Clayton Moore
Banned
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2008
- Messages
- 7,508
Is Elie Wiesel an outright imposter - or is he just a Judeocentric chauvinist and all-round humbug? Perhaps the question all been already aired in this forum. It was much discussed in the Codoh forum, from which I was recently expelled. Under the name Nathan (password=thewise) I used that place to unload thoughts which were extraneous to my central interest. The allegation that the Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel might be an even bigger rascal than he seems to be is a tangled tale, and anyone with a life to lead will have already have stopped reading.
One Miklos Gruener initially persuaded Carlos Mattogno that Elie never was in Auschwitz or any other camp. Gruener, himself a veteran of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, claims to have known two Wiesel Brothers Lazar and Abraham in Auschwitz, both of them born in Sighet in Rumania. He says he remembers Lazar as being 31 years old in 1944. (Lazar-e/Elie/Eliezer are or may be some alternative forms of the same name, as are Schlomo/Slazamo and Sighet/ Maromarossziget ). Gruener thinks that the grown man Lazar was the true author of Night, which was originally and unabridgedly written in Yiddish (but which Gruener seemed to think was written in Hungarian.)
Mattogno wrote three “Inconvenient History” articles about this in 2010 (Feb 24, March 26, May 1) In the first, on the basis of Lazar's personal file card Mattogno jumped to the conclusion that our Elie had stolen the older Lazar’s identity. For some reason I find I am not allowed to produce URLs here so the reader will have to forage thru Mattogno's three articles which are easily googled.
Our Elie claims he was born 30 Sep 1928; that he had the Auschwitz number A7713; that he had a father Shlomo, Auschwitz number A-7712, who accompanied him to Buchenwald and died there.
The personal File Card as reproduced is evidence that the Auschwitz number A-7713 and the Buchenwald number 123565 belonged to a Lazar Wiesel who was born in 1913. It is also evidence that this 31 year old man was put down as a down as a locksmith’s apprentice. Unless I have misunderstood, it also indicates that this Lazar did have a father Shlomo/Szalamo who was in Buchenwald as of 26 of January.
I seemed to be alone at Codoh in finding a 31-year old apprentice a bit of an oddity. This file card which for Mattogn proved that Elie had stolen another’s identity, might for others merely suggest the possibility of a clerical error, an error more likely to involve the birthday number than the job description.
But in the two later articles Mattogno strengthened his case and modified his claims. “In this puzzle, the only thing which is certain is that Elie Wiesel lied about the ID numbers assigned to himself and to his father at Auschwitz” he says. That “certainty” would still be a disaster for Elie, who could have no motive to use another’s Auschwitz number unless he had never been assigned one of his own. Here is an instance where Mattogno has “official historiography” on his side. Following Gruener he presents a letter from the director of the Auschwitz Museum, Kazimierz Smoleń, to Mrs. Eva Kor, founder of CANDLES (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors), dated 15 March 1987, where it is said:
(for some reason two of the three dates mentioned are presented in the American manner, month/day/year)
But a museum letter, even if genuine, is not a primary source. We need a second primary document made independently of the File Card, that ties A7713 to the year 1913. That would be quite enough to cook Elie’s goose. For it would an unbelievable coincidence that the same numerical mistake could be made more than once and independently. And we do seem to have such a document in the list of ex-Auschwitz prisoners arriving at Buchenwald on 26 January 1945.
Mattogno reproduces this list in his third article (google:riddle of lazar). But the data of one document are quite likely to have been copied from the other, or from a common source. The arrival list was drawn up at Buchenwald, and the file card was filled out at Buchenwald. Quite possibly they are the work of the same clerk. Mattogno in addition presents a registration card for Buchenwald prisoner 123565, made out later, on which the 1913 date and Schlosserlehrling trade has again been copied. It is all part of the mass of Buchenwald paperwork processing the arrivals of the 26th , so we cannot rule out the simple duplication of a simple mistake. One document is not corroborating the other. One document might be being copied from another.
