- For more than 40 years, Simon Wiesenthal has been tracking
hundreds of "Nazi criminals" from his "Jewish Documentation
Center" in Vienna. For his work as the world's most prominent "Nazi
hunter," he has been awarded several honorary degrees and numerous
medals, including Germany's highest decoration. In a formal White House
ceremony in August 1980, a teary-eyed President Carter presented him with
a special gold medal awarded by the US Congress. President Reagan praised
him in November 1988 as one of the "true heroes" of this century.
-
- This living legend was portrayed in flattering terms
by the late Laurence Oliver in the 1978 film fantasy "The Boys From
Brazil," and by Ben Kingsley in the 1989 HBO made-for-television movie
"Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story." One of world's
most prominent Holocaust organizations bears his name: the Simon Wiesenthal
Center of Los Angeles.
-
- Wiesenthal's reputation as a moral authority is undeserved.
The man whom The Washington Post has called the "Holocaust's Avenging
Angel" [1] has a little known but well-documented record of reckless
disregard for truth. He has lied about his own wartime experiences, misrepresented
his postwar "Nazi-hunting" achievements, and has spread vile
falsehoods about alleged German atrocities.
-
- Different Stories
-
- Szymon (Simon) Wiesenthal was born on December 31, 1908,
in Buczacz, a town in the province of Galicia (now Buchach in Ukraine)
in what was then the eastern fringe of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His
father was a prosperous wholesale sugar merchant.
-
- In spite of all that has been written about him, just
what Wiesenthal did during the war years under German occupation remains
unclear. He has given conflicting stories in three separate accounts of
his wartime activities. The first was given under oath during a two day
interrogation session in May 1948 conducted by an official of the US Nuremberg
war crimes commission. [2] The second is a summary of his life provided
by Wiesenthal as part of a January 1949 "Application for Assistance"
to the International Refugee Committee. [3] And the third account is given
in his autobiography, The Murderers Among Us, first published in 1967.
[4]
-
- Soviet Engineer or Factory Mechanic?
-
- In his 1948 interrogation, Wiesenthal declared that "between
1939 and 1941" he was a "Soviet chief engineer working in Lvov
and Odessa." [5] Consistent with that, he stated in his 1949 declaration
that from December 1939 to April 1940 he worked as an architect in the
Black Sea port of Odessa. But according to his autobiography, he spent
the period between mid-September 1939 and June 1941 in Soviet-ruled Lvov,
where he worked "as a mechanic in a factory that produced bedsprings."
[6]
-
- Relative Freedom
-
- After the Germans took control of Galicia province in
June 1941, Wiesenthal was interned for a time in the Janowska concentration
camp near Lvov, from where he was transferred a few months later to a camp
affiliated with the repair works (OAW) in Lvov of the Ostbahn ("Eastern
Railroad") of German-ruled Poland. Wiesenthal reported in his autobiography
that he worked there "as a technician and draftsman," that he
was rather well treated, and that his immediate superior, who was "secretly
anti-Nazi," even permitted him to own two pistols. He had his own
office in a "small wooden hut," and enjoyed "relative freedom
and was permitted to walk all over the yards." [7]
-
- Partisan Fighter?
-
- The next segment of Wiesenthal's life -- from October
1943 to June 1944 -- is the most obscure, and his accounts of this period
are contradictory. During his 1948 interrogation, Wiesenthal said that
he fled from the Janowska camp in Lvov and joined a "partisan group
which operated in the Tarnopol-Kamenopodolsk area." [8] He said that
"I was a partisan from October 6, 1943, until the middle of February
1944," and declared that his unit fought against Ukrainian forces,
both of the SS "Galicia" division and of the independent UPA
partisan force. [9]
-
- Wiesenthal said that he held the rank of lieutenant and
then major, and was responsible for building bunkers and fortification
lines. Although he was not explicit, he suggested that this (supposed)
partisan unit was part of the Armia Ludowa ("Peoples Army"),
the Polish Communist military force established and controlled by the Soviets.
[10]
-
- He said that he and other partisans slipped into Lvov
in February 1944, where they were "hidden by friends of the A.L. ['People's
Army'] group." On June 13, 1944, his group was captured by the German
Secret Field Police. (Although Jewish partisans caught in hiding were often
shot, Wiesenthal reports that he was somehow spared.) Wiesenthal told much
the same story in his 1949 statement. He said that he fled from internment
in early October 1943 and then "fought against the Germans as a partisan
in the forest" for eight months -- from October 2, 1943, to March
1944. After that, he was "in hiding" in Lvov from March to June
1944.
