by Mark Weber
For more than 40
years, Simon Wiesenthal has been tracking hundreds of „Nazi criminals“ from his
„Jewish Documentation Center“ in Vienna. For his work as the world’s most
prominent „Nazi hunter,“ he has been awarded several honorary degrees and
numerous medals, including Germany’s highest decoration. In a formal White
House ceremony in August 1980, a teary-eyed President Carter presented him with
a special gold medal awarded by the US Congress. President Reagan praised him
in November 1988 as one of the „true heroes“ of this century. [Image: Simon
Wiesenthal.]
This living
legend was portrayed in flattering terms by the late Laurence Oliver in the
1978 film fantasy „The Boys From Brazil,“ and by Ben Kingsley in the 1989 HBO
made-for-television movie „Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story.“ One
of world’s most prominent Holocaust organizations bears his name: the Simon
Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles.
Wiesenthal’s
reputation as a moral authority is undeserved. The man whom The Washington
Post has called the „Holocaust’s Avenging Angel“ has a little known but
well-documented record of reckless disregard for truth. He has lied about his
own wartime experiences, misrepresented his postwar „Nazi-hunting“
achievements, and has spread vile falsehoods about alleged German atrocities.
Different
stories
Szymon (Simon)
Wiesenthal was born on December 31, 1908, in Buczacz, a town in the province of
Galicia (now Buchach in Ukraine) in what was then the eastern fringe of the
Austro-Hungarian empire. His father was a prosperous wholesale sugar merchant.
In spite of all
that has been written about him, just what Wiesenthal did during the war years
under German occupation remains unclear. He has given conflicting stories in
three separate accounts of his wartime activities. The first was given under
oath during a two day interrogation session in May 1948 conducted by an official
of the US Nuremberg war crimes commission. The second is a summary of his life
provided by Wiesenthal as part of a January 1949 „Application for Assistance“
to the International Refugee Committee. And the third account is given in his
autobiography, The Murderers Among Us, first published in 1967.
Soviet engineer
or factory mechanic?
In his 1948
interrogation, Wiesenthal declared that „between 1939 and 1941“ he was a „Soviet
chief engineer working in Lvov and Odessa.“ Consistent with that, he stated in
his 1949 declaration that from December 1939 to April 1940 he worked as an
architect in the Black Sea port of Odessa. But according to his autobiography,
he spent the period between mid-September 1939 and June 1941 in Soviet-ruled
Lvov, where he worked „as a mechanic in a factory that produced bedsprings.“
‘Relative
freedom’
After the
Germans took control of Galicia province in June 1941, Wiesenthal was interned
for a time in the Janowska concentration camp near Lvov, from where he was
transferred a few months later to a camp affiliated with the repair works (OAW)
in Lvov of the Ostbahn („Eastern Railroad“) of German-ruled Poland. Wiesenthal
reported in his autobiography that he worked there „as a technician and
draftsman,“ that he was rather well treated, and that his immediate superior,
who was „secretly anti-Nazi,“ even permitted him to own two pistols. He had his
own office in a „small wooden hut,“ and enjoyed „relative freedom and was
permitted to walk all over the yards.“
Partisan
fighter?
The next segment
of Wiesenthal’s life -- from October 1943 to June 1944 -- is the most obscure,
and his accounts of this period are contradictory. During his 1948
interrogation, Wiesenthal said that he fled from the Janowska camp in Lvov and
joined a „partisan group which operated in the Tarnopol-Kamenopodolsk area.“ He
said that „I was a partisan from October 6, 1943, until the middle of February
1944,“ and declared that his unit fought against Ukrainian forces, both of the
SS „Galicia“ division and of the independent UPA partisan force.
Wiesenthal said
that he held the rank of lieutenant and then major, and was responsible for
building bunkers and fortification lines. Although he was not explicit, he
suggested that this (supposed) partisan unit was part of the Armia Ludowa („Peoples
Army“), the Polish Communist military force established and controlled by the
Soviets.
