Should Elie Wiesel come clean?

Should Elie Wiesel, the world’s most famous Holocaust survivor, come clean about his life story?  There is a whole website devoted to proving that Elie Wiesel was never a prisoner at Auschwitz or Buchenwald.  The latest article on this website is entitled “When did Elie Wiesel arrive at Auschwitz? Could he have received the number A-7713?”  You can read the article in full here.

As far as I know, Elie Wiesel has never acknowledged that Carolyn Yeager has done extensive research and has proved that he lied under oath when he claimed that he has the number A-7713 tattooed on his arm.  I think that Elie should come clean and admit that he is a fraud.  I believe that all the little kids who have read his book Night would come to his defense and forgive him.

Elie Wiesel appears to be in good health, but he is at the age where he could leave this earth any day now.  He should ensure that his legacy is protected before that happens. Who knows what will happen if he dies before coming clean and asking for forgiveness.

I blame Oprah for this debacle. In 2005, Oprah selected the “memoir” of James Frey, entitled A Million Little Pieces as her book club selection. Some people questioned the truth of the book, and Oprah came to the defense of James Frey. Two weeks after defending Frey on the Larry King show, Oprah brought Frey back onto her show and confronted him in front of a live audience. Meanwhile Frey’s “memoir” had sold 2 million copies in the three-month window between Oprah’s announcement of its selection and her confrontation of Frey before a live audience. Oprah’s next book club selection was Elie Wiesel’s Night.  At that time, the book Night was classified as fiction on Elie Wiesel’s own website.  But when Oprah selected it for her Book Club, the book became a non-fictional account of Elie Wiesel’s true story of surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Another Holocaust survivor, Herman Rosenblat, went on Oprah’s show and told the story of how he met his wife when she threw apples over the fence to him (at the age of 9) while he was in a sub-camp of Buchenwald.  After the publicity that he received from the Oprah show, Rosenblat landed a book contract.  Rosenblat was on the Oprah show twice.  The second time that he was on, I watched the show, and the minute that it was over, I e-mailed Oprah that this story could not possibly be true.  I don’t think anyone paid any attention to my e-mail, but other people also told Oprah that the Rosenblat story was fiction and his book was never published, as far as I know.

All is not lost.  Oprah no longer has a talk show, but she could go on some other talk show (I like the Dr. Drew show) and apologize to Elie Wiesel for enticing him to change the status of his book to non-fiction.  Night is a great piece of literature and Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust icon.  None of that would change if Elie Wiesel would just come clean and tell the truth.  He would be admired even more for telling the truth.  Keep in mind that nothing bad happened to Herman Rosenblat.

“the Holocaust never happened” (What does this mean?)

In a comment on this post on my blog, a reader used the expression “the Holocaust never happened.” But what does this mean?  Does anyone ever seriously say “The Holocaust never happened”?

Billboard that was put up in Berlin several years ago

Before the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was built in Berlin, the billboard shown in the photo above was put up at the future site of the memorial.  The message on this billboard was intended to be facetious, but some people took it literally, and the sign had to be taken down.  (The English translation is “the Holocaust never happened.”)

The expression “the Holocaust never happened” is used by Holocaust believers, followed by “of course, it happened.”  This is not an expression used by Holocaust revisionists.

There were a lot of lies told about World War I, including “The Big Lie.”  Does anyone ever say that World War I never happened?  (“The Big Lie” was the claim that Germany lost the war on the battlefield.)

After World War II, millions of ethnic Germans were expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries and forced to go to Germany, which was a pile of rubble at that time.  Thousands of the expellees lived at the former Dachau concentration camp for 17 years before they were thrown out so that the camp could be made into a Memorial site.  This piece of history is very controversial, but does anyone ever say that it never happened?

The question is “How much of history are people required by law to believe in order to stay out of prison?”  Do we have to believe every survivor story, no matter how ridiculous it is?  Do we have to believe Elie Wiesel’s story, even though he has no tattoo from Auschwitz and no ID number from Buchenwald?