-
- Wiesenthal tells a totally different story in his 1967
autobiography. He reports there that after escaping from the Ostbahn Repair
Works on Oct. 2, 1943, he lived in hiding in the houses of various friends
until June 13, 1944, when he was discovered by Polish and German police
and returned to a concentration camp. He makes no mention of any partisan
membership or activity. [11]
-
- According to both his 1948 interrogation and his 1967
autobiography, he tried to commit suicide on June 15, 1944, by cutting
his wrists. Remarkably, though, he was saved from death by German SS doctors
and recovered in an SS hospital. [12] He remained in the Lvov concentration
camp "with double rations" for a time, and then, he reports in
his autobiography, he was transferred to various work camps. He spent the
remaining chaotic months, until the end of the war, in different camps
until he was liberated from Mauthausen (in Austria) by American forces
on May 5, 1945. [13]
-
- Did Wiesenthal invent a past as a heroic wartime partisan?
Or did he later try to suppress his record as a Communist fighter? Or is
the true story altogether different -- and too shameful to admit?
-
- Nazi Agent?
-
- Did Wiesenthal voluntarily work for his wartime oppressors?
That's the accusation leveled by Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, himself
of Jewish ancestry and leader for many years of his country's Socialist
Party. During an interview with foreign journalists in 1975, Kreisky charged
Wiesenthal with using "Mafia methods," rejected his pretense
of "moral authority," and suggested that he was an agent for
the German authorities. Some of his more pertinent remarks, which appeared
in Austria's leading news magazine Profil, include: [14]
-
-
- "I really know Mr. Wiesenthal only from secret reports,
and they are bad, very nasty. I say this as Federal Chancellor ... And
I say that Mr. Wiesenthal had a different relationship with the Gestapo
than I did. Yes, and this can be proven. I can't say more [now]. Everything
else, I'll say in court.
-
- "My relationship with the Gestapo is unambiguous.
I was their prisoner, their inmate, and I was interrogated. His relationship
was a different one, I can say, and this will come out clearly. It's bad
enough what I've already said here. But he can't clear himself by charging
me with defaming his honor in the press, as he might wish. It's not that
simple, because that would mean a big court case ... A man like this doesn't
have the right to pretend to be a moral authority. That's what I say. He
doesn't have the right ...
-
- "Whether a man who, in my view, is an agent, yes,
that's right, and who uses Mafia methods ... Such a man has to go ...
-
- "He is no gentleman, and I would say, to make this
clear, so that he won't become a moral authority, because he is not ...
He shouldn't pretend to be a moral authority ...
-
- "I say that Mr. Wiesenthal lived in that time in
the Nazi sphere of influence without being persecuted. Right? And he lived
openly without being persecuted, right? Is that clear? And you perhaps
know, if you know what was going on, that no one could risk that.
-
- "He wasn't a "submarine" ... that is,
submerged and in hiding, but instead, he was completely in the open without
having to, well, ever risk persecution. I think that's enough. There were
so many opportunities to be an agent. He didn't have to be a Gestapo agent.
There were many other services."
-
-
- In response to these damning words, Wiesenthal began
efforts to bring a lawsuit against the Chancellor. Eventually, though,
both Wiesenthal and Kreisky backed away from a major legal clash.
-
- Mauthausen Myths
-
- Before he became famous as a "Nazi hunter,"
he made a name for himself as a propagandist. In 1946 Wiesenthal published
KZ Mauthausen, an 85-page work that consists mainly of his own amateurish
sketches purporting to represent the horrors of the Mauthausen concentration
camp. One drawing depicts three inmates who had been bound to posts and
brutally put to death by the Germans. [15]
-
- The sketch is completely phony. It was copied -- with
some minor alterations -- from photographs that appeared in Life magazine
in 1945, which graphically record the firing-squad execution in December
1944 of three German soldiers who had been caught operating as spies behind
the lines during the "Battle of the Bulge." [16] The source of
the Wiesenthal drawing is instantly obvious to anyone who compares it with
the Life photos. [17]
-
- The irresponsible character of this book is also shown
by Wiesenthal's extensive citation therein of the supposed "death
bed confession" of Mauthausen Commandant Franz Ziereis, according
to which four million were gassed to death with carbon monoxide at the
nearby Hartheim satellite camp. [18] This claim is totally absurd, and
no serious Holocaust historian still accepts it. [19] Also according to
the Ziereis "confession" cited by Wiesenthal, the Germans supposedly
killed another ten million people in Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. [20]
In fact, this fraudulent "confession" was obtained by torture.
[21]
-
- Years later, Wiesenthal was still lying about Mauthausen.
In a 1983 interview with the daily newspaper USA Today, he said of his
experience in Mauthausen: "I was one of 34 prisoners alive out of
150,000 who had been put there." [22] This is a blatant falsehood.
