memory: he is a man who cannot forget. (Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon
      Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, pp. 20-21.)
      But from someone in Mr. Wiesenthal's position, one expects no less one expects just such
      exactitude as he is gifted with, just such precision, just such vivid and accurate recall of
      detail. All such things are essential when one is entrusted with the grave responsibility of
      accusing individuals and ascribing guilt to nations. And precise memory of such events is to be
      expected all the more of someone who was young when the events occurred, and when the events
      were traumatic and seared into his memory.
      As Mr. Wiesenthal has related the story of his life to more than one biographer, it is not a
      difficult matter for a reader to compare these stories in order to be further edified by the
      demonstration of Mr. Wiesenthal's remarkable memory. Take, for example, this other account of
      the same story of being discovered underneath the floorboards:
      One evening in April 1943 a German soldier was shot dead in the street. The
      alarm was raised: SS and Polish police officers in civilian clothes searched
      the nearby houses for hidden weapons. Instead they found Simon Wiesenthal. He
      was marched off for the third time to, as he believed, his certain execution.
      (Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p.
      11)
      But this parallel version of the story is not precisely what the claims concerning Mr.
      Wiesenthal's memory led us to expect. The astonishingly accurate "Tuesday, 13 June 1944" has
      turned into "April 1943," "beaten" has become "murdered," "in a house" has become "in the
      street," the "railway inspector" has become a "German soldier," and the "Gestapo" has become the
      "SS." The last might seem like a fine point, but in fact the Gestapo and the SS had clearly
      defined and mutually exclusive duties: "A division of authority came about whereby the Gestapo
      alone had the power to arrest people and send them to concentration camps, whereas the SS
      remained responsible for running the camps" (Leni Yahil, The Holocaust, 1987, p. 133). Perhaps
      a fine point to someone who had not lived through these events, but to someone who had lived
      through them, then one would imagine a memorable point, one that should be easier to remember
      than, say, what color suit each participant wore at some huge function.
      And so now we are forced to wonder whether this is the same event badly remembered, or whether
      Mr. Wiesenthal was discovered twice under the floorboards, once in 1943 and again in 1944. The
      more cynical reader might even go on to wonder whether any such event took place at all.
      As the above comparison illustrates, and as a reading of Mr. Wiesenthal proves a hundred times
      over, Mr. Wiesenthal's salient characteristic is not that he has a photographic memory, but
      rather that he cannot tell a story twice in the same way. For a second example, take the case
      of the Rusinek slap.
      The Rusinek Slap
      Former inmates took over command. One of them was the future Polish Cabinet
      Minister Kazimierz Rusinek. Wiesenthal needed to see him at his office to get
      a pass. The Pole, who was about to lock up, struck him across the face - just
      as some camp officials had frequently treated Jews. It hurt Wiesenthal more
      than all the blows received from SS men in three years: "Now the war is over,
      and the Jews are still being beaten."
      ... He sought out the American camp command to make a complaint. (Peter
      Michael Lingens in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 12)
      That is one version, but here is another:
      A Polish trusty named Kazimierz Rusinek pounced on Simon for no good reason and
      knocked him unconscious. When Wiesenthal woke up, friends had carried him to
      his bunk. "What has he got against you?" one of them asked.
      "I don't know," Simon said. "Maybe he's angry because I'm still alive."
      (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 69)
      These two accounts are so different that one wonders whether they are of the same event. In the
      first account Wiesenthal is addressing Rusinek when Rusinek slaps him, while in the second
      Rusinek pounces on him, which suggests an ambush. But more important, when you have been
      pounced on and knocked unconscious, when you become aware that your friends have carried you to
      your bunk only after you have regained consciousness, then you would not ordinarily describe
      that as merely having been "struck across the face." Mr. Wiesenthal is a skilled raconteur - in
      fact an erstwhile professional stand-up comic - so that it is inconceivable that he would weaken
      a story, drain it of its significance, by turning a knock-out into a mere slap. With his
      training as a stand-up comic, however, it is conceivable that he would turn a slap into a
      knock-out.
      Mr. Wiesenthal's stories are cluttered with this sort of self-contradiction. Take, for still
      another example, the case of the Bodnar rescue: In Justice Not Vengeance, Bodnar saves only
      Wiesenthal, and takes him to his apartment. In The Wiesenthal File, however, Bodnar saves
      Wiesenthal together with another prisoner and takes the two to the office of a "commissar" which
      office they spend the entire night cleaning.
