The science of DNA was used to settle the dispute about whether or not the author of "Fragments" was a liar or not. It turns out our own Michael Mills was right, and the whole episode was one big, multi-million dollar scam.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/
Dan
Final proof
re
Dan, sorry to bother you, but could you cut and paste this article into this thread as I cannot gain access to Irving's website. the powers that be have banned the page and I'd like to read the article.
Cheers.
Tony
Cheers.
Tony
Tony, it's a pdf file in German and I don't seem to be able to cut and paste it. This technology is still somewhat new to me. Here, however, is a related article:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 17, 2002.
"A genuine fake?"
Review by Elaine Glazer of A Life in Pieces by Blake Eskin (Aurum, 2002; 245pp.. £16.99)
IN 1995, a Holocaust memoir entitled Fragments was published in German to instant acclaim. Its author, Binjamin Wilkomirski, purported to be a Jewish child survivor whose parents were brutally murdered in a massacre in Riga, Latvia.
Wilkomirski described how he was taken to concentration camps at Majdanek and Auschwitz, placed in a Swiss orphanage after the war, and eventually adopted. Translated into twelve languages, it was published in Britain and the United States the following year, winning numerous prizes.
Wilkomirski was invited to address Holocaust conferences, university departments and survivor groups around the world. Not everyone believed his account, however, and in 1998 a Swiss journalist, Daniel Ganzfried, claimed the memoir was a fake. According to Ganzfried, Wilkomirski was in fact Bruno Doessekker, born near the Swiss capital of Berne in 1941 to an unmarried mother. She had placed him in an orphanage, and he was later adopted by the Doessekker family, who brought him up in their middleclass, nonJewish Zurich home. In 1999, Fragments was withdrawn by its publishers.
A Life in Pieces documents the rise and fall of Wilkomirski's memoir, an extraordinary case in which Blake Eskin also has a personal interest. He is a member of a large New York Jewish family, and his mother's ancestors came from Riga, where they were called Wilkomirski. When Binjamin came to New York on his book tour, he met Eskin's family in the hope that they could establish a connection. This is a story of confidence tricks and disappointment, in a personal as well as a public context, as it gradually turns out that Eskin's relatives are just some of the many people with whom Wilkomirski constructed bogus relationships.
Threaded through this book are Eskin's attempts to discover the European origins of his own family, and it is also a detective story which lays out the paper trail of Wilkomirski's undoing. Eskin collates evidence from previous accounts, such as Elena Lappin's essay in Granta (1999), but his version is distinctive because he makes significant use of his personal connection to the story, and his tone is astute and sympathetic in equal measure. He has also assembled a wealth of speeches, correspondence and interviews which reveal in subtle and complex ways the investments and delusions of those involved.
The prime contribution of this book, however, is that its scope is much broader than the case itself. It explores the relationship between history and fiction, the revelation of SwissNazi collaboration, and controversies over recovered memory and Holocaust commemoration. Eskin discusses the motivations not only of Bruno Doessekker, but also of the world which was so eager to embrace him.
There was much at stake in protecting the identity and history of Binjamin Wilkomirski. Between the lines of Eskin's humane and compassionate book, there is a latent critique of a certain branch of the Holocaust memory industry that privileges the individual testimony of survivors. This testimony is thought to "break through" history, to provide immediacy and sentiment rather than mere knowledge. According to this belief, those child survivors who choose not to record their memories are accused of "collaborating in the erasure of our past", and those who question their veracity are accused of denying the Holocaust.
This emphasis on subjectivity is increasingly the foundation on which the reputations of many academics, psychologists and organizations rest. The concomitant downgrading of history made it easy for Wilkomirski's fake to pass as truth, and the value placed on emotional rather than intellectual response led commentators such as the American academic Deborah Lipstadt to declare that for it to be a false memoir "might complicate matters somewhat, but it's still powerful".
So when the truth was revealed, the myth refused to die. Bruno Doessekker had the perfect defence; he argued that he, like many postwar refugee children, had simply been given a new seamless Swiss identity. His prose style was, as the title suggests, fragmentary like Anne Michaels's post-Holocaust novel Fugitive Pieces, he was alluding to the elusive and discontinuous nature of memory. This applies especially to the recollection of childhood impressions, and indeed he explicitly set aside "the ordering logic of grownups".