The years have apparently not been kind to Wiesenthal's memory, because
in his own autobiography he wrote that "almost 3,000 prisoners died
in Mauthausen after the Americans liberated us on May 5, 1945." [23]
Another former inmate, Evelyn Le Chene, reported in her standard work about
Mauthausen that there were 64,000 inmates in the camp when it was liberated
in May 1945. [24] And according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, at least
212,000 inmates survived internment in the Mauthausen camp complex. [25]
-
- After the war Wiesenthal worked for the US Office of
Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA) and the US Army's Counter-Intelligence
Corps (CIC). He was also vice chairman of the Jewish Central Committee
in the US occupation zone of Austria. [26]
-
- 'Human Soap'
-
- Wiesenthal has given circulation and credence to one
of the most scurrilous Holocaust stories, the charge that the Germans manufactured
soap from the corpses of murdered Jews. According to this tale, the letters
"RIF" in bars of German-made soap allegedly stood for "Pure
Jewish Fat" ("Rein judisches Fett"). In reality, the initials
stood for "National Center for Industrial Fat Provisioning" ("Reichstelle
fur industrielle Fettversorgung"). [27]
-
- Wiesenthal promoted the "human soap" legend
in articles published in 1946 in the Austrian Jewish community paper Der
Neue Weg ("The New Path"). In an article entitled "RIF,"
he wrote: "The terrible words 'transport for soap' were first heard
at the end of 1942. It was in the [Polish] General Government, and the
factory was in Galicia, in Belzec. From April 1942 until May 1943, 900,000
Jews were used as raw material in this factory." After the corpses
were turned into various raw materials, Wiesenthal wrote, "The rest,
the residual fat stuff, was used for soap production."
-
- He continued: "After 1942 people in the General
Government knew quite well what the RIF soap meant. The civilized world
may not believe the joy with which the Nazis and their women in the General
Government thought of this soap. In each piece of soap they saw a Jew who
had been magically put there, and had thus been prevented from growing
into a second Freud, Ehrlich or Einstein." [28]
-
- In another imaginative article published in 1946 entitled
"Belzec Soap Factory," Wiesenthal alleged that masses of Jews
were exterminated in electrocution showers: [29]
-
-
- The people, pressed together and driven on by the SS,
Latvians and Ukrainians, go through the open door into the "bath."
Five hundred persons could fit at a time. The floor of the "bath chamber"
was made of metal and shower heads hung from the ceiling. When the room
was full, the SS turned on the 5,000 volts of electric current in the metal
plate. At the same time water poured from the shower heads. A short scream
and the execution was over. An SS chief physician named Schmidt determined
through a peep hole that the victims were dead. The second door was opened
and the "corpse commando" came in and quickly removed the dead.
It was ready for the next 500.
-
-
- Today no serious historian accepts the stories that Jewish
corpses were manufactured into bars of soap or that Jews were electrocuted
to death at Belzec (or anywhere).
-
- Wiesenthal's imaginative view of history is not limited
to the twentieth century. In his 1973 book Sails of Hope, he argued that
Christopher Columbus was a secret Jew, and that his famous voyage to the
western hemisphere in 1492 was actually a search for a new homeland for
Europe's Jews. [30]
-
- Wiesenthal is not always wrong, of course. In 1975 and
again in 1993 he publicly acknowledged that "there were no extermination
camps on German soil." [31] He thus implicitly conceded that the claims
made at the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal and elsewhere that Buchenwald, Dachau
and other camps in Germany proper were "extermination camps"
are not true.
-
- 'Fabrications' About Eichmann
-
- In more than 40 years of "Nazi hunting," Wiesenthal's
role in locating and capturing Adolf Eichmann is often considered his greatest
achievement. [32] (Eichmann headed the wartime SS Jewish affairs department.
He was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina in May 1960 and hanged
in Jerusalem after a trial that received worldwide media attention.)
-
- But Isser Harel, the Israeli official who headed the
team that seized Eichmann, has declared unequivocally that Wiesenthal had
"absolutely nothing" to do with the capture. (Harel is a former
head of both the Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel's foreign and domestic security
agencies.) [33]
-
- Wiesenthal not only "had no role whatsoever"
in the apprehension, said Harel, but in fact he endangered the entire Eichmann
operation. In a 278-page manuscript, Harel carefully refuted every claim
by Wiesenthal about his supposed role in identifying and capturing Eichmann.
Claims by Wiesenthal and his many friends about his supposedly crucial
role in capturing the former SS officer, said Harel, have no foundation
in fact. Many specific assertions and incidents described in two books
by Wiesenthal, said the Israeli official, are "complete fabrications."
[34]
-
- "Wiesenthal's reports and statements at that period
prove beyond any doubt that he had no notion of Eichmann's whereabouts,"
said Harel. [35] (For example, just before Eichmann's capture in Argentina,
Wiesenthal was placing him in Japan and Saudi Arabia.) [36]
-
- Characterizing Wiesenthal as a rank opportunist, Harel
summed up: "All the information supplied by Wiesenthal before and
in anticipation of the [Eichmann] operation was utterly worthless, and
sometimes even misleading and of negative value." [37]
-
- Reckless Charges in Walus Case
-
- One of Wiesenthal's most spectacular cases involved a
Polish-born Chicago man named Frank Walus. In a letter dated December 10,
1974, he charged that Walus "delivered Jews to the Gestapo" in
Czestochowa and Kielce in Poland during the war. This letter prompted a
US government investigation and legal action. [38] The Washington Post
dealt with the case in a 1981 article entitled "The Nazi Who Never
Was: How a witch hunt by judge, press and investigators branded an innocent
man a war criminal." The lengthy piece, which was copyrighted by the
American Bar Association, reported: [39]
-
-
- In January 1977, the United States government accused
a Chicagoan named Frank Walus of having committed atrocities in Poland
during World War II.