Elie Wiesel is expected to speak about the Talmud in his next lectures

In an article today in The Daily Free Press, The Independent Student Newspaper of Boston University, I read this: “In his next lectures, Wiesel is expected to speak about the Talmud and good and evil.”  The caption on an old photo accompanying the article was this: “Nobel Laureate and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities Elie Wiesel gives a talk entitled, “The Rebbe of Ger: A Tragedy in Hasidism,” at Metcalf Hall on Nov. 1, 2010.”

I couldn’t believe it when I read that Elie Wiesel had given a lecture on Hasidism last year and he is going to lecture on the Talmud this year.  I was reminded of a line spoken by Paulie Walnuts on The Sopranos, an HBO series that I used watch:  “Hasidim, but I don’t believe it.” ( The joke centers on the word Hasidim which sounds something like Hah-seed-em. Hasidim is explained here.)

According to Wikipedia, “Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston’s largest employers. The university identifies itself as nonsectarian, although it maintains an affiliation with The United Methodist Church.”

This sentence in the student newspaper article cited above is not entirely clear to me:  “In his next lectures, Wiesel is expected to speak about the Talmud and good and evil.” Does this mean that Wiesel is going to talk about the good and the evil that is in the Talmud? Or that he is going to talk about two separate topics:  1. the Talmud and 2. good and evil?

I always thought that the Talmud was a closely guarded secret.  Surely, Elie Wiesel is not going to spill the beans on the Talmud.

You can read more about Elie Wiesel on this blog; the title of the blog is “Elie Wiesel Cons the World.”  Eric Hunt has a blog that includes many articles on Elie Wiesel which you can read here.  Check out this blog post on Winston Smith’s excellent blog, which is unique and fun for all.

if you insist on answers to your questions, you could be “morally ill”

According to the world’s most famous Holocaust survivor, there is a difference between being mentally ill and “morally ill.”  In 2007, Elie Wiesel stepped into an elevator at the Hotel Argent in San Francisco where he was scheduled to speak at a peace conference. A young man named Eric Hunt got into the elevator with Wiesel.  Eric Hunt wanted answers to some questions about the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel told a reporter recently that he does not think that Eric Hunt’s problem is mental illness.  No — Eric Hunt is morally ill, according to Elie Wiesel, because he questions the Holocaust.

This quote is from a recent news article in the Tallahassee Democrat which mentions the incident in the elevator:

“He wanted to drag me off to his room and convince me that the Holocaust never happened and videotape me saying it was all made up, which is completely ridiculous,” Wiesel, who turned 83 this week, said.

Wiesel, who will speak Tuesday night at Florida State University, eluded the erstwhile kidnapper and alerted police. The culprit was arrested, put on trial and convicted.

“He was a college graduate. Only 22. His career is finished. And for that? I had to attend his trial. He apologized to me,” Wiesel said. “Personally, I felt nothing. I felt sorry for his mother, but not him. I felt nothing. There are some people who are mentally ill. There are other people who are not mentally ill but morally ill.”  

Elie Wiesel at Buchenwald: “I was there, but I wasn’t there.”

On June 5, 2009, Elie Wiesel accompanied President Barack Obama on a trip to the Memorial Site on the grounds of the former Buchenwald concentration camp.  Obama made a televised speech, standing in front of the Jedem Das Seine gate, which was in the open position.  Standing (unseen) behind him was Bertrand Hertz, one of the Buchenwald orphans who survived.

Early in his speech, Obama said this:

We saw the area known as Little Camp where Elie and Bertrand were sent as boys. In fact, at the place that commemorates this camp, there is a photograph in which we can see a 16-year-old Elie in one of the bunks along with the others. We saw the ovens of the crematorium, the guard towers, the barbed wire fences, the foundations of barracks that once held people in the most unimaginable conditions.

Following Obama’s speech, Elie Wiesel stepped up to the podium, and said this:

Mr. President, Chancellor Merkel, Bertrand, ladies and gentlemen. As I came here today it was actually a way of coming and visiting my father’s grave — but he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in the sky. This has become in those years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people.  The day he died was one of the darkest in my life. He became sick, weak, and I was there. I was there when he suffered. I was there when he asked for help, for water. I was there to receive his last words. But I was not there when he called for me, although we were in the same block; he on the upper bed and I on the lower bed. He called my name, and I was too afraid to move. All of us were. And then he died. I was there, but I was not there.