Doessekker thus preempted accusations that his memoir did not hang together, and at the same time capitalized on the inherent fragility of childhood memories, which prompts survivors, as well as concerned professionals, to defend them at all costs. In the resulting feedback loop, Wilkomirski's words aped those of child survivor accounts, and in a dark irony, genuine survivors felt that his memoir expressed their own experience.
In various Holocaust education projects, the attention paid to memory alongside history appears to chime with progressive historical techniques that take into account subjective testimony as well as traditional documentation. But where that methodology stresses the ultimately unknowable nature of the past, this emphasis on testimony does precisely the opposite -- it seeks to discover the absolute certainty of the past, embodied in eyewitness accounts.
Eskin reveals, however, that on a personal level the quest, as a Jew, to establish one's European family history at first hand can be both compelling and meaningful. The acknowledgement of his own desire to trace an ancestral link to the great tragedy of the twentieth century enables him to portray with sympathy the ease with which so many people were deluded. Intelligent, expertly written and gripping from start to finish, this book addresses the problem of how to live with the inherent uncertainties of identity, authenticity and history.
__________
This from the Times.
Regards, and maybe I'll look you up in Dublin at the end of July.
Dan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 17, 2002.
"A genuine fake?"
Review by Elaine Glazer of A Life in Pieces by Blake Eskin (Aurum, 2002; 245pp.. £16.99)
IN 1995, a Holocaust memoir entitled Fragments was published in German to instant acclaim. Its author, Binjamin Wilkomirski, purported to be a Jewish child survivor whose parents were brutally murdered in a massacre in Riga, Latvia.
Wilkomirski described how he was taken to concentration camps at Majdanek and Auschwitz, placed in a Swiss orphanage after the war, and eventually adopted. Translated into twelve languages, it was published in Britain and the United States the following year, winning numerous prizes.
Wilkomirski was invited to address Holocaust conferences, university departments and survivor groups around the world. Not everyone believed his account, however, and in 1998 a Swiss journalist, Daniel Ganzfried, claimed the memoir was a fake. According to Ganzfried, Wilkomirski was in fact Bruno Doessekker, born near the Swiss capital of Berne in 1941 to an unmarried mother. She had placed him in an orphanage, and he was later adopted by the Doessekker family, who brought him up in their middleclass, nonJewish Zurich home. In 1999, Fragments was withdrawn by its publishers.
A Life in Pieces documents the rise and fall of Wilkomirski's memoir, an extraordinary case in which Blake Eskin also has a personal interest. He is a member of a large New York Jewish family, and his mother's ancestors came from Riga, where they were called Wilkomirski. When Binjamin came to New York on his book tour, he met Eskin's family in the hope that they could establish a connection. This is a story of confidence tricks and disappointment, in a personal as well as a public context, as it gradually turns out that Eskin's relatives are just some of the many people with whom Wilkomirski constructed bogus relationships.
Threaded through this book are Eskin's attempts to discover the European origins of his own family, and it is also a detective story which lays out the paper trail of Wilkomirski's undoing. Eskin collates evidence from previous accounts, such as Elena Lappin's essay in Granta (1999), but his version is distinctive because he makes significant use of his personal connection to the story, and his tone is astute and sympathetic in equal measure. He has also assembled a wealth of speeches, correspondence and interviews which reveal in subtle and complex ways the investments and delusions of those involved.
The prime contribution of this book, however, is that its scope is much broader than the case itself. It explores the relationship between history and fiction, the revelation of SwissNazi collaboration, and controversies over recovered memory and Holocaust commemoration. Eskin discusses the motivations not only of Bruno Doessekker, but also of the world which was so eager to embrace him.
There was much at stake in protecting the identity and history of Binjamin Wilkomirski. Between the lines of Eskin's humane and compassionate book, there is a latent critique of a certain branch of the Holocaust memory industry that privileges the individual testimony of survivors. This testimony is thought to "break through" history, to provide immediacy and sentiment rather than mere knowledge. According to this belief, those child survivors who choose not to record their memories are accused of "collaborating in the erasure of our past", and those who question their veracity are accused of denying the Holocaust.
This emphasis on subjectivity is increasingly the foundation on which the reputations of many academics, psychologists and organizations rest. The concomitant downgrading of history made it easy for Wilkomirski's fake to pass as truth, and the value placed on emotional rather than intellectual response led commentators such as the American academic Deborah Lipstadt to declare that for it to be a false memoir "might complicate matters somewhat, but it's still powerful".