-
- In the following years, this retired factory worker went
into debt in order to raise more than $60,000 to defend himself. He sat
in a courtroom while eleven Jewish survivors of the Nazi occupation of
Poland testified that they saw him murder children, an old woman, a young
woman, a hunchback and others ...
-
- Overwhelming evidence shows that Walus was not a Nazi
War criminal, that he was not even in Poland during World War II.
-
- ... In an atmosphere of hatred and loathing verging on
hysteria, the government persecuted an innocent man. In 1974, Simon Wiesenthal,
the famous "Nazi hunter" of Vienna, denounced Walus as "a
Pole in Chicago who performed duties with the Gestapo in the ghettos of
Czestochowa and Kielce and handed over a number of Jews to the Gestapo."
-
-
- The Chicago weekly newspaper Reader also reported on
the case in a detailed 1981 article headlined: "The Persecution of
Frank Walus: To Catch a Nazi: The U.S. government wanted a war criminal.
So, with the help of Simon Wiesenthal, the Israeli police, the local press
and Judge Julius Hoffman, they invented one." [40] The article stated:
-
-
- ... It is logical to assume that the "reports received
by Wiesenthal [against Walus] actually were rumors... In other words, Simon
Wiesenthal had no evidence against Walus. He denounced him anyway.
-
- While [Judge] Hoffman had the Walus case under advisement,
Holocaust aired on television. During the same period, in April 1978, Simon
Wiesenthal came to Chicago, where he gave interviews taking credit for
the Walus case. "How Nazi-Hunter Helped Find Walus," was the
Sun-Times headline on a story by Bob Olmstead. Wiesenthal told Sun-Times
Abe Peck that he "has never had a case of mistaken identity."
"I know there are thousands of people who wait for my mistake,"
he said.
-
-
- It was only after an exhausting legal battle that the
man who was vilified and physically attacked as "the butcher of Kielce"
was finally able to prove that he had spent the war years as a peaceful
farm laborer in Germany. Frank Walus died in August 1994, a broken and
bitterly disappointed man, man.
-
- Wiesenthal's recklessness in the Walus case should have
been enough to permanently discredit him as a reliable investigator. But
his Teflon reputation survived even this.
-
- Wrong about Mengele
-
- Much of the Wiesenthal myth is based on his hunt for
Joseph Mengele, the wartime physician at Auschwitz known as the "Angel
of Death." Time and time again, Wiesenthal claimed to be close on
Mengele's heels. Wiesenthal reported that his informants had "seen"
or "just missed" the elusive physician in Peru, Chile, Brazil,
Spain, Greece, and half a dozen locations in Paraguay. [41]
-
- One of the closest shaves came in the summer of 1960.
Wiesenthal reported that Mengele had been hiding out on a small Greek island,
from where he escaped by just a few hours. Wiesenthal continued to peddle
this story, complete with precise details, even after a reporter whom he
had hired to check it out informed him that the tale was false from beginning
to end. [42]
-
- According to another Wiesenthal report, Mengele arranged
for the murder in 1960 of one of his former victims, a woman he had supposedly
sterilized in Auschwitz. After spotting her, and her distinctive camp tattoo,
at a hotel in Argentina where he was staying, Mengele allegedly arranged
to have her killed because he feared that she would expose him. It turned
out that the woman was never in a concentration camp, had no tattoo, had
never met Mengele, and her death was a simple mountaineering accident.
[43]
-
- Mengele regularly dined at the finest restaurants in
Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital, Wiesenthal said in 1977, and supposedly
drove around the city with a bevy of armed guards in his black Mercedes
Benz. [44]
-
- Wiesenthal announced in 1985 that he was "100 percent
sure" that Mengele had been hiding out in Paraguay until at least
June 1984, and charged that the Mengele family in Germany knew exactly
where. As it turned out, Wiesenthal was completely wrong. It was later
definitively established that Mengele had died in 1979 in Brazil, where
he had been living for years in anonymous poverty. [45]
-
- Israel's ambassador to Paraguay from 1968 to 1972, Benjamin
(Benno) Varon, remarked in 1983 on the Mengele campaign: "Wiesenthal
makes periodic statements that he is about to catch him, perhaps since
Wiesenthal must raise funds for his activities and the name Mengele is
always good for a plug." Wiesenthal "failed miserably" in
the Mengele case, the diplomat said on another occasion. [46] In the Mengele
case, former Mossad chief Harel remarked, "Wiesenthal's folly borders
on the criminal." [47]
-
- In truth, the bulging Mengele file in Wiesenthal's Vienna
"Documentation Center" was such a jumble of useless information
that, in the words of the London Times, it "only sustained his self-confirmatory
myths and gave scant satisfaction to those who apparently needed a definitive
answer to Mengele's fate." [48]
-
- In the considered view of Gerald Posner and John Ware,
coauthors of Mengele: The Complete Story, Wiesenthal spent years assiduously
cultivating a mythical "self-image of a tireless, dogged sleuth, pitted
against the omnipotent and sinister might of Mengele and a vast Nazi network."