He said that he
and other partisans slipped into Lvov in February 1944, where they were „hidden
by friends of the A.L. [‘People’s Army’] group.“ On June 13, 1944, his group
was captured by the German Secret Field Police. (Although Jewish partisans
caught in hiding were often shot, Wiesenthal reports that he was somehow
spared.) Wiesenthal told much the same story in his 1949 statement. He said
that he fled from internment in early October 1943 and then „fought against the
Germans as a partisan in the forest“ for eight months -- from October 2, 1943,
to March 1944. After that, he was „in hiding“ in Lvov from March to June 1944.
Wiesenthal
tells a totally different story in his 1967 autobiography. He reports there
that after escaping from the Ostbahn Repair Works on Oct. 2, 1943, he lived in
hiding in the houses of various friends until June 13, 1944, when he was
discovered by Polish and German police and returned to a concentration camp. He
makes no mention of any partisan membership or activity.
According to
both his 1948 interrogation and his 1967 autobiography, he tried to commit
suicide on June 15, 1944, by cutting his wrists. Remarkably, though, he was
saved from death by German SS doctors and recovered in an SS hospital. He
remained in the Lvov concentration camp „with double rations“ for a time, and
then, he reports in his autobiography, he was transferred to various work
camps. He spent the remaining chaotic months, until the end of the war, in
different camps until he was liberated from Mauthausen (in Austria) by American
forces on May 5, 1945.
Did Wiesenthal
invent a past as a heroic wartime partisan? Or did he later try to suppress his
record as a Communist fighter? Or is the true story altogether different -- and
too shameful to admit?
‘Nazi agent’?
Did Wiesenthal
voluntarily work for his wartime oppressors? That’s the accusation leveled by
Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, himself of Jewish ancestry and leader for
many years of his country’s Socialist Party. During an interview with foreign
journalists in 1975, Kreisky charged Wiesenthal with using „Mafia methods,“
rejected his pretense of „moral authority,“ and suggested that he was an agent
for the German authorities. Some of his more pertinent remarks, which appeared
in Austria’s leading news magazine Profil, include:
I really know
Mr. Wiesenthal only from secret reports, and they are bad, very nasty. I say
this as Federal Chancellor ... And I say that Mr. Wiesenthal had a different
relationship with the Gestapo than I did. Yes, and this can be proven. I can’t
say more [now]. Everything else, I’ll say in court.
My relationship
with the Gestapo is unambiguous. I was their prisoner, their inmate, and I was
interrogated. His relationship was a different one, I can say, and this will
come out clearly. It’s bad enough what I’ve already said here. But he can’t
clear himself by charging me with defaming his honor in the press, as he might
wish. It’s not that simple, because that would mean a big court case ... A man
like this doesn’t have the right to pretend to be a moral authority. That’s
what I say. He doesn’t have the right ...
Whether a man
who, in my view, is an agent, yes, that’s right, and who uses Mafia methods ...
Such a man has to go ...
He is no gentleman, and I would say, to make this clear, so that he won’t
become a moral authority, because he is not ... He shouldn’t pretend to be a
moral authority ...
I say that Mr.
Wiesenthal lived in that time in the Nazi sphere of influence without being
persecuted. Right? And he lived openly without being persecuted, right? Is that
clear? And you perhaps know, if you know what was going on, that no one could
risk that.
He wasn’t a „submarine“
... that is, submerged and in hiding, but instead, he was completely in the
open without having to, well, ever risk persecution. I think that’s enough.
There were so many opportunities to be an agent. He didn’t have to be a Gestapo
agent. There were many other services.
In response to
these damning words, Wiesenthal began efforts to bring a lawsuit against the
Chancellor. Eventually, though, both Wiesenthal and Kreisky backed away from a
major legal clash.
Mauthausen
myths
Before he
became famous as a „Nazi hunter,“ he made a name for himself as a propagandist.