So when the truth was revealed, the myth refused to die. Bruno Doessekker had the perfect defence; he argued that he, like many postwar refugee children, had simply been given a new seamless Swiss identity. His prose style was, as the title suggests, fragmentary like Anne Michaels's post-Holocaust novel Fugitive Pieces, he was alluding to the elusive and discontinuous nature of memory. This applies especially to the recollection of childhood impressions, and indeed he explicitly set aside "the ordering logic of grownups".
Doessekker thus preempted accusations that his memoir did not hang together, and at the same time capitalized on the inherent fragility of childhood memories, which prompts survivors, as well as concerned professionals, to defend them at all costs. In the resulting feedback loop, Wilkomirski's words aped those of child survivor accounts, and in a dark irony, genuine survivors felt that his memoir expressed their own experience.
In various Holocaust education projects, the attention paid to memory alongside history appears to chime with progressive historical techniques that take into account subjective testimony as well as traditional documentation. But where that methodology stresses the ultimately unknowable nature of the past, this emphasis on testimony does precisely the opposite -- it seeks to discover the absolute certainty of the past, embodied in eyewitness accounts.
Eskin reveals, however, that on a personal level the quest, as a Jew, to establish one's European family history at first hand can be both compelling and meaningful. The acknowledgement of his own desire to trace an ancestral link to the great tragedy of the twentieth century enables him to portray with sympathy the ease with which so many people were deluded. Intelligent, expertly written and gripping from start to finish, this book addresses the problem of how to live with the inherent uncertainties of identity, authenticity and history.
__________
This from the Times.
Regards, and maybe I'll look you up in Dublin at the end of July.
Dan
-
Scott Smith
- Member
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- Location: Arizona
- Contact:
ARTICLE...
Tony, here is the direct link to the German language article that Dan mentioned. If this doesn't work I can send it to you via e-mail if you are still interested.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Wilkomir ... 270302.pdf
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Wilkomir ... 270302.pdf
-
michael mills
- Member
- Posts: 9000
- Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
- Location: Sydney, Australia
Since my name is mentioned in the original message on this thread, and also in the article on the FPP website, I would like to make a few observations.
Firstly, I had never accused Wilkomirski of being an imposter. When I read his book "Fragments" in February 1998 (I had found it by chance in the local library, and had never heard of it before), I at once realised that the events described in it could not be literally true, due to the many historical anomalies and chronological impossibilities.
My impression was that he was a genuine child survivor of a concentration camp, but that he had no genuine memories, and that his memory had somehow become contaminated, perhaps unconsciously, by material that he had read somewhere. When I read his claim that he in fact had had no conscious memories of being in a concentration camp, but had "recovered" the memories with the help of a hypnotist, I was confirmed in that belief. In other words, I did not think that he was consciously lying, but that his false memories had been implanted, as occurs with the so-called "false-memory syndrome".
When I subsequently read about the children's camp at Belsen, and about a particular survivor of that camp about whom a book had been written and made into a film, I noticed similarities with the story told by Wilkomirski, and concluded that this was a likely source of contamination of his memory.
I then wrote a couple of reviews on the Amazon.com site, which as you are probably aware solicits such reviews from readers. Whether those reviews are still posted there I do not know, but they were there a year or so ago.
In the middle of 1998, I was contacted by a British freelance filmmaker (I have forgotten his name) on the basis of my reviews on the Amazon.com site (where my address was recorded). He was in the process of negotiating with Wilkomirski to make a film about him (he had already made one about Anne Frank, as I recall), and wanted to know why doubted the veracity of the story. I had a fairly long correspondence with him, in which he presented a number of reasons why he thought Wilkomirski's memories were genuine (including the "fact" that Wilkomirski was circumcised - obviously he had not had a good look!). Perhaps I saved this guy from making a fool of himself - who knows?
Towards the end of the year, I began to receive email from persons unknown, asking how I had known that Wilkomirski was a fake. At that time, I had not heard anything about the investigation that revealed the true identity of "Wilkomirski".
Later I was contacted by the journalists Elena Lappin and Doreen Carvajal, who were writing about the scandal and wanted to know how I had realised the falsehood of Wilkomirski's account so early. However, when they found out that I was not a historian but merely a relatively well-read amateur, they lost interest. The I was contacted by Blake Eskin, and had a long correspondence with him.
