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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
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