In 1946 Wiesenthal published KZ Mauthausen, an 85-page work that
consists mainly of his own amateurish sketches purporting to represent the
horrors of the Mauthausen concentration camp. One drawing [below] depicts three
inmates who had been bound to posts and brutally put to death by the Germans.
The sketch is
completely phony. It was copied -- with some minor alterations -- from photographs
that appeared in Life magazine in 1945, which graphically record the
firing-squad execution in December 1944 of three German soldiers who had been
caught operating as spies behind the lines during the „Battle of the Bulge.“
The source of the Wiesenthal drawing is instantly obvious to anyone who
compares it with the Life photos.
The
irresponsible character of this book is also shown by Wiesenthal’s extensive
citation therein of the supposed „death bed confession“ of Mauthausen
Commandant Franz Ziereis, according to which four million were gassed to death
with carbon monoxide at the nearby Hartheim satellite camp. This claim is
totally absurd, and no serious Holocaust historian still accepts it. Also
according to the Ziereis „confession“ cited by Wiesenthal, the Germans
supposedly killed another ten million people in Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
In fact, this fraudulent „confession“ was obtained by torture.
Years later,
Wiesenthal was still lying about Mauthausen. In a 1983 interview with the daily
newspaper USA Today, he said of his experience in Mauthausen: „I was one of 34
prisoners alive out of 150,000 who had been put there.“ This is a blatant
falsehood. The years have apparently not been kind to Wiesenthal’s memory,
because in his own autobiography he wrote that „almost 3,000 prisoners died in
Mauthausen after the Americans liberated us on May 5, 1945.“ Another former
inmate, Evelyn Le Chene, reported in her standard work about Mauthausen that
there were 64,000 inmates in the camp when it was liberated in May 1945. And
according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, at least 212,000 inmates
survived internment in the Mauthausen camp complex.
After the war
Wiesenthal worked for the US Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of
the CIA) and the US Army’s Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC). He was also vice
chairman of the Jewish Central Committee in the US occupation zone of Austria.
‘Human soap’
Wiesenthal has
given circulation and credence to one of the most scurrilous Holocaust stories,
the charge that the Germans manufactured soap from the corpses of murdered
Jews. According to this tale, the letters „RIF“ in bars of German-made soap
allegedly stood for „Pure Jewish Fat“ („Rein judisches Fett“). In reality, the
initials stood for „National Center for Industrial Fat Provisioning“ („Reichstelle
fur industrielle Fettversorgung“).
Wiesenthal
promoted the „human soap“ legend in articles published in 1946 in the Austrian
Jewish community paper Der Neue Weg („The New Path“). In an article
entitled „RIF,“ he wrote: „The terrible words ‘transport for soap’ were first
heard at the end of 1942. It was in the [Polish] General Government, and the
factory was in Galicia, in Belzec. From April 1942 until May 1943, 900,000 Jews
were used as raw material in this factory.“ After the corpses were turned into
various raw materials, Wiesenthal wrote, „The rest, the residual fat stuff, was
used for soap production.“ [Image: Zyklon B and „Jewish soap“ exhibited on
Mount Zion in Jerusalem, 1972.]
He continued: „After
1942 people in the General Government knew quite well what the RIF soap meant.
The civilized world may not believe the joy with which the Nazis and their
women in the General Government thought of this soap. In each piece of soap
they saw a Jew who had been magically put there, and had thus been prevented
from growing into a second Freud, Ehrlich or Einstein.“
In another
imaginative article published in 1946 entitled „Belzec Soap Factory,“
Wiesenthal alleged that masses of Jews were exterminated in electrocution
showers:
The people,
pressed together and driven on by the SS, Latvians and Ukrainians, go through
the open door into the „bath.“ Five hundred persons could fit at a time. The
floor of the „bath chamber“ was made of metal and shower heads hung from the
ceiling. When the room was full, the SS turned on the 5,000 volts of electric
current in the metal plate. At the same time water poured from the shower
heads. A short scream and the execution was over. An SS chief physician named
Schmidt determined through a peep hole that the victims were dead. The second
door was opened and the „corpse commando“ came in and quickly removed the dead.