To me, the nub of the issue is not that Wilkomirski is a charlatan who was eventually exposed. The real issue is why so many people believed him, given that his account had so many immediately obvious flaws in it. If I could immediately pick the anomalies (which I detailed in my reviews for Amazon), any historian worth his salt should have. In fact, I am sure that many historians did see what I saw. So why did they keep quiet about it, and allow the charade to go on for so long? Perhaps they were afraid of saying anything that might be construed as "denial", so long as Wilkomirski's true identity remained unexposed.
Firstly, I had never accused Wilkomirski of being an imposter. When I read his book "Fragments" in February 1998 (I had found it by chance in the local library, and had never heard of it before), I at once realised that the events described in it could not be literally true, due to the many historical anomalies and chronological impossibilities.
My impression was that he was a genuine child survivor of a concentration camp, but that he had no genuine memories, and that his memory had somehow become contaminated, perhaps unconsciously, by material that he had read somewhere. When I read his claim that he in fact had had no conscious memories of being in a concentration camp, but had "recovered" the memories with the help of a hypnotist, I was confirmed in that belief. In other words, I did not think that he was consciously lying, but that his false memories had been implanted, as occurs with the so-called "false-memory syndrome".
When I subsequently read about the children's camp at Belsen, and about a particular survivor of that camp about whom a book had been written and made into a film, I noticed similarities with the story told by Wilkomirski, and concluded that this was a likely source of contamination of his memory.
I then wrote a couple of reviews on the Amazon.com site, which as you are probably aware solicits such reviews from readers. Whether those reviews are still posted there I do not know, but they were there a year or so ago.
In the middle of 1998, I was contacted by a British freelance filmmaker (I have forgotten his name) on the basis of my reviews on the Amazon.com site (where my address was recorded). He was in the process of negotiating with Wilkomirski to make a film about him (he had already made one about Anne Frank, as I recall), and wanted to know why doubted the veracity of the story. I had a fairly long correspondence with him, in which he presented a number of reasons why he thought Wilkomirski's memories were genuine (including the "fact" that Wilkomirski was circumcised - obviously he had not had a good look!). Perhaps I saved this guy from making a fool of himself - who knows?
Towards the end of the year, I began to receive email from persons unknown, asking how I had known that Wilkomirski was a fake. At that time, I had not heard anything about the investigation that revealed the true identity of "Wilkomirski".
Later I was contacted by the journalists Elena Lappin and Doreen Carvajal, who were writing about the scandal and wanted to know how I had realised the falsehood of Wilkomirski's account so early. However, when they found out that I was not a historian but merely a relatively well-read amateur, they lost interest. The I was contacted by Blake Eskin, and had a long correspondence with him.
To me, the nub of the issue is not that Wilkomirski is a charlatan who was eventually exposed. The real issue is why so many people believed him, given that his account had so many immediately obvious flaws in it. If I could immediately pick the anomalies (which I detailed in my reviews for Amazon), any historian worth his salt should have. In fact, I am sure that many historians did see what I saw. So why did they keep quiet about it, and allow the charade to go on for so long? Perhaps they were afraid of saying anything that might be construed as "denial", so long as Wilkomirski's true identity remained unexposed.
re
Cheers Scott 'n' Dan.
I tried to read the PDF on a friends machine, but my German is brutal. I better get a few more words, I'm off to Germany this month, which I can't wait for. I'm going to visit the tank museum and talk to my friend's grand dad who served in the transport corps on the Russian front. Unfortunately, I can't view anything on Irving's website on my PC in work as my company has seen fit to ban it! and I don't have the internet at home. Its interesting how the Wilkomirski story turned out in the end.
Tony
I tried to read the PDF on a friends machine, but my German is brutal. I better get a few more words, I'm off to Germany this month, which I can't wait for. I'm going to visit the tank museum and talk to my friend's grand dad who served in the transport corps on the Russian front. Unfortunately, I can't view anything on Irving's website on my PC in work as my company has seen fit to ban it! and I don't have the internet at home. Its interesting how the Wilkomirski story turned out in the end.
Tony
Now that would be a great thread. "Circumsision in the Third Reich".I had a fairly long correspondence with him, in which he presented a number of reasons why he thought Wilkomirski's memories were genuine (including the "fact" that Wilkomirski was circumcised - obviously he had not had a good look!). Perhaps I saved this guy from making a fool of himself - who knows?
