Elie Wiesel: “The Most Authoritative Living Witness” of The Shoah?
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By Carlo Mattogno
On 27 January 2010, the tenth “Holocaust Remembrance Day”, Elie Wiesel was invited into Montecitorio Hall, the seat of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic where he had the opportunity to give a brief speech. The president of the Chamber, Gianfranco Fini, introduced him as “the most authoritative living witness of the horrors of the Shoah among the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps”.[1] But is he really a witness?
Is Elie Wiesel an impostor?
On 3 March 2009, a Hungarian website published an article entitled Még mindig kísérti a haláltábor (The extermination camp is still tempting)[2] and outlining important revelations by Miklós Grüner, a former deportee to Auschwitz. The article was translated and appeared the following day under the title Auschwitz Survivor Claims Elie Wiesel is an Impostor[3]. The text reads as follows:
«In May 1944 , when Miklos Gruner was 15, he was deported from Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau with his mother and father as well as both a younger and an elder brother. He says that his mother and his younger brother were immediately gassed after their arrival in the camp. Then he, his elder brother and their father had an inmate number tattooed on their arms and were sent to perform hard work in a synthetic fuel factory linked to IG Farben where the father died six months later. After that, the elder brother was sent to Mauthausen and, as the young Miklos was then alone, two elder Jewish inmates who were also Hungarians and friends with his late father took him under their protection. These two protectors of the young Miklos were the Lazar and Abraham Wiesel brothers.
In the following months, Miklos Gruner and the Wiesel brothers became good friends. Lazar Wiesel was 31 years old in 1944. Miklos never forgot the number Lazar was tattooed with by the Nazis: A-7713. In January 1945, as the Russian army was coming, the inmates were transferred to Buchenwald. During the ten days this transfer took, partly by foot, partly by train, more than half of the inmates died and amongst them was Abraham, the elder brother of Lazar Wiesel. In April 8, 1945, the US army liberated Buchenwald. Miklos and Lazar were amongst the survivors of the camp. As Miklos had tuberculosis, he was sent in a Swiss clinic and therefore was separated from Lazar. After recovering, Miklos emigrated to Australia while his elder brother, who also survived the war, established himself in Sweden.
Years later, in 1986, Miklos was contacted by the Swedish journal Sydsvenska Dagbladet in Malmo and invited to meet “an old friend” named Elie Wiesel… As Miklos answered that he doesn`t know anyone with this name, he was told Elie Wiesel was the same person Miklos knew in the Nazi camps under the name Lazar Wiesel and with the inmate number A-7713… Miklos still remembered that number and he was therefore convinced at that point that he was going to meet his old friend Lazar and happily accepted the invitation to meet him at the Savoj Hotel in Stockholm on December 14, 1986. Miklos recalls:
“I was very happy at the idea of meeting Lazar but when I confronted the so-called ‘Elie Wiesel’, I was stunned to see a man I didn`t recognize at all, who didn`t even speak Hungarian or Yiddish and instead he was speaking English in a strong French accent. Therefore our meeting was over in about ten minutes. As a goodbye gift, the man gave me his book entitled ‘Night’ of which he claimed to be the author. I accepted the book I didn`t know at that time but told everyone there that this man was not the person he pretended to be!”
Miklos recalls that during this strange meeting, Elie Wiesel refused to show him the tattooed number on his arm, saying he didn`t want to exhibit his body. Miklos adds that Elie Wiesel showed his tattooed number afterward to an Israeli journalist who Miklos met and this journalist told Miklos that he didn`t have time to identify the number but… was certain it wasn`t a tattoo. Miklos says:
“After that meeting with Elie Wiesel, I spent twenty years of research and found out that the man calling himself Elie Wiesel has never been in a Nazi concentration camp since he was not included in any official list of detainees”.
Miklos also found out that the book Elie Wiesel gave him in 1986 as something he has written himself was in fact written in Hungarian in 1955 by Miklos’ old friend Lazar Wiesel and published in Paris under the title “Un di Velt hot Gesvigen”, meaning approximately “The World Kept Silent”. The book was then shortened and rewritten in French as well as in English in order to be published under the author`s name Elie Wiesel in 1958, under the french title “La Nuit” and the English title “Night”. Ten million copies of the book were sold in the world by Elie Wiesel who even received a Nobel Peace prize for it in 1986 while – says Miklos – the real author Lazar Wiesel was mysteriously missing…
“Elie Wiesel never wanted to meet me again”, says Miklos. “He became very successful; he takes 25 thousand dollars for a 45 minutes speech on the Holocaust. I have officially reported to the FBI in Los Angeles. I have also complained to governments and media, in the US and Sweden with no result.
I have received anonymous calls telling me I could be shot if I don`t shut up but I am not afraid of death any more. I have deposited the whole dossier in four different countries and, if I died suddenly, they would be made public. The world must know that Elie Wiesel is an impostor and I am going to tell it, I am going to publish the truth in a book called “Stolen Identity A7713”.”»
Miklós Grüner’s declarations have been repeated many times, but have not caused any major research effort. We will thus scrutinize them critically but soberly.
For the full story visit http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2010/02/el ... the-shoah/
