Soap made of people. Completely different stories

Pre-war fate

Activity

After the end of World War II, Wiesenthal devoted all his energies to searching for Nazi criminals hiding from punishment. He personally and the organization he created (from the city - Center for Jewish Documentation in Linz, later in Vienna) took part in the search and capture of a number of major figures of the Nazi punitive system, including Adolf Eichmann - head of department IV-B-4, responsible for the "final solution to the Jewish question" in the Gestapo.

In the 1980s Wiesenthal was also in fierce confrontation with the political elite of Austria, constantly reminding the country's leading politicians of their Nazi past. Was a staunch opponent of the idea of collective responsibility German people, arguing that, in this case, Nazi criminals could “dissolve” among the people.

Wiesenthal's work was recognized with high government awards from the USA, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Austria and others.

Simon Wiesenthal and the Mossad

There is a hypothesis that Simon Wiesenthal could be an employee of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. This is stated in his biography written by Tom Segev.

According to Segev, Wiesenthal began collaborating with Israeli intelligence in 1948. Then, according to official documents While in Austria, Wiesenthal assisted intelligence agents in a failed operation to capture Adolf Eichmann, the former high-ranking Gestapo leader responsible for the extermination of millions of Jews.

This fact is also evidenced by the reports of the participants in the operation. According to the biographer, Wiesenthal became a Mossad agent after Adolf Eichmann was caught with his help in 1960. Eichmann, found in Buenos Aires, was smuggled out to Israel by the Mossad, where he was tried and executed.

“Simon Wiesenthal worked for Israeli intelligence for about 10 years. The Mossad paid him about $300 a month and financed the Jewish documentation center he created in 1947, which was engaged in the search for Nazi criminals,” the biography says.

Although Wiesenthal's name appears on the Israeli list of participants in the capture of Eichmann, his role in the case remains unclear and his participation is denied by a number of sources, including the director of the Mossad and the head of the operation to capture Eichmann, Isser Harel.

Criticism

Mark Weber expressed especially harsh criticism, accusing Wiesenthal of illiteracy, financial fraud, self-promotion and slander. Disputes about the true motives of Simon Wiesenthal are still raging.

Awards

Commander of the Order of the White Lion (Czech Republic, )
Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Badge of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria, 6th class (2005)

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Excerpt characterizing Wiesenthal, Simon