Due to the Calvinistic nature of early America, all Americans were routinely circumsised at the hospital until a few decaded ago. In gym class in my highschool years in the 1970's we noticed that Mexicans were different, but chalked it up to evolution. Then in the latter part of that decade I was chosen to be on an All-star athletic team from California to Germany. After the first match, both teams hit the showers and there were many furitive glances, but no comments. Since there were many members of my team of German heritage, I realized it couldn't be genetic, so assumed it was diet or something. It wasn't until I was 18 that someone brought up the subject. We were all sitting around in a hot tub when a team member said "don't you dummies know you've been circumsised?" and there was great shock and silence.
So, what was the case in Protestant Switzerland?
Dan
Wow that is interesting story Michael. Perhaps the reason people believed him is part of the old story, if it is such a large lie then people believe. It is hard to call someone on an issue like this, and most people I think could not imagine someone making this up, and I would imagine many of those that were wanting to work with him did not have your knowledge. But fortunately you did, nice work.To me, the nub of the issue is not that Wilkomirski is a charlatan who was eventually exposed. The real issue is why so many people believed him, given that his account had so many immediately obvious flaws in it. If I could immediately pick the anomalies (which I detailed in my reviews for Amazon), any historian worth his salt should have. In fact, I am sure that many historians did see what I saw. So why did they keep quiet about it, and allow the charade to go on for so long? Perhaps they were afraid of saying anything that might be construed as "denial", so long as Wilkomirski's true identity remained unexposed.
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Mensch Meyer
- Member
- Posts: 87
- Joined: 28 May 2002, 05:34
- Location: MD
Re: Final proof
Dan wrote:The science of DNA was used to settle the dispute about whether or not the author of "Fragments" was a liar or not. It turns out our own Michael Mills was right, and the whole episode was one big, multi-million dollar scam.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/
Dan
Some time ago I saw a news item that examined the case that you describe above.- Not quite on the same Grand $-Dollar Scale of scam, but also involving false and exaggerated claims, is the case of another Holocaust Survivor, the case of Deli Strummer.
As in so many communities throughout the country, elderly grandmotherly or grandfatherly survivors volunteer to appear before school children, civic groups or other captive audiences to present their - often profoundly emotional - holocaust stories.
In the case of Deli Strummer this pracitice, sponsored by Jewish organizations, lead to considerable embarrassment, and she was questioned by her own community in this interview:
Deli Strummer Addresses Her Critics'
Allegations And Doubts About Her Holocaust Record.
Alan H. Feiler Managing Editor (Baltimore, MD):
"Over the past two decades, Deli Strummer has acquired a reputation as
one of the preeminent public speakers in local Holocaust survivor circles.
A presentation by the grandmotherly Ms. Strummer characteristically
brims with unabashed patriotic fervor, poignant recollections about life
in Vienna prior to World War II, graphic accounts of her experiences in
the concentration camps, and hopes for a world to come full of peace
and tolerance.
"The first time I covered a talk by Ms. Strummer, at a Holocaust
Remembrance Day program in the late 1980s at the Social Security
administration in Woodlawn, her audience of approximately 800 federal
employees seemed initially indifferent to the subject while munching on
their lunches, almost as if required by their supervisors to attend. But
when Ms. Strummer concluded her lecture 45 minutes later, there
wasn't a dry eye in the house and nearly everyone in the room stood
up and applauded.
For more than two hours last Friday morning, June 23, amid constant
interruptions from phone callers offering support, Ms. Strummer spoke
to the Baltimore Jewish Times in her Towson residence about the
Baltimore Jewish Council's decision to remove her name from its
speakers list. At times during the interview, Ms. Strummer, 78, was
emotional, angry, defiant and confounded by the BJC's claims of
inaccurate and inconsistent information in her presentations.
Question: How do you account for the fact that two of the world's
most respected Holocaust historians, Dr. Raul Hilberg and Dr. Lawrence
L. Langer, have strongly questioned the validity of your wartime
recollections?
Answer: Historians are not always right. Even the pope makes
mistakes. They made mistakes. We all can make mistakes.
Question: What happened when you met them for an interview last
winter?
Answer: I had this interview - it was a very snowy day. I had no
idea of what I was getting into. They talked, I answered. It was like being
with the Gestapo. [Arthur C. Abramson, executive director of the
Baltimore Jewish Council, maintains that the conversation was "cordial" at
all times.]
There were no questions [like], "Were you burned? Were you starved?
Were you mistreated?" No one asked about my suffering.
I have nothing to hide. But if you talk to me, you must give me the time
and courtesy to let me answer. They were finished with me in an hour.
