[Updated on 08.09.2019]
A whole cottage industry has sprung up in recent years devoted to "proving" that the late Elie Wiesel was a total fraud: an impostor who stole an actual Auschwitz survivor's identity. Most of the crazies are of course Holocaust deniers. One notable exception is an actual Jewish Auschwitz and Buchenwald survivor, Nikolaus Grüner, whose book Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713 serves as a springboard for the deniers.
To remind our readers: according to Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) in Auschwitz he had the number (and a corresponding tattoo) A-7713, his father Shlomo Wiesel had the number A-7712.
The basic denial claims look like this:
1. Elie Wiesel allegedly had no visible Auschwitz tattoo.
2. Camp documents allegedly show that Lazar Wiesel A-7713 from Auschwitz was born in 1913 (not 1928 as Elie Wiesel; note: both "Elie" and "Lazar" are variants of the name "Eliezer") and that A-7712, who Elie Wiesel said was his father Shlomo, was actually someone named Abram Viezel.
3. Grüner claimed that he knew the "actual" Lazar Wiesel A-7713 in Auschwitz (Monowitz) and Buchenwald and that he wasn't the same person as Elie Wiesel. Moreover, Grüner claimed to have also known the prisoner A-7712, Lazar's brother Abram.
A whole cottage industry has sprung up in recent years devoted to "proving" that the late Elie Wiesel was a total fraud: an impostor who stole an actual Auschwitz survivor's identity. Most of the crazies are of course Holocaust deniers. One notable exception is an actual Jewish Auschwitz and Buchenwald survivor, Nikolaus Grüner, whose book Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713 serves as a springboard for the deniers.
To remind our readers: according to Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) in Auschwitz he had the number (and a corresponding tattoo) A-7713, his father Shlomo Wiesel had the number A-7712.
The basic denial claims look like this:
1. Elie Wiesel allegedly had no visible Auschwitz tattoo.
2. Camp documents allegedly show that Lazar Wiesel A-7713 from Auschwitz was born in 1913 (not 1928 as Elie Wiesel; note: both "Elie" and "Lazar" are variants of the name "Eliezer") and that A-7712, who Elie Wiesel said was his father Shlomo, was actually someone named Abram Viezel.
3. Grüner claimed that he knew the "actual" Lazar Wiesel A-7713 in Auschwitz (Monowitz) and Buchenwald and that he wasn't the same person as Elie Wiesel. Moreover, Grüner claimed to have also known the prisoner A-7712, Lazar's brother Abram.
