Elie Wiesel — Holocaust survivor # A7713?

On March 25, 2010, Elie Wiesel spoke to students at the University of Dayton in Ohio as reported by the Dayton Daily News.

Here is a quote from the Dayton Daily News article:

One student wondered if Wiesel still has his concentration camp number and if it serves as a reminder of those terrible experiences.

“I don’t need that to remember, I think about my past every day,” he responded. “But I still have it on my arm – A7713. At that time, we were numbers. No names, no identity.”

At the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp where Elie Wiesel says he was a prisoner from May 1944 to January 1945, the Jews, who were chosen to work, had an identification number tattooed on their arm. The Jews who arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944 were tattooed with a number preceded by the letter A.

After a few weeks in quarantine at Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel says that he and his father were sent to Auschwitz III, aka Monowitz, to work in a factory.  When the prisoners were evacuated from Monowitz on January 18, 1945, Elie says that he and his father were taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp. All incoming prisoners at Buchenwald were given a new and different identification number. Elie Wiesel has never revealed his Buchenwald ID number; he has also never allowed the tattoo on his arm to be photographed.

In the last couple of years, Elie Wiesel has been accused  by Miklos Grüner, of being an imposter who stole the identity of another prisoner who arrived at Auschwitz in May 1944 and was transferred to Buchenwald in January 1945. Grüner has documentation to prove that he himself is a survivor of both Auschwitz and Buchenwald; he has identified himself as one of the prisoners in the famous Buchenwald photo below.

Miklos Grüner claims he is the prisoner shown in the lower left hand corner in Barracks #56

Here is another quote from the article in the Dayton Daily News:

When asked what he would say to a Holocaust denier, Wiesel said he would say nothing. “I don’t want to be in the same room with a Holocaust denier. They are morally deranged.”

Carlo Mattogno is a famous “Holocaust denier” who could be said to fit Elie’s epithet “morally deranged.” Yesterday,  Mattogno published a shocking blog post in which he quoted from the following document:

6)  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, under point 2:

“In the concentration camp of Auschwitz a Mr. Lazar Weisel was given A-7713. He was born 4/9/13. He was a Jew from Hungary, born at Marmarossiget. This particular prisoner arrived in Auschwitz 5/24/44. He was there til [sic] the end of 1944 in KL Auschwitz III called Monowitz. Towards the end of the evacuation he was transferred to KL Buchenwald. He was registered there on the day of 1/26/45”

So Mr. Lazar Weisel (the last name might be misspelled) from Marmarossiget (Sighet) was given the Auschwitz number A-7713, the number that Elie has claimed for years is his Auschwitz number?

Elie’s full name is Eliezer Wiesel and he was born in Sighet, Romania (Marmarossiget) which was a part of Hungary in 1944.  Elie claims he was born on September 30, 1928 and that he was an orphan, living in Barrack #66, the orphan’s barrack at Buchenwald, when he was liberated in 1945.

Lazar Weisel was born on 4/9/13 and arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 5/24/44.  In his famous book, “Night,” Elie Wiesel did not mention his date of arrival at Birkenau.

Note that this letter was sent from the Auschwitz Museum, where the records of the former prisoners are stored, to Mrs. Eva Kor, who is a well known survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  We know that Eva Kor is a real Holocaust survivor because there are photos of her taken in Birkenau after the camp was liberated. Elie Wiesel claims that he is in the famous Buchenwald photo shown above, but he also wrote that he was in the hospital at Buchenwald on the date that the photo was taken.

Caro Mattogno also published this document on his blog:

7)  A letter from the Auschwitz Museum to Miklós Grüner dated 7 July 2003 which states that detainee ID A-7713 appears in a list of the SS Hygiene Institute dated 7 December 1944-Monowitz and giving the following data:

A-11104 Grüner Miklos, Hungarian Jew, born on 6 April 28 at Nyiregyhaza

A-7712 Viesel Abram, born on 10 October 1900 at Marmarosz

A-7713 Wiesel Lazar, born on 4 September 1913 in Marmarossziget, Schlosser (locksmith)

So Miklos Grüner was barely 17 when the famous photo in Barrack #56 at Buchenwald was taken. There are records of Grüner being a prisoner at both Auschwitz and Buchenwald.  But who is this guy Viesel Abram?  Elie Wiesel has claimed that his father was number A-7712 at Auschwitz.  Could this be his father? And number A-7713 is Lazar Wiesel. Could this be Elie Wiesel?

According to the research done by Carlo Mattogno, there was yet a third person — Lázár Wiesel. Note the different spelling of the first name.  Lázár Wiesel filled out a US Army questionaire on 22 April 1945 at Buchenwald; he stated on the questionaire that he was born at Màromarossziget on 4 October 1928; he was a student who was arrested on 16 April 1944 and interned at Auschwitz and Monowitz. Note that he was born in 1928, the same year as Elie Wiesel, but not on the same day.