What are we to make of this?  The reason that I dredged up this memory of Elie Wiesel’s words at Buchenwald is because the question of whether Elie was really an orphan at Buchenwald just won’t go away.  Now a new post, which questions Elie Wiesel’s claim to be a Buchenwald orphan, has just gone up on the Elie Wiesel Cons the World blog, which you can read here.

Registration card for Lazar Wiesel at Buchenwald

A new post has just gone up on Carolyn Yeager’s website Elie Wiesel Cons the World.  This website (or blog) is devoted to the study of Elie Wiesel, the world’s most famous Holocaust survivor.  This latest post shows a photo of a Buchenwald registration card for Lazar Wiesel.  The Germans were famous for keeping detailed records during World War II.  Strangely, there is no Buchenwald registration card for Elie Wiesel, the most famous survivor of Buchenwald.  I previously blogged about this here. Maybe Lazar Wiesel was a relative of Elie Wiesel.  You’ll have to read Carolyn’s latest post to find out.

What did Buchenwald look like when Elie Wiesel was a prisoner there?

Elie Wiesel’s book “Night” has very few details about what the Buchenwald concentration camp actually looked like when he was a prisoner there for several months just before the camp was liberated on April 11, 1945.  There is an article here on the Elie Wiesel Cons The World web site about the curious lack of a detailed description of Buchenwald in Elie’s most famous book.

The Buchenwald camp was mainly a concentration camp for political prisoners; as a Jewish prisoner, Elie Wiesel would not have been allowed to walk around the whole camp, so he may not have seen everything. One thing that he would have seen is the gatehouse into the camp, which is shown in the photo below.  All incoming prisoners entered through this gatehouse.

Gatehouse at the entrance to Buchenwald

Note the clock on top which is permanently stopped at 3:15 p.m., the exact time, on April 11, 1945, when the Communist prisoners took over the camp and the SS men fled into the woods.  This view of the gatehouse is what Elie Wiesel would have seen as he marched up to the camp.

Jedem Das Seine on Buchenwald gate

Jedem das Seine is usually translated into English as “To each his own,” but the phrase has the connotation of “Everyone gets what he deserves.”  Buchenwald was a Class II concentration camp for dangerous political prisoners and hardened criminals, who had little chance of being released, so the Buchenwald camp did not have the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign that was used on Class I camps.  Note that the photo above was taken from inside the camp, looking out; the sign faces the inside of the camp.  

Elie Wiesel’s description of Buchenwald in his book “Night.”

Carolyn Yeager has put up a new article on her web site www.eliewieseltatto.com which addresses the issue of Elie Wiesel’s description of the Buchenwald concentration camp in his book “Night.”  You can read the full article here.

Ms. Yeager does not believe that Elie Wiesel was ever an inmate at Buchenwald.  One would think that a highly acclaimed writer like Elie Wiesel would have painted vivid word pictures of the Buchenwald camp.  But that is not the case, as Ms. Yeager points out.  She has come to the conclusion that he was not at Buchenwald because he did not describe the camp at all.

This quote is from http://www.eliewieseltatto.com:

I have to say Wiesel doesn’t describe Buchenwald at all. You don’t know anything about Buchenwald from reading Night. You don’t learn much about Eliezer or anyone else. You are given an impression of suffering, without rhyme or reason, so Buchenwald becomes synonymous with suffering, that’s about it. We don’t know what it looks like.

In the few pages in which Wiesel described his suffering at Buchenwald, he tripped up twice.  The first time was when he wrote “Then I came to a block where they were distributing black coffee.”  

Whatever happened to the book about “the boys of Buchenwald”?

Elie Wiesel, the world’s best known Holocaust survivor, who was a prisoner at both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, famously wrote, regarding the “stories” in his books: “Some events do take place but are not true; others are—although they never occurred.”  Elie Wiesel was a Talmud scholar at 15 when he was sent to Auschwitz.  At 16 and 1/2, he was one of “the boys of Buchenwald,” the orphan boys who were protected by the other prisoners in the camp.