Dr. Langer said I was a mischling [half-Jewish and half-non-Jewish]. The
last time I heard this was from the Nazis.
They judge a woman who went through hell? Why don't they go there
[to the concentration camps] and see what she's talking about? Don't tell
me about what I've seen. -- I'm being victimized twice!
Question: What did they ask about your background?
Answer: I had called my father a general [in the Austrian army].
So I called the Austrian Embassy, and it turned out he was a lieutenant.
Question: What about other inconsistencies?
Answer: I left Europe later than I thought. And I had this life [under
Nazi imprisonment] for two years, not 4 1/2.
Question: You now say that you came to Theresienstadt in 1943.
But didn't you previously state that you arrived there in 1941?
Answer: I had thought it was earlier. I take responsibility for it. This
is what I have to accept. But it was my only error. They blame me
because I lost my timing. In Theresienstadt, I felt humiliated.
Question: What about your time in Auschwitz, which in the past
you've reportedly said amounted to nine months but now say was, in
actuality, a few weeks?
Answer: I arrived [in Auschwitz] in October [1944]. I was there for
three weeks or four weeks, according to my memory. Day was night and
night was day. My [sense of] timing became hopeless after I went to
Auschwitz.
I was immediately tortured there.- I just became a number. I don't recall
ever saying nine months. I don't know where it came from.
To tell me I was not in Auschwitz, it's the worst thing you can do to me.
In Auschwitz, I became a person without an identity.
Question: What about your Auschwitz recollections of showers and
gas chambers used in the same facility? Dr. Hilberg and Dr. Langer say
this is inaccurate and technologically impossible.
Answer: I personally think they're wrong. It's very hard and
difficult for someone who didn't go through this to understand. When you
speak about concentration camps, you had to be there.
You never knew in this situation what would be the case. All I know is
when I felt this cold water on me, I prayed. I knew God saved me.
Question: They also dispute your account of being liberated from
Mauthausen on May 5, 1945, while in line to the gas chamber and with
naked people running out of the gas chamber.
Answer: I saw a white flag and the door opened. People
yelled, "Help, help," but I don't know what they were doing with those
people in there.
I told the truth. This is what I saw and stand up for.
Question: Some people have even questioned your identity as
Adele S. Aufrichtig.
Answer: How dare they question my identity? I have a sister and
two brothers in Europe. Call my family, they will tell you that I am who I
am.
Question: Over the years, you've spoken to thousands of
choolchildren. Do you worry that these reports will influence their
feelings about you, and the Holocaust in general?
Answer: Those children whose lives I've touched, I hope, will
understand I'm still the same Deli. Those kids have been supportive.
Kids don't read the papers.
Question: Do you fear that the disclosure about inconsistencies in
your story will feed the Holocaust denial movement?
Answer: I wish the Holocaust deniers would line up at my door. I'd
rather face them than those who I served for so many years and who
have now judged me.
Question: How do you feel about the Baltimore Jewish Council today?
Answer: Working with the council for 20 years, being their No. 1
star and doing what they wanted me to do, I know it raised jealousy. It
didn't go over well with other survivors, who felt I got more speaking
engagements. It wasn't my fault.
Even if they'd want me, I wouldn't go back to the council. First, the Nazis
took my identity away, and now the people I worked so hard for. It's not
deserved.
Question: The council says that you violated an agreement not to
talk about your Holocaust experiences publicly.
Answer: I never said I wouldn't speak about the Holocaust. I said
I'll speak on human rights, including the Holocaust. I said no from the
beginning, even in front of [Darrell D.] Friedman [president of the
Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore]. Only God could
stop me.
If I agreed to this, why did [Mr. Abramson] go to the rabbis, the schools
and even the pope [advising them not to use Ms. Strummer as a
Holocaust speaker]? Why? What agreement?
Question: What do you want to say to the Jewish community today?
Answer: I have always been a person trying with her heart and soul
to connect this hellish life with a message of peace for our children. Only
a person who has lived what I have lived can understand how wonderful
this country is. Whomever wants to listen to me and to learn from me, I
will be willing to give as long as God lets me live...
______________end of interview __________
Additional (segment) article about Deli Strummer:
A Series Of Inaccuracies Led To The Baltimore Jewish Council's
Break With Deli Strummer.
Rona S. Hirsch Staff Reporter:
"Six months ago, the Baltimore Jewish Council requested that Towson
resident Deli Strummer no longer lecture on behalf of its Holocaust
bureau and removed her from its list of recommended speakers. The
decision was reached after two Holocaust experts interviewed the Ms.