      And on top of outright contradiction, there are a mass of details that fail to ring true. For
      example, although many Ukrainians did risk their lives to save Jews, the number who knowingly
      gave their lives to save Jews must have been considerably smaller - and yet, as noted above,
      that is what Wiesenthal seems to be asking us to believe that Bodnar did. And then too,
      Wiesenthal tells us that in the execution which he had just barely escaped, the prisoners were
      being shot with each standing beside his own wooden box, and dumped into his own box after he
      was shot - where we might have expected the executioners to follow the path of least effort, Mr.
      Wiesenthal's account shows them going to the trouble of providing each victim with a makeshift
      coffin.
      And just how did it come to pass that the executioners stopped before killing Wiesenthal
      himself? - According to Simon Wiesenthal, they heard church bells, and being devoutly religious,
      stopped to pray. But what an incongruous juxtaposition - Ukrainians at once deeply Christian
      and deeply genocidal. If Christianity invited the murder of Jews, then this would make sense,
      but in fact - in modern times at least - Christianity has stood against such practices, and more
      emphatically so in Ukraine than perhaps anywhere else, as we have already noted above.
      But what has Mr. Wiesenthal's inability to come up with a consistent or credible biography got
      to do with the quality of his professional denunciations? - The evidence suggests that the two
      are equally shoddy. Had 60 Minutes looked into Mr. Wiesenthal's professional background, it
      would quickly have found much to wonder at. It would, for one thing, have quickly come across
      the case of Frank Walus, The Nazi Who Never Was.
      Frank Walus: The Nazi Who Never Was
      In 1976 Simon Wiesenthal, in Vienna, had gone public with charges that a Polish
      emigre living in Chicago, Frank Walus, had been a collaborator involved in
      persecuting Polish Jews, including women and children, as part of a Gestapo-led
      auxiliary police unit. Walus, charged Wiesenthal, "performed his duties with
      the Gestapo in the ghettos of Czestochowa and Kielce and handed over numerous
      Jews to the Gestapo." (Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters,
      1988, p. 193)
      Walus, in turn, was convicted by judge Julius Hoffman, who
      ran the trial with an iron hand and an eccentricity that bordered on the
      bizarre. He allowed government witnesses great latitude, while limiting
      severely Korenkiewicz's cross-examination of them. When Walus himself
      testified, Hoffman limited him almost entirely to simple yes and no answers.
      (Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 193)
      Despite weaknesses in the prosecution case, Judge Hoffman went on to convict Walus, and later
      despite accumulating evidence of Walus's innocence, refused to reconsider his verdict. But
      then a formal appeal was filed. The process took almost two years, but in
      February 1980, the court ruled. It threw out Hoffman's verdict and ordered
      Walus retried. In making the ruling, the court said that it appeared the
      government's case against Walus was "weak" but that Hoffman's handling of the
      trial had been so biased that it could not evaluate the evidence properly.
      (Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 195)
      In view of irrefutable documentary and eye-witness evidence that Walus had served as a farm
      laborer in Germany during the entire war, he was never re-tried. And what, we may ask, was the
      occasion for Simon Wiesenthal's fingering Walus in the first place?
      Only later was the source of the "evidence" against Walus that had reached
      Simon Wiesenthal identified. Walus had bought a two-family duplex when he came
      to Chicago. In the early 1970s, he rented out the second unit to a tenant with
      whom he eventually had a fight. Walus evicted the tenant, who then started
      telling one and all how his former landlord used to sit around and reminisce
      about the atrocities he had committed against Jews in the good old days.
      Apparently one of the groups to which he told the story was a Jewish refugee
      agency in Chicago, which passed the information along to Simon Wiesenthal.
      (Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 195)
      For a statement concerning the Walus case made by Frank Walus himself, please read Frank Walus's
      letter to Germany.
      The Deschenes Commission
      But is the Walus case a single slipup in Simon Wiesenthal's otherwise blemish-free career? No,
      other slipups can be found - in one instance a batch of 6,000 others. Simon Wiesenthal kicked
      the ball into play with the accusation that Canada harbored "several hundred" war criminals
      (Toronto Star, May 19, 1971). The Jewish Defense League caught the ball, found it soft and
      inflated it to "maybe 1,000" (Globe and Mail, July 5, 1983) before tossing it to Edward
      Greenspan. Edward Greenspan mustered enough hot air to inflate it to 2,000 (Globe and Mail,
      November 21, 1983) before tossing it to Sol Littman whose lung capacity was able to raise it to
      3,000 (Toronto Star, November 8, 1984). The ball, distended beyond recognition, was tossed back
      to Wiesenthal who boldly puffed it up to 6,000 (New York Daily News, May 16, 1986) and then made
      the mistake of trying to kick it - but poof! The ball burst!
