By Donald H. Harrison

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, remembers receiving a highly personal phone call in 1990 from actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The actor said he had met in Europe with nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who had suggested that Hier could help him learn about his father's record as a member of the nazi party in Austria.

"He really was in the dark about what role his father had" in World War II, Hier recalled Sunday, Aug. 10, a few days after Schwarzenegger made international news by declaring himself a candidate in the Oct. 7 recall election against California Gov. Gray Davis. In the wake of his
announcement, questions were almost immediately raised by news media about
Schwarzenegger's alleged "nazi problem."

"We checked it out, in various archives, and we discovered his father Gustav's nazi party card," Hier said. "Soon after the Anschluss (the merger of Germany and Austria in 1938), he wanted to join the nazi party, but his membership was not accepted until January of 1941.

"We then checked if there had been any war crimes," Hier continued. "He had been a policeman in an Austrian town, but not a ranking policeman. We wanted to search whether he had any role in the Holocaust, with Jews or anyone else. But we could not find anything in any of the files, anything to suggest that there were any charges against him."

The rabbi said he forwarded that information to Schwarzenegger, whom he had known since 1984 as a friend of the Wiesenthal Center. Hier said that Schwarzenegger not only has been a regular financial contributor to the center, which operates the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, but also has through guest appearances helped to raise millions of dollars for the
organization.

Hier said it was significant that Schwarzenegger made the inquiries more than a decade before he decided to get into politics.

The rabbi was asked his reaction to a report on Slate.com that Schwarzenegger continued his friendship with Kurt Waldheim, the former Austrian president and United Nations secretary-general, even after disclosures of Waldheim¹s nazi activities.

Waldheim was invited "but did not attend" Schwarzenegger's 1986 marriage to Maria Shriver, niece of slain U.S. President John F. Kennedy, the Internet magazine reported. Slate.com also quoted the New York Post as reporting in 1998 that Schwarzenegger sat beside Waldheim that year at the second inauguration of his successor as Austria's president, Thomas Klestil.

In response, Hier noted that he had been one of two witnesses in a congressional hearing against Waldheim, in which he had urged that Waldheim never again be allowed in the United States. The invitation to the 1986 wedding, he said, came before Waldheim's role as a nazi officer became known. As for the meeting in 1998, said Hier, "if he (Schwarzenegger) would
ask me, I would tell him to stay away from him; this guy (Waldheim) has not admitted his role."

Elaine Jennings of Schwarzenegger's campaign press staff said there would be no immediate comment concerning the nature of the candidate's relationship with Waldheim.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that about four years ago Austrian Freedom Party leader Jorg Haider asked Schwarzenegger to intercede on his behalf after learning that the Museum of Tolerance kept Haider¹s photo up in a "rogue's gallery" of demagogues.

Cooper said that Schwarzenegger then called Hier, who told him about various speeches Haider had been making in Austria. Thereafter, Cooper said, Schwarzenegger called Haider and said, "You're up there because you belong there."

On another occasion, Cooper said, the Wiesenthal Center was alerted to nazi video games being disseminated in Austria by a Jewish man who used to lift weights with Schwarzenegger in Graz before Schwarzenegger emigrated to the United States. "They were close friends during their high school years," Cooper recalled.

In San Diego, hot dogs, soft drinks and Arnold Schwarzenegger were features at a summer picnic on Mission Bay held by members of the New Life Club of Holocaust Survivors.

Beno Hirschbein, a Polish-born survivor, noted that Schwarzenegger was born in 1947, "two years after World War II ended," and said his father¹s nazi past should not be held against him. He noted that President Kennedy's father (and Maria Shriver's grandfather), Joseph Kennedy, was considered pro-nazi, yet "Kennedy was one of our greatest presidents." Hirschbein said
he would happily vote for Schwarzenegger to replace Davis.

Ben Midler, another Polish-born survivor, took the opposite view. "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," he said. "His family has a nazi background and I am very skeptical about it." He said he would not vote for Schwarzenegger.

Manny Flaster, another Polish-born survivor, said, "I have many concerns about people who come out of Austria because there are a bunch of anti-Semites over there and I wouldn't trust them farther than I could throw them."

But Morry Klein, a Romanian-born survivor, said, "I don¹t think this new generation should be judged by the past. He was born after the war, he came to the United States, he became prosperous and has shown what you can accomplish in the United States."

Helen Bluzstejn, a survivor who had lived in Danzig, said, "He is here a long time in the United States, and maybe he understands the American way and everything, but I have a funny feeling."