- Yes, he is very, very kind person“When she is under the influence not of bad people, but of people like me,” the princess told herself.
The change that took place in Pierre was noticed in their own way by his servants, Terenty and Vaska. They found that he had slept a lot. Terenty often, having undressed the master, with boots and dress in his hand, wishing him good night, hesitated to leave, waiting to see if the master would enter into conversation. AND for the most part Pierre stopped Terenty, noticing that he wanted to talk.
- Well, tell me... how did you get food for yourself? - he asked. And Terenty began a story about the Moscow ruin, about the late count, and stood for a long time with his dress, telling, and sometimes listening to, Pierre’s stories, and, with a pleasant consciousness of the master’s closeness to him and friendliness towards him, he went into the hallway.
The doctor who treated Pierre and visited him every day, despite the fact that, according to the duties of doctors, he considered it his duty to look like a man whose every minute is precious for suffering humanity, sat for hours with Pierre, telling his favorite stories and observations on the morals of patients in general and especially ladies.
“Yes, it’s nice to talk to such a person, not like here in the provinces,” he said.
Several prisoners lived in Orel French officers, and the doctor brought one of them, a young Italian officer.
This officer began to go to Pierre, and the princess laughed at those tender feelings, which the Italian expressed to Pierre.
The Italian, apparently, was happy only when he could come to Pierre and talk and tell him about his past, about his home life, about his love and pour out his indignation at the French, and especially at Napoleon.
“If all Russians are even a little like you,” he said to Pierre, “est un sacrilege que de faire la guerre a un peuple comme le votre. [It’s blasphemy to fight with a people like you.] You, who have suffered so much from the French, you don’t even have any malice against them.
And Pierre now deserved the passionate love of the Italian only because he aroused in him best sides his souls and admired them.
During the last period of Pierre's stay in Oryol, his old freemason acquaintance, Count Villarsky, came to see him, the same one who introduced him to the lodge in 1807. Villarsky was married to a rich Russian woman who had large estates in Oryol province, and occupied a temporary place in the city in the food department.
Having learned that Bezukhov was in Orel, Villarsky, although he had never been briefly acquainted with him, came to him with those statements of friendship and closeness that people usually express to each other when meeting in the desert. Villarsky was bored in Orel and was happy to meet a person of the same circle as himself and with the same, as he believed, interests.
But, to his surprise, Villarsky soon noticed that Pierre was very far behind real life and fell, as he defined Pierre to himself, into apathy and selfishness.
– Vous vous encroutez, mon cher, [You are starting, my dear.] - he told him. Despite this, Villarsky was now more pleasant with Pierre than before, and he visited him every day. For Pierre, looking at Villarsky and listening to him now, it was strange and incredible to think that he himself had very recently been the same.
Villarsky was married family man, busy with the affairs of his wife’s estate, and service, and family. He believed that all these activities were a hindrance in life and that they were all despicable because they were aimed at the personal good of him and his family. Military, administrative, political, and Masonic considerations constantly absorbed his attention. And Pierre, without trying to change his view, without judging him, with his now constantly quiet, joyful mockery, admired this strange phenomenon, so familiar to him.
In his relations with Villarsky, with the princess, with the doctor, with all the people with whom he now met, Pierre had a new trait that earned him the favor of all people: this recognition of the ability of each person to think, feel and look at things in his own way; recognition of the impossibility of words to dissuade a person. This legitimate characteristic of every person, which previously worried and irritated Pierre, now formed the basis of the participation and interest that he took in people. The difference, sometimes the complete contradiction of people's views with their lives and with each other, pleased Pierre and aroused in him a mocking and gentle smile.
In practical matters, Pierre suddenly now felt that he had a center of gravity that he did not have before. Before everyone money issue, especially requests for money, to which he, as a very rich man, was subjected very often, led him into hopeless unrest and bewilderment. “To give or not to give?” - he asked himself. “I have it, but he needs it. But someone else needs it even more. Who needs it more? Or maybe both are deceivers? And from all these assumptions he had previously not found any way out and gave to everyone while he had something to give. He had been in exactly the same bewilderment before with every question concerning his condition, when one said that it was necessary to do this, and the other - another.
Now, to his surprise, he found that in all these questions there were no more doubts and perplexities. A judge now appeared in him, according to some laws unknown to himself, deciding what was necessary and what should not be done.
He was just as indifferent to money matters as before; but now he undoubtedly knew what he should do and what he should not do. The first application of this new judge for him was the request of a captured French colonel, who came to him, talked a lot about his exploits and in the end almost declared a demand that Pierre give him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children. Pierre refused him without the slightest difficulty or tension, marveling later at how simple and easy it was that which had previously seemed insurmountably difficult. At the same time, immediately refusing the colonel, he decided that it was necessary to use cunning in order to force the Italian officer, when leaving Orel, to take the money that he apparently needed. New proof for Pierre of his established view of practical matters was his solution to the issue of his wife’s debts and the renewal or non-renewal of Moscow houses and dachas.
His chief manager came to see him in Orel, and with him Pierre made a general account of his changing income. The Moscow fire cost Pierre, according to the chief manager’s accounts, about two million.
The chief manager, to console these losses, presented Pierre with a calculation that, despite these losses, his income not only would not decrease, but would increase if he refused to pay the debts remaining after the countess, to which he could not be obliged, and if he does not renew the Moscow houses and the Moscow region, which cost eighty thousand annually and brought nothing.
“Yes, yes, it’s true,” said Pierre, smiling cheerfully. - Yes, yes, I don’t need any of this. I became much richer from ruin.
But in January Savelich arrived from Moscow, told him about the situation in Moscow, about the estimate that the architect made for him to renovate the house and the Moscow region, speaking about it as if it was a decided matter. At the same time, Pierre received a letter from Prince Vasily and other acquaintances from St. Petersburg. The letters talked about his wife's debts. And Pierre decided that the manager’s plan, which he liked so much, was wrong and that he needed to go to St. Petersburg to finish off his wife’s affairs and build in Moscow. Why this was necessary, he did not know; but he knew without a doubt that it was necessary. As a result of this decision, his income decreased by three quarters. But it was necessary; he felt it.
Villarsky was traveling to Moscow, and they agreed to go together.
Throughout his recovery in Oryol, Pierre experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life; but when, during his travels, he found himself in the free world and saw hundreds of new faces, this feeling intensified even more. Throughout the trip he felt the joy of a schoolboy on vacation. All persons: the coachman, the caretaker, the men on the road or in the village - everything was important to him. new meaning. The presence and comments of Villarsky, who constantly complained about poverty, backwardness from Europe, and ignorance of Russia, only increased Pierre's joy. Where Villarsky saw deadness, Pierre saw an extraordinary powerful force of vitality, that force that in the snow, in this space, supported the life of this whole, special and united people. He did not contradict Villarsky and, as if agreeing with him (since the feigned agreement was shortest remedy bypass reasoning from which nothing could come of it), smiled joyfully as he listened to him.