      Judge Jules Deschenes writing the report for Canada's Commission on War Criminals first
      certifies that the ball had indeed reached the record-breaking 6,000 Canadian war criminals:
      The Commission has ascertained from the New York Daily News that this figure is
      correct and is not the result of a printing error. (Jules Deschenes,
      Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 247)
      But now the big ball was gone, and all that was left was the deflated pigskin which Mr.
      Wiesenthal lamely flopped on the Commission's table - a list of 217 names (which in other places
      becomes a list of 218 or 219 names). The list was focussed on Ukrainians - Mr. Wiesenthal's
      Vienna Documentation Center Annual Report for 1984 claimed that "218 former Ukrainian officers
      of Hitler's S.S. (elite guard), which ran death camps in Eastern Europe, are living in Canada."
      Upon subjecting the deflated ball to close and prolonged scrutiny, Judge Deschenes, arrived at
      the following conclusions:
      Between 1971 and 1986, public statements by outside interveners concerning
      alleged war criminals residing in Canada have spread increasingly large and
      grossly exaggerated figures as to their estimated number ... [among them] the
      figure of 6,000 ventured in 1986 by Mr. Simon Wiesenthal.... (p. 249)
      The high level reached by some of those figures, together with the wide
      discrepancy between them, contributed to create both revulsion and
      interrogation. (p. 245)
      It was obvious that the list of 217 officers of the Galicia Division furnished
      by Mr. Wiesenthal was nearly totally useless and put the Canadian government,
      through the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] and this Commission, to a
      considerable amount of purposeless work. (p. 258)
      The Commission has tried repeatedly to obtain the incriminating evidence
      allegedly in Mr. Wiesenthal's possession, through various oral and written
      communications with Mr. Wiesenthal himself and with his solicitor, Mr. Martin
      Mendelsohn of Washington, D.C., but to no avail: telephone calls, letters, even
      a meeting in New York between Mr. Wiesenthal and Commission Counsel on 1
      November 1985 followed up by further direct communications, have succeeded in
      bringing no positive results, outside of promises. (p. 257)
      From the conclusions of the Deschenes Commission alone, 60 Minutes might have decided that Simon
      Wiesenthal is not the kind of person whose pronouncements may be aired without verification.
      Had any Ukrainian come to 60 Minutes carrying such a load of hatred toward Jews as Simon
      Wiesenthal carries toward Ukrainians, and displaying - or rather flaunting - such credentials of
      unreliability, 60 Minutes would never have given him air time, or if it did, it would be only to
      excoriate him. Instead of exposing Mr. Wiesenthal, 60 Minutes has joined him in portraying a
      world filled with Nazis, and so has lent support to a witch hunt more hysterical than Joe
      McCarthy's sniffing out of Communists in the 50's. Consider the following excerpts from cases
      submitted to the Deschenes commission for investigation as suspected Nazi war criminals, and see
      if you don't agree. In the Commission report, all of the following cases end with the words,
      "On the basis of the foregoing, it is recommended that the file on the subject be closed." The
      selection is not intended to be representative, as the overwhelming number of cases are simply
      dismissed for lack of evidence - but rather is a sample of cases that upon casual browsing stand
      out as being particularly comical, pathetic, or alarming depending upon one's mood. The sample,
      furthermore, is far from exhaustive - a vastly greater number of similarly striking cases abound
      within the Commission report:
      CASE NO. 73. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by
      Mr. Sol Littman. Mr. Littman made no particular allegation against the
      subject, but referred to information obtained from a particular individual as
      the source of the subject's name. Mr. Littman further indicated that the
      subject resided at an unspecified address in Canada and had been the object of
      an extradition request by the government of an Eastern European country. No
      particulars of this alleged extradition request were provided. ... The
      Commission confirmed that an extradition request had not been received by the
      Canadian government and that the Berlin Document Center had no record on the
      subject.
      CASE NO. 121. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Department of the Solicitor
      General which, in turn, had received the information from a private citizen.
      It was alleged that this individual may have been a doctor who experimented on
      concentration camp prisoners. ... The interview established that the
      complainant was not in a position to place the subject in a Nazi war camp nor
      was she in possession of names of witnesses able to connect the subject with
      wartime criminal activities. ... [T]he subject would have been only 15 to 20
      years old during the war, hardly an age to have the position suggested above.