If Mattogno had some Auschwitz paperwork linking A7713 to 1913 he would be on stronger ground. And he does mention:
That sounds promising but is misleading. Delving thru Mattognos footnotes we can examine the complete Museum letter (in English) within a long Hungarian text. I have had to delete the URL
The “following data” were indeed from the Museum letter. But the Museum letter does not say that these data derived from any Auschwitz list. As I read the letter it explicitly informs Gruener that these data came from Buchenwald records which Gruener already had seen. Apart from those data the letter says “the only entry we have regarding this prisoner is certain list of Hygiene Institute unfortunately without his name or birthdate – just sole number A7713 dated 7-12-44 Monowitz.”
However, the Museum letter of 1987 to Mrs Kor had been confident that “this particular prisoner arrived in Auschwitz 5/24/44” Any original documentation for registration at Auschwitz would also, I would have imagined, have include a birthdate. If such documentation exists it would be quite decisive; but if it has been found I only wish Mattogno had brandished it more visibly.
Otherwise I cannot see much - so far- to disturb any Elie fan who maintains that “1913” was simply a clerical mistake routinely copied. As far as I can see we do not even have any primary “datum” which calls the Lazar born 1913 a “locksmith” tout court. The arrivals list entry 2438 has Lazar down as what I dimly discern as a “Schlol” (?) which could well be Schlosserlehrling (?)
But the plot thickens. Elie claims that he was accompanied by his father Shlomo A7712 who died in Buchenwald. The arrivals list shows that Lazar was accompanied by an Abram Viesel A7712 born 1900. Abram, the camp records show, did die in Buchenwald in February 2.
Anyone sharing my sense of what is likely will find it very probable that two members of a Wiesel family were indeed registered into Auschwitz as A7712 and A7713, the elder coming first. But this Abram born 1900 is old enough to be either the father of Elie born 1928, or the elder brother of a Lazar born 1913. That Abraham Wiesel A7712 finds himself listed among the V arrivals merely indicates for me how much linguistic confusion surrounded the spelling and sounding of names in a polyglot environment of mass induction. (To add to our madness there is, to my eyesight, another “Abraham Wiesel” born in 1929 who precedes Lazar on the 26 January arrival list). “Abram Viesel” A7712 seems to be listed as a “Schl” which could (?) be Schlosser (locksmith), as befits the older man.
I cannot think of areason why Wiesel pere, if he it was, would arrive and die in Buchenwald named as Abraham rather Shlomo. Against that, I cannot think why Lazar, a thirty-one year old locksmith’s apprentice, should be recorded as having a father Shlomo/Szalamo who was also in Buchenwald in the day of Lazar’s arrival. For that is what I take the Buchenwald File Card to state clearly. As far as I see the legend of the two brothers Lazar and Abram, as spun by Gruener, does not include the presence of a father named Shlomo. The father of Abram, born 1900, would have to be well over sixty.
The plot unthickens, if only slightly, with the appearance of a young Lazar Wiesel who was born 1928 .
Mattogno writes:
The 1928 Lázár of the questionnaire, whose name is spelled with acute accents on the a, was born on 4 October. The 1913 Lazar sans accent of the File Card was born on the 4 September. Our Elie of 1928 was also born in September, but on the 30th.
So: because of a wrong birthdate we have no unequivocal document which places Elie in Auschwitz. And because of a wrong birthdate we have no unequivocal document which places Elie in Buchenwald. Is this more than a surprising coincidence of errors? I think not. Life is richer in surprising coincidences than we are conditioned to expect.
It is true that nobody writes down his own birthday wrongly. But it is plain from reproduced specimens that these questionnaires were not filled out by their signatories. They were filled out - in English - by a military clerk/interpreter in preparation for signature by the inmate and then final signature by an American Release Board officer who probably had no second language. In the hurly-burly and Babel of 1945 captivity it was not uncommon for English-language documents to be signed by detainees with no English. It was factory process involving a dozen tongues spoken among a thousand inmates who in this case were prime candidates for rapid denazification or release. The SS underling who back in January had filled out the File Card did not have a young/old Wiesel sitting in front of him; he had another piece of paper. The military government panel of April might well have noticed if the man in front of them had seemed ten years older than he should. They are not likely to have noticed whether a seventeen year old was born a month later than he should. There could in any case be no sinister motive for declaring an October rather than a September birthday. As to the number 123165 scribbled on the questionnaire, it is too close to the correct 123565 to be anything but a slip.