Because of his "knack of playing to the gallery," Posner and
Ware concluded, Wiesenthal "ultimately comprom ised his credibility."
[49]
-
- 'Incompetence and Arrogance'
-
- Eli Rosenbaum, an official with the US government's "Nazi
hunting" Office of Special Investigations and an investigator for
the World Jewish Congress, took aim at Wiesenthal's carefully cultivated
"Nazi hunter" reputation in a detailed 1993 book, Betrayal. [50]
For example, Rosenbaum mentioned, Wiesenthal "had all these reports
placing Mengele in almost every country in Latin America except the one
he was in -- namely, Brazil." [51]
-
- Wiesenthal, wrote Rosenbaum, has been a "pathetically
ineffective" investigator who had "gone far beyond the buffoonery
and false boasts in prior years." Much of his illustrious career,
Rosenbaum said, has been characterized by "incompetence and arrogance."
[52]
-
- Bruno Kreisky once summed up his attitude towards the
"Nazi hunter" in these words: [53]
-
-
- The engineer Wiesenthal, or whatever else his title is,
hates me because he knows that I despise his activity. The Wiesenthal group
is a quasi-political Mafia that works against Austria with disgraceful
methods. Wiesenthal is known as someone who isn't very careful about the
truth, who is not very selective about his methods and who uses tricks.
He pretends to be the "Eichmann hunter," even though everyone
knows that this was the work of a secret service, and that Wiesenthal only
takes credit for that.
-
-
- 'Commercializing' the Holocaust
-
- The Los Angeles Wiesenthal Center pays the Vienna "Nazi
Hunter" $75,000 a year for the use of his name, the director of Israel's
Yad Vashem Holocaust center said in 1988.
-
- Both the Center and Wiesenthal "commercialize"
and "trivialize" the Holocaust, the director added.
-
- Wiesenthal "threw out" the figure of "11
million who were murdered in the Holocaust -- six million Jews and five
million non-Jews," said the Yad Vashem official. When asked why he
gave these figures, Wiesenthal replied: "The gentiles will not pay
attention if we do not mention their victims, too." Wiesenthal "chose
'five million (gentiles)' because he wanted a 'diplomatic' number, one
that told of a large number of gentile victims but in no way was larger
than that of Jews ..." [54]
-
- "What Wiesenthal and the Los Angeles Center that
bears his name do is to trivialize the Holocaust," commented The Jewish
Press, a weekly that claims to be the largest-circulation English-language
Jewish community paper in America.
-
- In recent years Wiesenthal has been concerned about the
growing impact of Holocaust revisionism. In "A Message from Simon
Wiesenthal" published by the Center that bears his name, he said:
"Today, when I see the rise of antisemitism here in Europe ... the
popularity of Le Pen, of David Duke, of the Holocaust revisionists, then
I am convinced more than ever about the need for our new [Wiesenthal Center]
Beit Hashoah-Museum of Tolerance" in Los Angeles. [55]
-
- Wiesenthal is often asked why he does not forgive those
who persecuted Jews half a century ago. His stock answer is that although
he has the right to forgive for himself, he does not have the right to
forgive on behalf of others. [56] On the basis of this sophistical logic,
though, neither does he have the right to accuse and track down anyone
in the name of others. Wiesenthal has never confined his "hunt"
to those who victimized him personally.
-
- 'Driven by Hatred'
-
- It is difficult to say just what drives this remarkable
man. Is it a craving for fame and praise? Or is he trying to live down
a shameful episode from his past?
-
- Wiesenthal clearly enjoys the praise he receives. "He
is a man of considerable ego, proud of testimonials and honorary degrees,"
the Los Angeles Times has reported. [57] Bruno Kreisky has given a simpler
explanation. He said that Wiesenthal is "driven by hatred." [58]
-
- In light of his well-documented record of deceit, lies
and incompetence, the extravagant praise heaped upon this contemptible
man is a sorry reflection of the venal corruptibility and unprincipled
self-deception of our age.