Strummer, 78, and presented their findings about a series of inaccuracies
in her testimony.
Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg and Lawrence L. Langer, an expert in
Holocaust testimony, reviewed Ms. Strummer's accounts and revealed
their findings to the BJC last January, stating that many of her
recollections were incorrect or embellished... etc For the rest of the story
-->
http://www.jewishtimes.com/scripts/edit ... ID=915#bjc
-
Mensch Meyer
- Member
- Posts: 87
- Joined: 28 May 2002, 05:34
- Location: MD
There are numerous similar stories that lack varacity. One of them is about soap-bars made of Jewish victims by the nazis. Such soap bars were even entered as exhibit during the Nuremberg Trial ! And then silently dropped from the holocaust history.Caldric wrote:To me, the nub of the issue is not that Wilkomirski is a charlatan who was eventually exposed. .
And yet there are those, writing books for profit, who still insist in the macabre soap story, even basing it on personal connection to family members. This item explains how such a book became an embarrassment when it made national news:
Holocaust museum, Atlanta author at odds. Book alleges Nazis used corpses of Jews for soap --- Associated Press
ATLANTA -- The U.S. Holocaust Museum has barred a book signing by an Atlanta architect who suggests Nazis made soap out of the bodies of Jews who died in concentration camps.
In a memoir published this spring, Ben Hirsch writes that his uncle was forced to work in Auschwitz making soap and saved his own life by using human corpses.
Hirsch, whose parents and two siblings died in the camps, also was part of a group of about 35 people who buried four bars of soap at the base of an Atlanta cemetery's Holocaust memorial in 1970.
Following is a display of her "scholarly"
assessment on this matter: THE Historian Lipstadt :''What the Nazis did in the Third Reich is bad enough, if this story's true or not,'' (!!) said Deborah Lipstadt, an Emory University history professor who won over a Holocaust denier in a British libel suit earlier this year..."
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/092 ... 0020.shtml
If Meyer had read the Nuremberg records, he would know that the IMT concluded on nothing other than isolated experimental attempts to manufacture soap from human fat:Mensch Meyer wrote: There are numerous similar stories that lack varacity. One of them is about soap-bars made of Jewish victims by the nazis. Such soap bars were even entered as exhibit during the Nuremberg Trial ! And then silently dropped from the holocaust history.
From the IMT's judgment, transcribed online underAfter cremation the ashes were used for fertilizer, and in some instances attempts were made to utilise the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/p ... ersecution
Emphasis is mine.
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Mensch Meyer
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ARE you denying that soap bars were presented as one of the most important and legitimate war crime allegations at the main Nuremberg trial? !!Roberto wrote:If Meyer had read the Nuremberg records, he would know that the IMT concluded on nothing other than isolated experimental attempts to manufacture soap from human fat:Mensch Meyer wrote: There are numerous similar stories that lack varacity. One of them is about soap-bars made of Jewish victims by the nazis. Such soap bars were even entered as exhibit during the Nuremberg Trial ! And then silently dropped from the holocaust history.
From the IMT's judgment, transcribed online underAfter cremation the ashes were used for fertilizer, and in some instances attempts were made to utilise the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/p ... ersecution
Emphasis is mine.
Are you denying that a human soap "recipe" allegedly prepared by Dr. Spanner (Nuremberg document USSR-196), was actually presented at the trial, and that a sample of what was supposed to be a piece of "human soap" was actually submitted to the Nuremberg Tribunal as exhibit USSR-393 ?
Are you now a holocaust denier !???
Roberto, a denier? My God! To put a label like that on my litlle buddy is worse than call him a sexual deviant!
In 1946, it was a "proven fact" that Nazis made human soap (Judgement, Nuremberg Trial, IMT I 252 <<283>>; VII 597-600 <<656-659>>; XIX 506 <<566-567>>; XXII 496 <<564>>).
This "fact" has since become, apparently, merely "rumour" (Hilberg, "revised definitive" Destruction of the European Jews, Holmes and Meier, NY, page 966: "To this day, the origin of the soap making rumour has not been traced").
The forensically untested "rumour" of Soviet origin (Exhibit USSR 393) is in the Peace Palace of The Hague. Peace Palace officials show it to eager visitors and tell them it is authentic; but do not, apparently, answer letters from persons asking to have it tested.