniform and hated Hitler more than she could ever imagine’ (Lingens 2). Lingens was then the editor-in-chief of profil. He is the son of Drs. Ella and Kurt Lingens, members of the Just Among Peoples and was at one time Simon Wiesenthal’s secretary.

[5] As late as 2010, Segev (364) wrote, for example, that Waldheim lied about his service in Yugoslavia, thus missing Wiesenthal’s own opinion and research that contradicts this assessment.

[6] Some of Dr. Ella Lingens testimony about her time in Auschwitz may be heard at http://www.auschwitz-prozess.de.