      CASE NO. 122. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by an anonymous note. The only allegation initially made was that the subject
      was a war criminal and was living at a certain address in Canada. ... [T]he
      evidence ... indicates the individual has lived all his life in Canada and was
      drafted into the Canadian army for a short time in 1942.
      CASE NO. 133. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by the RCMP, whose source of information was Mr. Sol Littman. It was alleged
      that the subject under investigation had been a member of the SS. ... These
      investigations revealed that the subject was born in 1933 and would therefore
      have been between 6 and 12 years of age during the war.
      CASE NO. 156. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by Mr. Sol Littman. Mr. Littman alleged only that the subject had been a
      "propagandist for the party." When contacted by the Commission, Mr. Littman
      indicated that he had no further evidence or information. ... On the basis of
      the foregoing [itemized investigation], no evidence of participation in or
      knowledge of specific war crimes is available.
      CASE NO. 158. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by a private citizen. The only allegation initially made was that the subject
      was a war criminal because he was so wealthy and of German background. ...
      The Commission was advised [by several German sources] that it had a record of
      the subject which indicated his membership in the Luftwaffe (air force).
      CASE NO. 171. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by ... the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna. ... According to the year
      of birth, this person would have been only five or six years old at the end of
      World War II.
      CASE NO. 179. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by an anonymous letter. The allegation initially made was that the subject was
      the owner of a shop who behaved curiously regarding the sources of the store's
      goods. ... The subject is the spouse of the individual who is reported in
      Case No. 180. Both were denounced in the same anonymous letter. ... The
      Commission checked the shop itself and concluded that the complaint is entirely
      spurious and unfounded.
      CASE NO. 180. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by an anonymous letter. The only allegation initially made was that the
      subject was the owner of a shop who behaved curiously regarding the sources of
      the store's goods. ... The Commission also checked the shop itself and
      concluded that the complaint is entirely spurious and unfounded.
      CASE NO. 190. This family's surname was brought to the attention of the
      Commission by Mr. David Matas [chairman of the Jewish National Legal
      Committee], whose source of information was an anonymous letter claiming the
      family came from a foreign country and deserved investigation because they were
      "recluses." There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made
      against this family.
      CASE NO. 202. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
      citizen. There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made
      against this individual, and the information received was irrational. ... The
      Commission contacted the wife of the subject, who stated that she did not know
      the citizen (who made the allegation) and that her husband never had any
      business dealings with a person by that name. The Commission also tried to
      locate the complainant but to no avail.
      CASE NO. 247. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
      citizen. There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made
      against the individual. ... The Commission was advised by the German Military
      Service Office ... that it had a record of a person with the same name as the
      subject, which indicated that he was a pilot in the Allied Air Force and had
      been taken prisoner by the Germans.
      CASE NO. 269. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
      citizen. It was alleged that this individual is a physician whose physical
      description resembles that of the notorious war criminal Dr. Mengele. ...
      Personal data of the subject taken from various documentation reveal the
      following in comparison with the information contained in the Commission file
      with respect to Dr. Mengele:
      Year of Birth
      Height
      Weight
      Eyes
      Face
      Chin
      Subject
      &&&& 1913
      6'3"+
      195-215 lbs
      Blue
      Oval (from Photo)
      
      Dr. Mengele
      1911
      5'8"+
      Medium build
      Brown
      Round
      Round
      In addition, the picture of the subject appearing in the various documents
      received, does not suggest that he resembles Dr. Mengele. All other search
      responses were negative.
      CASE NO. 431. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by the RCMP, whose source of information was Mr. Sol Littman. Mr. Littman had
      forwarded a letter to the RCMP from a private individual. It was alleged in
      the letter that the subject under investigation had been in charge of an
      unnamed camp and was believed to have shot civilians. ... The Commission
      interviewed the individual who submitted the subject's name to Mr. Littman and
      was advised that this individual had subsequently determined that the subject
      under investigation had been a prisoner of war and further that the complaint
      was unfounded.
      CASE NO. 433. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by the RCMP, whose source of information was an anonymous informant. The only
      allegation made was that the subject was "a possible German involved in war
      crimes". No specific allegation or evidence against the subject was provided.
      ... The Commission reviewed material available from the RCMP and CSIS, which
      determined that the subject was born in 1933, and for that reason could not
      have been involved in the commission of war crimes between 1939 and 1945.
      CASE NO. 526. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
      individual. It was alleged that the subject under investigation might be Dr.
      Josef Mengele. ... The Department of External Affairs reported that it had a
      record in respect of the individual, but that the individual had been born in
      1928 in Canada.... ... Furthermore, the subject's name is not one of the
      aliases used from time to time by Josef Mengele.
