I have been searching my fingers to the bone, but I cannot find any recent news on the Internet about Martin Zaidenstadt, the Jew who pan-handled at the Dachau Memorial Site for many years. Zaidenstadt claimed that he had been a prisoner at Dachau for three years; he told the tourists all about the Dachau gas chamber, which he had somehow escaped during his three years of confinement.
There is currently only one Internet article about Zaidenstadt, which was written by Mark Weber on the IHR website, at http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v19/v19n2p60_Weber.html
This quote is from the article written by Mark Weber several years ago:
Each year many thousands of tourists visit the site of the notorious Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany, not far from Munich. They see the crematory, the memorial shrines, and the museum. And in recent years, as an almost daily fixture, they see Martin Zaidenstadt. This elderly Jewish man lectures visitors to Dachau on his experiences as a wartime prisoner there. He is particularly passionate about the horrors of the camp’s gas chamber where, he explains, many prisoners were put to death with poison gas. He even claims that this gas chamber served as a model for Auschwitz (New York Times, Oct. 26, 1997). Zaidenstadt’s listeners respond to his heart-rending testimony with unquestioning sympathy. Many reach generously into their wallets.
I recall that, for many years, there were numerous photos of Zaidenstadt on the Internet; these photos have now disappeared. His favorite place to pose was at the statue of the unknown prisoner; Zaidenstadt claimed that he had posed for this statue.
I previously blogged about Martin Zaidenstadt at https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/martin-zaidenstadt-the-fake-holocaust-survivor-who-pan-handled-at-dachau/
Has Martin Zaidenstadt become an embarrassment to the Jews? His name has been completely removed from search results, and I cannot find anything on him any more, except on my own website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauSurvivor.html
If Zaidenstadt is still alive, he is now 103 years old, but I have been unable to find anything on the Internet about his death.
When I visited the town of Dachau, several years ago, I was told by a Dachau resident, that the house in the photo below was where Martin Zaidenstadt lived in luxury when he was not out pan-handling at the Dachau Memorial Site.