Mattogno wrote on his blog that the records at the Buchenwald Gedenkstätte (Memorial Site) show that  Lázár Wiesel was sent to Paris on 16 July 1945 with a convoy of surviving children and is registered on the respective list. Mattogno asks: Is this Lázár Wiesel the writer Elie Wiesel?

Buchenwald orphans on a transport train to Paris

Lázár Wiesel’s Auschwitz number is unknown, but it is not A7713 because that number was assigned to Lazar Wiesel.  Lazar Wiesel’s name was on the transport list from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, but the name Lázár Wiesel was not.  That doesn’t mean that Lázár was never at Auschwitz. He could have been sent, from Auschwitz, to some other camp, such as Gross Rosen, and then sent to Buchenwald when Gross Rosen, or whatever other camp, was evacuated.

In 2008, Eric Hunt was put on trial in California after he accosted Elie Wiesel in a hotel and attempted to interview him.  On his blog post, Carlo Mattogno quoted from Elie Wiesel’s trial testimony as follows:

Q. And is this book Night that you wrote a true account of your experience during World War II?

A. It is a true account. Every word in it is true.

[…]

Q. And what was your – what day were you born in Sighet, Romania?

A. September 30th, 1928.

[…]

Q. And what [number] was tattooed on your left arm?

A. My number was A7713. My father’s number was 7712.

So Elie swore under oath that he was # A7713 and his father was # 7712.

Buchenwald library where the records are kept

Anyone can go to the Buchenwald research library where the camp archives are kept, and look up the records of the former prisoners.  Or one can write to the Buchenwald Memorial Site and ask for a copy of the record of a prisoner in the former Buchenwald concentration camp. The archives are open to anyone, for a fee.  You don’t have to be a Holocaust survivor to look up someone in the records.

According to the research done by Carlo Mattogno, there is a record in the Buchenwald archives which says that  Lazar Wiesel, born at Maromarossiget on 4 September 1913, an apprentice locksmith, political detainee and Hungarian Jew, was registered at Buchenwald on 26 January 1945 and assigned the ID number 123565. There is also some information concerning Lázár Wiesel, (note difference in spelling) born 4 October 1928, ID Number 123165 at Buchenwald.

So there were two different people, with similar names, who were both at Auschwitz and later at Buchenwald.  Each of them had an ID number at Buchenwald. Could Elie Wiesel have borrowed the identity of both of these people and combined them into his own identity as a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald?

Elie Wiesel has never mentioned his Buchenwald ID number.  Anyone who wants to know his ID number can write to the Buchenwald Memorial Site and ask for his number.

I did one more search on Elie Wiesel and found a post on The Daily Beast in which Elie did an interview with Jonathan Mahler.  Here is a quote from the interview:

When my father was born, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. When I was born, it was Lithuania. When I left, it was Hungary. It is difficult to say where I come from. Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.

As I’m sure you know, in Lithuania the Hungarians were the last to be deported. They were the last community and I am angry that they were the only community that couldn’t be saved. Literally, they were the only community that couldn’t be saved, Hungarian Jews.

Nobody told us [that the Jews would be deported]. If they had, in my case, my father surely would have followed the urgings of our maid, a marvelous English lady. She told him, “come to the mountains and I’ll take care of you.” But we didn’t know. Five-hundred-thousand or more, much more, were deported in six to eight weeks, and close to 500,000, were killed. Gassed and burned in that small period.

I was deported at the end of May 1944. When we arrived at Auschwitz, my father looked out the window, a small hole in a cattle car, and saw the name Auschwitz and didn’t know what it meant. That’s really what happened to us… We were eventually liberated by the American army and then I came to France. That’s more or less the beginning.

Is Elie getting senile?  He was born in Lithuania?  I think he means Rumania (Romania).

Ken Waltzer, a professor and director of Jewish Studies at Michigan State University is currently writing a book about the orphans at Buchenwald.  In an interview that was published on this web site, he said the following:

Among the older boys was Eliezer Wiesel from Sighet, Rumania, who was protected in block 66 with hundreds of others. He later became a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

This story is largely unknown. I hope to tell it honestly, and with attention to detail, drawing on the voices and memories of many of these Buchenwald boys who today are men in their late seventies as well as the documentary evidence now available from the Red Cross International Tracing Service archive and other sources.

So Waltzer will be providing the “documentary evidence” from the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross, which has been put online by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. These records will show whether or not Elie Wiesel is telling the truth about his time at Monowitz and at Buchenwald.

Anyone who is a Holocaust survivor, or a family member of a survivor,  can access the records at the USHMM online, but non-survivors will have to go to the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC in person in order to get access to the records from the International Tracing Service.