Now there is a web site, called “Elie Wiesel Cons the World, at http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com, which is devoted to the events in Elie’s life that are true — although they never occurred. This web site claims that Elie Wiesel’s time as a prisoner at Buchenwald did not occur.  This could be one of those events that are true, even if it never occurred. Like Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account that was hacked, although this never occurred, as Weiner admitted today when he resigned from Congress.

According to the Elie Wiesel Cons the World web site, there is a new book that has been in the works for six years, which is supposed to be all about the orphan boys at Buchenwald.  So what has happened to the book?  You can read all about it here.  I previously blogged about Ben Helfgott, a Buchenwald survivor, here.

Update, June 19, 2011:

In reading some of my old posts, I noticed a comment, written by Ken Waltzer on Nov. 14, 2010 at 6:57 a.m.  Here is the comment:

For the skeptics and know-nothings who have written in suggesting Eli Wiesel was not in the camps, that Night is purely fiction, you are all dead wrong. The Red Cross International Tracing Service Archives documents for Lazar Wiesel and his father prove beyond any doubt that Lazar and his father arrived from Buna to Buchenwald January 26, 1945, that his father soon died a few days later, and that Lazar Wiesel was then moved to block 66, the children’s block in the little camp in Buchenwald. THese documents are backed up by military interviews with others from Sighet who were also in block 66, and by the list of Buchenwald boys sent thereafter to France. All of this is public domain.

Wishful thinking by Holocaust deniers will not make their fantasies true. While Wiesel took liberties in writing Night as a literary masterpiece, Night is rooted in the foundation of Wiesel’s experience in the camps. The Buchenwald experience, particularly, runs closely to what is related in Night.

On the same date, Nov. 14, 2010, at 10:34 a.m., Ken Waltzer made a comment on this post by Carolyn Yeager:

Carolyn Yeager wrote:

Lazar Wiesel, born Sept. 4, 1913 arrived at the camp on January 26, 1945, along with his brother Abram, born Oct. 10, 1900, in a large transport from Auschwitz. They both have Buchenwald registration (or entry) numbers.

After the liberation in April, a questionnaire is filled out by a Lázár Wiesel who accents his name in the Hungarian style, giving a birth date of Oct. 4, 1928, and this Lazar is listed on the “childrens” transport to France in July. Neither of these Lazar Wiesel’s fit Elie Wiesel with his birth date of Sept. 30, 1928, and now we find his signature doesn’t match either.

Ken Waltzer commented:

Contrary to Carolyn Yeager’s wishful thinking, Eli Wiesel was indeed the Lazar Wiesel who was admitted to Buchenwald on January 26, 1945, who was subsequently shifted to block 66, and who was interviewed by military authorities before being permitted to leave Buchenwald to go with other Buchenwald orphans to France. Furthermore, there is not a shadow of a doubt about this, although the Buchenwald records do erroneously contain — on some pieces — the birth date of 1913 rather than 1928. A forthcoming paper resolves the “riddle of Lazar” and indicates that Miklos Gruner’s Stolen Identity is a set of false charges and attack on Wiesel without any foundation. ~~ by kenwaltzer

Has Ken Waltzer finally figured out that there were three separate people involved in this controversy and all three are named Wiesel. One of the three was in the orphan’s barrack, but it was not Elie Wiesel. Is that why his book has not been published?

Holy Toledo! students learn about Holocaust horrors (Updated)

I was planning to write today about the ship St. Louis, which was carrying Jewish passengers to Cuba. When the passengers were turned away, the St. Louis then docked in an American port but the Jews were not allowed to enter the United States.  Then I read a comment made on this post that I wrote a year ago, and decided to update it.

Here is a quote from the original news article that this post was based on:

MONROE — For several weeks, ninth graders at Monroe High School had been assigned to read Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night.

The book Mr. Wiesel penned more than 50 years ago was used to introduce the approximately 300 students to the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Last week, they learned about multiple facets of one of history’s darkest chapters, with some of them getting a firsthand account from a woman who lived through it.

Over a one-hour period, students were jammed standing up into a space that simulated a railroad car. They tasted cabbage and bread, the typical meal given to Jews in concentration camps. In one class, they learned of the staggering number of people killed.