It was ready for the next 500.
Today no
serious historian accepts the stories that Jewish corpses were manufactured
into bars of soap or that Jews were electrocuted to death at Belzec (or
anywhere).
Wiesenthal’s
imaginative view of history is not limited to the twentieth century. In his
1973 book Sails of Hope, he argued that Christopher Columbus was a
secret Jew, and that his famous voyage to the western hemisphere in 1492 was
actually a search for a new homeland for Europe’s Jews.
Wiesenthal is
not always wrong, of course. In 1975 and again in 1993 he publicly acknowledged
that „there were no extermination camps on German soil.“ He thus implicitly
conceded that the claims made at the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal and elsewhere
that Buchenwald, Dachau and other camps in Germany proper were „extermination
camps“ are not true.
‘Fabrications’
about Eichmann
In more than 40
years of „Nazi hunting,“ Wiesenthal’s role in locating and capturing Adolf
Eichmann is often considered his greatest achievement. (Eichmann headed the wartime
SS Jewish affairs department. He was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina
in May 1960 and hanged in Jerusalem after a trial that received worldwide media
attention.)
But Isser
Harel, the Israeli official who headed the team that seized Eichmann, has
declared unequivocally that Wiesenthal had „absolutely nothing“ to do with the
capture. (Harel is a former head of both the Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel’s
foreign and domestic security agencies.)
Wiesenthal not
only „had no role whatsoever“ in the apprehension, said Harel, but in fact he
endangered the entire Eichmann operation. In a 278-page manuscript, Harel
carefully refuted every claim by Wiesenthal about his supposed role in
identifying and capturing Eichmann. Claims by Wiesenthal and his many friends
about his supposedly crucial role in capturing the former SS officer, said
Harel, have no foundation in fact. Many specific assertions and incidents
described in two books by Wiesenthal, said the Israeli official, are „complete
fabrications.“
„Wiesenthal’s
reports and statements at that period prove beyond any doubt that he had no
notion of Eichmann’s whereabouts,“ said Harel. (For example, just before
Eichmann’s capture in Argentina, Wiesenthal was placing him in Japan and Saudi
Arabia.)
Characterizing
Wiesenthal as a rank opportunist, Harel summed up: „All the information
supplied by Wiesenthal before and in anticipation of the [Eichmann] operation
was utterly worthless, and sometimes even misleading and of negative value.“
Reckless
charges in Walus case
One of
Wiesenthal’s most spectacular cases involved a Polish-born Chicago man named
Frank Walus. In a letter dated December 10, 1974, he charged that Walus „delivered
Jews to the Gestapo“ in Czestochowa and Kielce in Poland during the war. This
letter prompted a US government investigation and legal action. The
Washington Post dealt with the case in a 1981 article entitled „The Nazi
Who Never Was: How a witch hunt by judge, press and investigators branded an
innocent man a war criminal.“ The lengthy piece, which was copyrighted by the
American Bar Association, reported:
In January
1977, the United States government accused a Chicagoan named Frank Walus of
having committed atrocities in Poland during World War II.
In the
following years, this retired factory worker went into debt in order to raise
more than $60,000 to defend himself. He sat in a courtroom while eleven Jewish
survivors of the Nazi occupation of Poland testified that they saw him murder
children, an old woman, a young woman, a hunchback and others ...
Overwhelming
evidence shows that Walus was not a Nazi War criminal, that he was not even in
Poland during World War II.
... In an
atmosphere of hatred and loathing verging on hysteria, the government
persecuted an innocent man. In 1974, Simon Wiesenthal, the famous „Nazi hunter“
of Vienna, denounced Walus as „a Pole in Chicago who performed duties with the
Gestapo in the ghettos of Czestochowa and Kielce and handed over a number of
Jews to the Gestapo.“
The Chicago
weekly newspaper Reader also reported on the case in a detailed 1981
article headlined: „The Persecution of Frank Walus: To Catch a Nazi: The U.S.
government wanted a war criminal. So, with the help of Simon Wiesenthal, the
Israeli police, the local press and Judge Julius Hoffman, they invented one.“
The article stated:
... It is
logical to assume that the „reports received by Wiesenthal [against Walus]
actually were rumors ... In other words, Simon Wiesenthal had no evidence
against Walus. He denounced him anyway.