-
- Notes
-
- 1. Quoted in: M. Weber, "'Nazi Hunter' Caught Lying,"
The Spotlight (Washington, DC), Oct. 26, 1981, p. 9. 2. Interrogation
of S. Wiesenthal on May 27 and 28, 1948, conducted by Curt Ponger of the
Interrogation Branch of the Evidence Division of the Office (U.S.) Chief
of Counsel for War Crimes. Interrogation No. 2820. On file at the National
Archives (Washington, DC), "Records of the U.S. Nürnberg War
Crimes Trials Interrogations, 1946-49," Record Group 238, microfilm
M-1019, roll 79, frames 460-469 and 470-476. Also cited in: "New Documents
Raise New Doubts About Simon Wiesenthal's War Years," The Journal
of Historical Review, Winter 1988-89 (Vol. 8, No. 4), pp. 489-503. 3.
PCIRO (International Refugee Organization, Austria) "Application for
Assistance" filled out and signed by Wiesenthal. Dated Jan. 16,1949.
(This was a trial exhibit in the Walus court case. Photocopy in author's
possession.) 4. Simon Wiesenthal, The Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal
Memoirs. Edited by Joseph Wechsberg. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967) 5.
Interrogation of S. Wiesenthal, May 27, 1948, pp. 1-2. 6. The Murderers
Among Us, p. 27. 7. The Murderers Among Us, pp. 29-35. This account is
not inconsistent with his 1948 and 1949 statements; See also: Simon Wiesenthal,
Justice Not Vengeance (New York: Grove Weidenfeld: 1989), pp. 7-9. 8.
Interrogation of May 27, 1948, p. 2. In a signed 1945 statement, Wiesenthal
wrote: "... I escaped on October 18, 1943, from the Lemberg [Lvov]
hard labor camp where I was kept as a prisoner during my two years of labor
at the railroad works... and went into hiding until joining Jewish partisans
on November 21, 1943, who operated there. It was while fighting in the
partisan ranks against the Nazis that we managed to collect and bury for
safekeeping considerable amount of evidence... When the partisans were
dispersed by the Germans I fled to Lemberg on February 10, 1944, and again
went into hiding. On June 13, 1944, I was found during a house to house
search and was immediately sent to the famous Lacki camp, near that city
..." Source: "Curriculum Vitae of Ing. Wiesenthal, Szymon."
SHAEF, Subject: War Crimes, July 6, 1945. Records of USAEUR, War Crimes
Branch, National Archives (Suitland, Maryland), Records Group 338, Box
534, Folder 000-50-59. Wiesenthal's alleged partisans activities are also
recounted in Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
1994), pp. 50-53. 9. Interrogation of May 28, 1948, pp. 1-2. 10. Interrogation
of May 28, 1948, p. 5. 11. The Murderers Among Us, pp. 35-37. 12. The Murderers
Among Us, pp. 37-38; Interrogation, May 27, 1948, p. 2, and May 28, 1948,
p. 5; A. Levy, The Wiesenthal File (1994), p. 54. 13. The Murderers Among
Us, pp. 39-44; Interrogation, May 27, 1948, pp. 2-3. 14. Interview with
foreign journalists in Vienna, Nov. 10, 1975. Text published in: "War
Wiesenthal ein Gestapo-Kollaborateur?," Profil (Vienna), No. 47, Nov.
18, 1975, pp. 16, 22-23; Reprinted in: Robert H. Drechsler, Simon Wiesenthal:
Dokumentation (Vienna: 1982), pp. 215-218, 222-223; Quoted in part in A.
Levy, The Wiesenthal File (1994), p. 349, and in, S. Wiesenthal, Justice
Not Vengeance (New York: 1989), pp. 7, 299. Kreisky was not alone in charging
that Wiesenthal had collaborated with the German Gestapo. Wim Van Leer,
columnist for the English-language daily Jerusalem Post, stated in May
1986 that a high-level police official in Vienna, citing confidential police
records, had told him during the early 1960s that these and other charges
against Wiesenthal were true. Source: J. Bushinsky, "Nazi hunter sues
over charges of links to Gestapo," Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 31, 1987.
