Contrary to what
may have been said here and there, the fact that the Hungarian Jew Miklos
Grüner has, both in first instance and on appeal, lost his defamation case in
Budapest against rabbi Shlomo Köves does not mean that Mr Grüner lied with
regard either to Elie Wiesel or to the rabbi. I found the article below online
in Hungarian and asked my friend Jürgen Graf for an English translation, and he
quickly set to work; I thank him for his helpfulness and speed.
The article shows that the Budapest court of
appeal has refused to rule on whether Elie Wiesel, as stated many years by the
former Auschwitz inmate Miklos Grüner, is an impostor who, in particular, has usurped
the registration number A-7713 of a certain Lazar Wiesel and appropriated the
latter’s account of his time at Auschwitz. Indeed, in November 2012 the court
held that the matter was one for historians or other competent authorities but
not for judges, and that the rabbi, who had accused Grüner of falsifying
history, had stayed within the bounds tolerated by the law on freedom of
expression.
Mr Grüner, understandably, was deeply
disappointed by that ruling. For a quarter of a century he has been trying to
bring into the open what he claims is the truth about Elie Wiesel’s imposture.
As is known, the Auschwitz State Museum has
recently acknowledged that the number A-7713 was indeed that of Lazar Wiesel. Thus
Mr Grüner, at least on this point – one of considerable importance – has been telling
the truth. Thanks are owed to Jean Robin, who is an anti-revisionist and of
Jewish origin, and to Alain Soral, who had prompted him to look into the
Wiesel/Grüner affair in order to judge the revisionists on actual evidence and
not in line with media-inspired prejudice.
It would be interesting if the current heads of
archives at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, along with the officials at the
International Tracing Service (ITS) of Arolsen-Waldeck, let it be known whether
their records included any documents relating to Elie Wiesel and his father,
mother and three sisters – two of whom, like him, survived.
In the United States, Mrs Carolyn Yeager
tirelessly publishes interesting documents or writings on her blog “Elie Wiesel
Cons the World”: www.eliewieseltattoo.com. I myself have held
E. Wiesel to be a con-man for quite some time but, just as only those who do
not really need the money can ever get a loan, I fear that people may, now and
then, go a bit too far with this type of accusation. Is it the case with Mr
Grüner at times? The Hungarian judges have left the question to historians and
specialists.
February 8, 2013
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Holocaust survivor
disappointed by Court
The high court of justice of
the [Hungarian] capital has dismissed the claim of Holocaust survivor Miklos
Grüner against Shlomo Köves, whom Grüner had sued for libel after Köves accused
him of falsifying history. A lower court’s decision is thus upheld. The
plaintiff had wanted to prove that the man known to the world as Elie Wiesel
was living under a false identity. Miklos Grüner is disappointed with the
ruling; in his opinion, the court has shirked its duty to render a truthful
judgment.
On Thursday the high court of justice upheld a lower
court ruling that had rejected Miklos Grüner’s claim against rabbi Slomo Köves for
libel in an article in which Köves had
accused Grüner of falsifying history. That decision, which now stands, held that
in the context of a libel suit a court could not take a stand on questions that
were a matter for historians or other competent authorities.
However, that was exactly what Miklos Grüner had
wished to obtain: he had wanted the case to focus on Nobel prize winner and
writer Elie Wiesel. According to Grüner’s claim, the man known to the world
today as Elie Wiesel had stolen the identity of [a certain] Lazar Wiesel, who
had been lodged in the same barracks at Auschwitz as himself. Grüner had hoped
the court would rule that everything he [Grüner] had been saying about Wiesel
for 25 years matched the truth.
In his libel suit Grüner had attacked Köves, head
rabbi of the united Israelite community, asking that he be held liable for tarnishing
his good reputation as Köves had, in an internet article appearing in 2009 on
the occasion of Elie Wiesel’s visit to Hungary, branded Grüner a falsifier of
history. In the trial court the plaintiff had presented evidence that he
considered conclusive. According to his assertion, all trace of Lazar Wiesel,
who at Auschwitz had been registered under number A-7713, vanished in the mid
nineteen-fifties. Grüner held that the book connected with Lazar [Elie?] Wiesel’s name, entitled Night, was the work of another person.
With a view to the royalties, Grüner suspects, Lazar [Elie?]
Wiesel first rewrote the Yiddish language autobiography in literary style;
thereupon Elie Wiesel assumed Lazar Wiesel’s identity.
In the lower court the plaintiff, who had produced
several pieces of evidence, attached particular value to documents he had
obtained from the archives of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, which showed that the
prisoner Lazar Wiesel, registered under number A-7713, was born on September 4,
1913. Miklos Grüner claimed Elie Wiesel’s assertion that his father Salomon
Wiesel had been assigned number A-7712 at the death camp was untenable.
According to the documents presented by the plaintiff, the prisoner with number
A-7712 was Abraham Wiesel who, born on October 10, 1900, could not possibly
have been the father of Lazar Wiesel, born in 1913.
In their respective rulings neither the court of
appeal nor the lower court dwelt upon Grüner’s documents; in the words of the appeal
court ruling, such judgments were for science or for other competent
authorities to make. Indeed, the high court took a stand only on the question
whether Mate (Slomo) Köves had damaged the good reputation of the plaintiff in
an article dating from 2009, holding as follows: “In his evaluation of Miklos
Grüner’s historical activities, the rabbi did not exceed the limits of free
speech. In the opinion of the high court Köves had indeed used strong language,
but his formulations were neither hateful nor offensive nor abasing”.
After hearing the decision, Miklos Grüner answered our
questions saying he was very disappointed and felt that the court had shirked
its duty to render a truthful judgment, thus leaving open the question he had
raised a quarter of a century ago. He added: “For a pious Jew there can hardly
be a greater insult than being called a falsifier of history by a rabbi, and
seeing everything to which he has devoted the last 25 years of his life called
into doubt.”