While [Judge]
Hoffman had the Walus case under advisement, Holocaust aired on
television. During the same period, in April 1978, Simon Wiesenthal came to
Chicago, where he gave interviews taking credit for the Walus case. „How
Nazi-Hunter Helped Find Walus,“ was the Sun-Times headline on a story by
Bob Olmstead. Wiesenthal told Sun-Times Abe Peck that he „has never had
a case of mistaken identity.“ „I know there are thousands of people who wait
for my mistake,“ he said.
It was only
after an exhausting legal battle that the man who was vilified and physically
attacked as „the butcher of Kielce“ was finally able to prove that he had spent
the war years as a peaceful farm laborer in Germany. Frank Walus died in August
1994, a broken and bitterly disappointed man.
Wiesenthal’s
recklessness in the Walus case should have been enough to permanently discredit
him as a reliable investigator. But his Teflon reputation survived even this.
Wrong about
Mengele
Much of the
Wiesenthal myth is based on his hunt for Joseph Mengele, the wartime physician
at Auschwitz known as the „Angel of Death.“ Time and time again, Wiesenthal
claimed to be close on Mengele’s heels. Wiesenthal reported that his informants
had „seen“ or „just missed“ the elusive physician in Peru, Chile, Brazil,
Spain, Greece, and half a dozen locations in Paraguay.
One of the
closest shaves came in the summer of 1960. Wiesenthal reported that Mengele had
been hiding out on a small Greek island, from where he escaped by just a few
hours. Wiesenthal continued to peddle this story, complete with precise
details, even after a reporter whom he had hired to check it out informed him
that the tale was false from beginning to end.
According to
another Wiesenthal report, Mengele arranged for the murder in 1960 of one of
his former victims, a woman he had supposedly sterilized in Auschwitz. After
spotting her, and her distinctive camp tattoo, at a hotel in Argentina where he
was staying, Mengele allegedly arranged to have her killed because he feared
that she would expose him. It turned out that the woman was never in a
concentration camp, had no tattoo, had never met Mengele, and her death was a
simple mountaineering accident.
Mengele
regularly dined at the finest restaurants in Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital,
Wiesenthal said in 1977, and supposedly drove around the city with a bevy of
armed guards in his black Mercedes Benz.
Wiesenthal
announced in 1985 that he was „100 percent sure“ that Mengele had been hiding
out in Paraguay until at least June 1984, and charged that the Mengele family
in Germany knew exactly where. As it turned out, Wiesenthal was completely
wrong. It was later definitively established that Mengele had died in 1979 in
Brazil, where he had been living for years in anonymous poverty.