15. Simon Wiesenthal, KZ Mauthausen (Linz and Vienna: Ibis-Verlag, 1946).
Facsimile reprint in: Robert H. Drechsler, Simon Wiesenthal: Dokumentation
(Vienna: 1982), p. 64. 16. "Firing Squad," Life magazine, US
edition, June 11, 1945, p. 50. 17. M. Weber and K. Stimely, "The Sleight-of-Hand
of Simon Wiesenthal," The Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1984
(Vol. 5, No. 1), pp. 120-122; D. National-Zeitung (Munich), May 21, 1993,
p. 3. 18. S. Wiesenthal, KZ Mauthausen (1946). See also facsimile reprint
in: Robert H. Drechsler, Simon Wiesenthal: Dokumentation (Vienna: 1982),
pp. 42, 46. This "confession" is a somewhat altered version of
Nuremberg document NO-1973; A new edition of Wiesenthal's 1946 book has
been published under the title Denn sie Wussten, was sie tun: Zeichnungen
und Aufzeichnungen aus dem KZ Mauthausen (Vienna: F. Deuticke, 1995). I
am grateful to Robert Faurisson for bringing this to my attention. He points
out in a July 1995 essay that Wiesenthal has deleted from this new edition
both the "death bed confession" of Ziereis as well as his drawing
of the three Mauthausen inmates. 19. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica
("Mauthausen,", Vol. 11, p. 1138), a grand total of 206,000 persons
were inmates of Mauthausen and its satellite camps (including Hartheim)
at one time or another. 20. S. Wiesenthal, KZ Mauthausen (1946). Facsimile
reprint in: R. Drechsler, Simon Wiesenthal: Dokumentation, p. 47. 21. R.
Faurisson, "The Gas Chambers: Truth or Lie?," The Journal of
Historical Review, Winter 1981, pp. 330, 361. See also: Hans Fritzsche,
The Sword in the Scales (London: 1953), p. 185; Gerald Reitlinger, The
Final Solution (London: Sphere, pb., 1971), p. 515; M. Weber, "The
Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust," The Journal of Historical Review,
Summer 1992 (Vol. 12, No. 2), p. 182. 22. USA Today, April 21, 1983, p.
9A. 23. The Murderers Among Us, p. 44. 24. Evelyn Le Chene, Mauthausen:
The History of a Death Camp (London: 1971), pp. 166-168 and 190-191. 25.
"Mauthausen", Encyclopaedia Judaica (New York and Jerusalem:
1971), vol. 11, p. 1138. 26. C. Moritz, ed., Current Biography 1975 (New
York: H.W. Wilson, 1975), p. 442; Wiesenthal interrogation of May 27, 1948,
p. 3. 27. Mark Weber, "Jewish Soap," The Journal of Historical
Review, Summer 1991 (Vol. 11, No. 2), pp. 217-227; See also: Robert Faurisson,
"La savon juif," Annales d'Histoire Revisionniste (Paris), No.
1, Printemps 1987, pp. 153-159. 28. Der Neue Weg (Vienna), No. 17/18, 1946,
pp. 4-5. Article entitled "RIF" by "Ing. Wiesenth."
(Simon Wiesenthal). 29. Der Neue Weg (Vienna), Nr. 19/20, 1946, pp. 14-15.
Article entitled "Seifenfabrik Belsetz" ("Belzec Soap Factory"),
by "Ing. S.Wiesenth." 30. S. Wiesenthal, Sails of Hope (Macmillan,
1973). 31. Letters by Wiesenthal in Books and Bookmen (London), April 1975,
p. 5, and in Stars and Stripes (European edition), Jan. 24, 1993, p. 14.
Facsimile of Stars and Stripes letter in The Journal of Historical Review,
May-June 1993, p. 10; In 1986 Wiesenthal lied about his 1975 statement.
In a letter dated May 12, 1986, to Prof. John George of Central State University
in Edmond, Oklahoma (copy in author's possession), Wiesenthal wrote: "I
have never stated that 'there were no extermination camps on German soil.'
This quote is false, I could never have said such a thing." 32. For
example, in a letter (dated Sept. 13, 1993), published in The New York
Times, Sept. 29, 1993, Wiesenthal boasted: "I succeeded in putting
a number of Nazis on trial who had perpetrated horrendous crimes in the
Nazi era, including Adolf Eichmann, Franz Stangl, Gustav Wagner,..."
33. S. Birnbaum, "Wiesenthal's Claim on Eichmann Disputed by Former
Mossad Head," Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin (New York),
April 4, 1989. (Dispatch dated April 3). 34. J. Schachter, "Wiesenthal
had no role in Eichmann capture," The Jerusalem Post, May 18, 1991.
Facsimile reprint in Christian News, May 27, 1991, p. 19. See also: Ruth
Sinai, "Wiesenthal's role in Eichmann's capture disputed," Associated
Press, The Orange County Register, Feb. 25, 1990, p. A 26; L. Lagnado,
"How Simon Wiesenthal Helped a Secret Nazi," Forward (New York),
Sept. 24, 1993, pp. 1, 3. 35. J. Schachter, The Jerusalem Post, May 18,
1991 (cited above). Facsimile in Christian News, May 27, 1991, p. 19. 36.
Arnold Forster, Square One (New York: 1988), pp. 187-189. (Forster was
general counsel of the Anti-Defamation League, a major Zionist organization.)
37. J. Goldberg, "Top Spy Says Wiesenthal Lied About His Exploits,"
Forward (New York), Nov. 12, 1993, pp. 1, 4; R. Sinai, "Wiesenthal's
role...," The Orange County Register, Feb. 25, 1990 (cited above).