Mattogno reproduces Lazar’s signed questionnaire in his second article. The signature of young Wiesel on this questionnaire looks to me like “Wiezel, Eliezar” and I am not sure if it includes an acute accent. But I am ready to be corrected. It must be said that it in no way resembles the much published signature of the mature Elie. Signatures do evolve and deteriorate with age, but this amount of change is remarkable.
So: the “only certainty of this puzzle” is that nothing is certain. To remove the uncertainty, the accusers have to find a second, independent link between A7713 and 1913. Defenders of Elie have to explain why his father A-7712 got himself named Abraham/Abram on two distinct Buchenwald records. They would do well to explain why Elie’s signature has evolved so far from its early adolescent flourish. They would do very well to find an Auschwitz document connecting A7713 to the birthyear 1928.
Elie says he was born in Sighet on 30 Sep 1928, father Shlomo, mother Sara. Mattogno reproduces a birth certificate for some reason “issued” by the Romanian authorities on 27 November 1996 for Lazar Vizel, born at Sighet to Solomon Vizel and Sura Feig. This gives the date of birth as 30 September 1928. This is not a photocopy of an actual 1928 document, such as any citizen could acquire in the UK. But on the face of it, it is still good evidence that Elie was born on the day he says he was born. I don’t understand how it might be based on a “self-declaration” as Mattogno thinks possible. At one stage Mattogno seems to believe that Lázár born 1928 was a different fellow from Lazar born 1913 who was a different fellow from young Elie, who may have been a different fellow from Lazar Vizel certifiably born 1928. The ghost of Occam cries out: do not multiply Wiesels beyond necessity!
We can be sure that Wiesel’s war memoir is full of mistakes, discrepancies, false memories exaggerations and lies. Most war memoirs are full of mistakes, discrepancies, false memories exaggerations and lies - and Elie is very far from being an especially honest man. If he really was in Monowitz, he spares us the details. Convincing detail in fact is not his forte. Not only as a human being but as a writer he is vastly inferior to Primo Levi, an undoubted Monowitz inmate with a real gift of observation.
There remains the tattoo and the group photograph. On the prolonged study of these matters I advise my reader not to fritter away his youth. The tattoo thing can lead nowhere. If Elie does have a faded tattoo, he will never degrade himself by responding to anti-Semitic challenge. If he has no trace of a tattoo - he will never expose himself by responding to a scholarly challenge. And if he really is an elaborately cunning imposter, he would surely not have spent so much time publicly seeking photo-ops all around Israel in his shirtsleeve without making sure that he does not have Nothing to hide. As to the Buchenwald group photo, it should not surprise anyone that each of our two Pinnochios, Gruener and Wiesel, claims that it was his destiny, out of thousands of prisoners, to appear in it. As in the case of the signatures, it should not be too hard to devise a “blind” expert test which might shorten the odds. Until someone does that, there is not much to say.
It seems on his own account that in 1986 Gruener met the grand Nobel Prize winner Elie for the first time in forty years. He failed to recognise him, was probably snubbed by him, and certainly resented him. He has spent twenty years obsessively searching for negative evidence. Mrs Kor’s enquiries suggest was not alone in his suspicions. Had Gruener published his tale before the File Card and the Arrival List were found, then these documents would be very strong proof the tale was true. But it is Gruener himself apparently who has unearthed these documents - perhaps ignoring others - and the documents may be the basis of the tale rather than its verification
A minimalist conspiracy theory might propose that Elie Wiesel, actual deportee, actual author of Night, really was in Auschwitz but only as a “transit Jew.” He would not be the only Hungarian transit deportee who suffered in obscure labour camps but wanted the moral glamour of having suffered in Auschwitz. Perhaps in Buchenwald Elie met an older member of the Wiesel clan, a Monowitz alumnus whose Auschwitz number he later could find it safe to appropriate. But even to propose this conjecture, sparse as it is, is to see a dozen difficulties with it.
And your view of the Holocaust is that the miniscule number of testimonies of intent/actions of genocide by gassing and baby throwing is?