      CASE NO. 561. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Canadian Jewish Congress. It
      was alleged that the subject was responsible for the deaths of "hundreds of
      Jews." No specific evidence of the alleged war crimes was provided. ...
      Records of the Department of Employment and Immigration ... indicate that the
      subject was born in 1941....
      CASE NO. 588.1. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
      by the RCMP, who were investigating the suspicions of the Department of
      Employment and Immigration officials that the individual might be older than he
      claims and might be hiding a questionable past, which may have involved the
      Nazi Party. ... It was verified [through various investigations] that the
      subject is indeed who he claims to be and that he was indeed born in 1929. He
      was barely 10 years old at the start of the war.
      Sol Littman's Mengele Scare
      As another piece of evidence that we are in the midst of a witch hunt a witch hunt in which
      Simon Wiesenthal plays the role of chief inquisitor - consider Sol Littman's Mengele Scare. On
      December 20, 1984, Mr. Littman - Canadian representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center - wrote
      to the Prime Minister of Canada unequivocally affirming that
      Mengele, employing the alias of Dr. Joseph Menke, applied to the Canadian
      embassy in Buenos Aires for admission to Canada as a landed immigrant in late
      May or early June, 1962. (In Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War
      Criminals, 1986, p. 67)
      Then on January 23, 1985, Ralph Blumenthal wrote an article in the New York Times captioned
      "Records indicate Mengele sought Canadian visa":
      Other records indicate that Mengele applied to the Canadian Embassy in Buenos
      Aires for a Canadian visa in 1962 under a pseudonym and that the Canadians
      informed American intelligence officials of this attempt.
      This information was widely reprinted and broadcast. Subsequently, both Mr. Blumenthal and Mr.
      Littman affirmed that the information in this article concerning Josef Mengele came solely from
      Mr. Littman. However, following its thorough investigation, the Commission concluded:
      There is no documentary evidence whatsoever of an attempt by Dr. Joseph
      Mengele to seek admission to Canada from Buenos Aires in 1962.
      The affirmation has come from Mr. Sol Littman, and from him alone. ...
      The advice which Littman solicited [in the course of his own research] ...
      did not support his assumptions, but put him on notice about their fragility.
      As stated at the outset, all that Littman could rely on was "speculation,
      impression, possibility, hypothesis". Yet he chose to transmute them into
      statements of facts which he publicized....
      This is a case where not a shred of evidence has been tendered to support
      Mr. Littman's statement to the Prime Minister of Canada on 20 December 1984, or
      Mr. Ralph Blumenthal's article in the New York Times on 23 January 1985.
      (Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 70)
      In view of Sol Littman's irresponsibility in engineering the Mengele Scare, it is not a little
      ironic to note that it was this very scare which was the prime cause of the Canadian government
      constituting the Jules Deschenes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals. We see this
      demonstrated when the reasons for the Commission being constituted are laid out, and Sol
      Littman's Mengele disinformation - at the time accepted as information - appears at the top of
      the list:
      WHEREAS concern has been expressed about the possibility that Joseph Mengele,
      an alleged Nazi war criminal, may have entered or attempted to enter
      Canada.... (Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p.
      17)
      What we see in Sol Littman, then, is a case somewhat paralleling that of Morley Safer - a single
      Jew creates a story out of thin air, and gets it disseminated to tens of millions of people
      through a Jewish-controlled media which conveniently neglects to verify it prior to
      publication. In Littman's case, he goes well beyond dissemination - he further succeeds in
      pressuring the Canadian government to waste taxpayer money (always in short supply for education
      and health care) on a costly inquiry which turns up just about nothing, and whose only
      appreciable benefit is not to the Canadian people, and not even to Jews collectively, but only
      to Sol Littman personally - which benefit is the stirring up of Jewish anxiety on the one hand
      together with anti-Jewish resentment on the other, both of which are necessary to increasing the
      flow of Jewish contributions into Sol Littman's coffers. Sol Littman, in short, is a parasite
      upon the Jewish people, preying on the fears of the more gullible of them, essentially playing a
      role not unlike that of Stephen King in which the bigger a scare he is able to elicit out of his
      audience by means of the fantastic stories he is able to concoct, the greater is his success.
      Repeating the same principle in different words, we may say that the more anti-Semitism Sol
      Littman is able to provoke, the greater is his success.
      How does Sol Littman come to be in the vanguard of the fight to suppress hate on the Internet?
      Consider the information on Sol Littman which can be found on The Ukrainian Archive: (1)