38. Michael Arndt, "The Wrong Man," The Chicago Tribune Magazine,
Dec. 2, 1984, pp. 15-35, esp. p. 23; Charles Ashman and Robert J. Wagman,
The Nazi Hunters (New York: Pharos Books, 1988), pp. 193-195. 39. "The
Nazi Who Never Was," The Washington Post, May 10, 1981, pp. B5, B8.
40. "The Persecution of Frank Walus," Reader (Chicago), Jan.
23, 1981, pp. 19, 30. After Wiesenthal was ultimately proven wrong in a
similar case in Canada, the Toronto Sun newspaper commented in an editorial:
"It seems that material provided by professional Nazi hunter Simon
Wiesenthal is wrong, but repeated anyway [in the media]." (Quoted
by M. Weber in The Journal of Historical Review , Spring 1984, pp. 120-122.)
41. Gerald L. Posner and John Ware, Mengele: The Complete Story (New York:
Dell, 1987), pp. 220-221; Gerald Astor, The 'Last' Nazi: The Life and Times
of Dr. Joseph Mengele (Toronto: Paperjacks, 1986), p. 202. 42. G. Posner
and J. Ware, Mengele: The Complete Story (cited above), p. 220. 43. G.
Posner and J. Ware, Mengele (cited above), pp. 179-180; G. Astor, The 'Last'
Nazi (cited above), pp. 178-180. 44. Time magazine, Sept. 26, 1977, pp.
36-38. Cited in: G. Posner and J. Ware, Mengele (cited above), p. 219.
45. "Hunting the 'Angel of Death'," Newsweek, May 20, 1985, pp.
36-38. See also: M. Weber, "Lessons of the Mengele Affair," Journal
of Historical Review, Fall 1985 (Vol. 6, No. 3), p. 382. On Wiesenthal's
distortion of truth in the Mermelstein-IHR case, see: M. Weber, "Declaration,"
Journal of Historical Review , Spring 1982 (Vol. 3, No. 1), pp. 42-43;
M. Weber, "Albert Speer and the 'Holocaust,"' Journal of Historical
Review, Winter 1984 (Vol. 5, Nos. 2-4), p. 439. 46. Midstream, Dec. 1983,
p. 24. Quoted in: G. Posner and J. Ware, Mengele (cited above), p. 219;
Los Angeles Times, Nov. 15, 1985, p. 2. 47. J. Schachter, "Wiesenthal
had no role in Eichmann capture," The Jerusalem Post, May 18, 1991.
Facsimile reprint in Christian News, May 27, 1991, p. 19. 48. Tom Bower
in The Times (London), June 14, 1985, p. 14. Quoted in: G. Posner and J.
Ware, Mengele (cited above), pp. 222-223. 49. G. Posner and J. Ware, Mengele
(cited above), pp. 222-223. 50. Betrayal, by Eli M. Rosenbaum, with William
Hoffer. Published in 1993 by St. Martin's Press (New York). Reviewed by
Jacob Heilbrunn in The New York Times Book Review, Oct. 10, 1993, p. 9.
51. Quoted in L. Lagnado, "How Simon Wiesenthal...," Forward
(New York), Sept. 24, 1993, p. 3. 52. The New York Times Book Review, Oct.
10, 1993, p. 9; Forward (New York), Sept. 24, 1993, p. 3. 53. "Was
hat Wiesenthal zu verbergen?," D. National-Zeitung (Munich), Nov.
11, 1988, p. 4. 54. David Sinai, "News We Doubt You've Seen,"
The Jewish Press (Brooklyn, NY), Dec. 23, 1988. Based on report in the
Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Dec. 16, 1988. 55. "A Message from Simon
Wiesenthal," Response: The Wiesenthal Center World Report, Winter
1992, p. 11. 56. Charles Ashman and Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters
(New York: Pharos Books, 1988), p. 286; A. Popkin, "Nazi-Hunter Simon
Wiesenthal: 'Information is Our Best Defense'," Washington Jewish
Week, Oct. 29, 1987, p. 2. 57. Quoted in: M. Weber, The Spotlight, Oct.
26, 1981, p. 9. 58. Quoted in D. National-Zeitung (Munich), July 8, 1988,
p. 7, and in, R. Drechsler, Simon Wiesenthal: Dokumentation (Vienna: 1982),
p. 199. #2009
-
- _____
-
- About The Author
-
- Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical
Review. He studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the
University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University
(M.A., 1977). For nine years he served as editor of the IHR's Journal of
Historical Review.
-
- This article is from The Journal of Historical Review,
July-August 1995 (Vol. 15, No. 4), pages 8-16. This is a revised and updated
version of an article that first appeared in the Winter 1989-90 issue of
The Journal of Historical Review.
-
- http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/wiesenthal.shtml
-
- _____
-
- -- Albert Einstein, quoted in Collier's Magazine, November
26, 1938
-
- Anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude
produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group.The Jewish group has thrived
on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world...the
root cause is their use of enemies they create in order to keep solidarity.
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