Mr. Wiesel’s book, required reading for the ninth graders’ English class, and the classroom sessions were for Holocaust Remembrance Day on May 1.

Deborah Mau, an English teacher who helped organize the program, said the main focus was to have students delve deeply into the Holocaust and World War II. “This gives them a lesson on tolerance and recognizing that not everyone has to look like you and to accept people for their differences and uniqueness,” she said.

Nine segments ranging from stories about Holocaust survivors to slides on Dachau to poetry and Jewish holidays were available. Students could attend three sessions.

I am sorry that my criticism of the Monroe High School program offended anyone, but I truly feel that students in the 9th grade should not be taught about the Holocaust in this way.  First of all, Elie Wiesel’s book Night should be taught as literature, not as a way to “introduce students to the atrocities of the Holocaust.”  The atrocities in the book Night are fiction, and the book should be taught as fiction.  Babies were not thrown, alive, into a burning ditch at Auschwitz, and students should be told that this atrocity did not happen.

Mark Scoles, left, conducts a "Remembrance Walk" through the hallway in which a march to the death camps is reenacted during an afternoon of Holocaust Remembrance activities.

The students who were on the pretend “march to the death camps” should have been told that prisoners were marched OUT of the death camps, not TO the death camps. They were marched out to get them out of a war zone and into a safer camp.  The purpose of these marches was to save the lives of the prisoners, not march them to their death. Elie Wiesel volunteered to join the march out of Auschwitz and was then taken to the Buchenwald camp where he survived.

The students, who were fed cabbage and bread, should have been told that Heinrich Himmler, who was in charge of all the concentration camps, had a degree in Agriculture and he was growing cabbage, using the method of organic gardening, which was pioneered by the Germans.  The bread given to the prisoners was whole grain bread, not the fluffy white bread that Americans were eating during World War II. The students should have been told that food was rationed in all countries during World War II, including America.

The students, who had to stand for an hour in a crowded space, should have been told that, during World War II, there was a scarcity of trains and even upper class German citizens were riding in cattle cars.

These students were taught “a lesson on tolerance and recognizing that not everyone has to look like you and to accept people for their differences and uniqueness.”  Teaching tolerance is fine, but it is wrong to tell high school students that the Jews were deported to camps because of “intolerance or differences or uniqueness.”  This is a touchy subject that might be too offensive to teach in the 9th grade, but the students should at least have been told that one of the main reasons that the Jews were kicked out was because Hitler, and many of the German people, thought that the Jews were responsible for causing Germany to lose World War One.

The students should have been taught that the “staggering number of people” who were killed is unknown.  The numbers keep changing and there are no records to prove the “staggering number.”  The “staggering number” of people killed in the Holocaust should be taught in context with the number of non-Jews killed during World War II, who were not in concentration camps.

The students should have been taught that the reasons for genocide vary from one country to another, but there is always a reason that a group of people are targeted. Genocide is not caused by intolerance or racism or differences between people.  Jews have been targeted for thousands of years, in many different countries, and it is not because of their religion.

The students should have been told that there were “internment camps” in America where Japanese-Americans, citizens of Germany, and German-Americans were imprisoned in violation of the American constitution.  German-Americans, who had not committed any crime, were kept in these camps for two years AFTER the war.  German citizens were kidnapped in South America and brought to America to be put into the internment camps.

There was a war going on when the Holocaust happened.  The students should have been told about the war crimes committed by BOTH sides during World War II. Along with the lessons on the “death camps” for Jews, the students should also learn about Eisenhower’s “death camps.”

Continue reading my original post:

According to a news article on the Toledo Blade website, 9th graders in Monroe, Ohio are spending several weeks learning about the horrors of the Holocaust in preparation for Holocaust Remembrance Day on May 1st.  How many Holocaust Remembrance Days are there?  Enough, already.

The Toledo students saw a slide show on the cremation ovens at Dachau; they ate cabbage and bread just like the concentration camp prisoners and even stood for an hour in a cramped space to feel what it was like to be jammed into a railroad car on the way to a death camp.  Prior to this, they had spent several weeks reading Elie Wiesel’s book “Night.”