Israel’s
ambassador to Paraguay from 1968 to 1972, Benjamin (Benno) Varon, remarked in
1983 on the Mengele campaign: „Wiesenthal makes periodic statements that he is
about to catch him, perhaps since Wiesenthal must raise funds for his
activities and the name Mengele is always good for a plug.“ Wiesenthal „failed
miserably“ in the Mengele case, the diplomat said on another occasion. In the
Mengele case, former Mossad chief Harel remarked, „Wiesenthal’s folly borders
on the criminal.“
In truth, the
bulging Mengele file in Wiesenthal’s Vienna „Documentation Center“ was such a
jumble of useless information that, in the words of the London Times, it
„only sustained his self-confirmatory myths and gave scant satisfaction to
those who apparently needed a definitive answer to Mengele’s fate.“
In the
considered view of Gerald Posner and John Ware, coauthors of Mengele: The
Complete Story, Wiesenthal spent years assiduously cultivating a mythical „self-image
of a tireless, dogged sleuth, pitted against the omnipotent and sinister might
of Mengele and a vast Nazi network.“ Because of his „knack of playing to the
gallery,“ Posner and Ware concluded, Wiesenthal „ultimately compromised his
credibility.“
‘Incompetence
and arrogance’
Eli Rosenbaum,
an official with the US government’s „Nazi hunting“ Office of Special
Investigations and an investigator for the World Jewish Congress, took aim at
Wiesenthal’s carefully cultivated „Nazi hunter“ reputation in a detailed 1993
book, Betrayal. For example, Rosenbaum mentioned, Wiesenthal „had all
these reports placing Mengele in almost every country in Latin America except
the one he was in -- namely, Brazil.“
Wiesenthal,
wrote Rosenbaum, has been a „pathetically ineffective“ investigator who had „gone
far beyond the buffoonery and false boasts in prior years.“ Much of his
illustrious career, Rosenbaum said, has been characterized by „incompetence and
arrogance.“
Bruno Kreisky
once summed up his attitude towards the „Nazi hunter“ in these words:
The engineer
Wiesenthal, or whatever else his title is, hates me because he knows that I
despise his activity. The Wiesenthal group is a quasi-political Mafia that
works against Austria with disgraceful methods. Wiesenthal is known as someone
who isn’t very careful about the truth, who is not very selective about his
methods and who uses tricks. He pretends to be the „Eichmann hunter,“ even
though everyone knows that this was the work of a secret service, and that
Wiesenthal only takes credit for that.
‘Commercializing’
the Holocaust
The Los Angeles
Wiesenthal Center pays the Vienna „Nazi Hunter“ $75,000 a year for the use of
his name, the director of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust center said in 1988.
Both the Center
and Wiesenthal „commercialize“ and „trivialize“ the Holocaust, the director
added.
Wiesenthal „threw
out“ the figure of „11 million who were murdered in the Holocaust -- six
million Jews and five million non-Jews,“ said the Yad Vashem official. When
asked why he gave these figures, Wiesenthal replied: „The gentiles will not pay
attention if we do not mention their victims, too.“ Wiesenthal „chose ‘five
million (gentiles)’ because he wanted a ‘diplomatic’ number, one that told of a
large number of gentile victims but in no way was larger than that of Jews ...“
„What
Wiesenthal and the Los Angeles Center that bears his name do is to trivialize
the Holocaust,“ commented The Jewish Press, a weekly that claims to be
the largest-circulation English-language Jewish community paper in America.
In recent years
Wiesenthal has been concerned about the growing impact of Holocaust
revisionism. In „A Message from Simon Wiesenthal“ published by the Center that
bears his name, he said: „Today, when I see the rise of antisemitism here in
Europe ... the popularity of Le Pen, of David Duke, of the Holocaust
revisionists, then I am convinced more than ever about the need for our new
[Wiesenthal Center] Beit Hashoah-Museum of Tolerance“ in Los Angeles.
Wiesenthal is
often asked why he does not forgive those who persecuted Jews half a century
ago. His stock answer is that although he has the right to forgive for himself,
he does not have the right to forgive on behalf of others. On the basis of this
sophistical logic, though, neither does he have the right to accuse and track
down anyone in the name of others. Wiesenthal has never confined his „hunt“ to
those who victimized him personally.
‘Driven by
hatred’
It is difficult
to say just what drives this remarkable man. Is it a craving for fame and
praise? Or is he trying to live down a shameful episode from his past?
Wiesenthal
clearly enjoys the praise he receives. „He is a man of considerable ego, proud
of testimonials and honorary degrees,“ the Los Angeles Times has
reported. Bruno Kreisky has given a simpler explanation. He said that
Wiesenthal is „driven by hatred.“
In light of his well-documented record of deceit, lies and incompetence,
the extravagant praise heaped upon this contemptible man is a sorry reflection
of the venal corruptibility and unprincipled self-deception of our age.