Simon Wiesenthal, known throughout the world as the “Nazi hunter,” was born on December 31, 1908 in Lvov. After Wiesenthal Sr., the head of the family, died on the fronts of the First World War, Mrs. Wiesenthal moved with her son to Vienna, but then returned to her native land. In 1928, Simon graduated from high school and submitted documents to Lvov polytechnic institute, but he, a Jew, was not accepted there. Then the young man went to Prague, where in 1932 he graduated Technical University majoring in architectural engineering. Four years later he got married.

The story of Wiesenthal the martyr began in 1939, when Germany and the USSR signed a non-aggression pact and the division of Poland, and in September Lvov was occupied by units of the Red Army. The hunt began for the “bourgeois element,” that is, the owners and owners of any enterprises. Simon's stepfather and half-brother died in the NKVD, the shop belonging to the Wiesenthals was confiscated, and the whole family was prepared for deportation to Siberia. But Simon bribed the security officers and received permission to stay in Lvov. He went to work as a mechanic in a mattress spring factory.

In 1941, Lviv was occupied by Wehrmacht columns, and the SS units advancing after them began to methodically exterminate the Jewish population. Wiesenthal was saved from death by the director of his factory, who became a policeman. However, he could not get rid of the concentration camp. In 1941, Simon and all his relatives were sent to the Janvsk extermination camp, then to Ostbahn. The prisoners were engaged in the construction of railways, and since Wiesenthal was an engineer, he was trusted with plans and diagrams. Simon entered into a conspiracy with the Polish underground: he provided the partisans with plans for the construction of railways, and they sent his wife Cila, blond, blue-eyed and Polish-looking, documents in the name of Irzna Kowalska. The Nazis decided that they had arrested her by mistake and released her.

In the summer of 1944, due to the approaching Soviet army The administration of the Janvska camp destroyed 149 thousand prisoners, leaving only 34 valuable workers alive, including engineer Wiesenthal. He was transported along the route Plaszow - Gross-Rosen - Buchenwald - Mauthausen. On May 5, 1945, the 45-kilogram prisoner was released by the Americans.

Immediately after his release, Wiesenthal began a detailed study of the many captured Nazi documents in the special US bureau for combating war criminals, located in the American occupation zone in Austria. Since 1947, he has been actively involved in searching for and exposing the Nazis who participated in the genocide of the Jewish people. He created the Jewish Documentation Center. In total, Wiesenthal brought the cases of more than 1,100 Nazi criminals to trial.

The most notorious was the case of Adolf Eichmann, the executioner of the Jewish people. Eichmann was found in Argentina, from where he was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence services. He was convicted and executed in 1961. Wiesenthal's next success was the capture of Karl Silberbauer, the Gestapo officer who arrested Anne Frank, a girl from a German-Jewish family who had been hiding in an attic in Amsterdam for two years. In 1963, Wiesenthal established that Silberbauer did not even try to escape, lives in Austria and holds the post of police inspector. The former Gestapo man was arrested, confessed to everything and was convicted. Wiesenthal found Franz Stangl, the commander of two concentration camps in Poland, in Brazil. But no one except Wiesenthal believed that the friendly and funny housewife Hermine Ryan was actually SS Unterscharführer Magda Braunsteiner, who commanded the execution of several hundred children in Majdanek. In 1973, a German federal court sentenced her to life imprisonment.

In 1977, the international Jewish human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center was founded in Los Angeles. Today it has branches all over the world. Attempts were made repeatedly on Wiesenthal himself, and attempts were made to destroy his Viennese archive. But Wiesenthal did not back down. “Survivors are always indebted to those who died,” he said. “I always thought about what I could do for those who are no longer alive.”

The center's file contains the names of 90 thousand criminals - less than half of them were arrested. By in my own words Wiesenthal, the work of the center is complicated by the fact that many social movements the world generally denies the fact of the Holocaust. “Remember the Holocaust!” calls Wiesenthal. “More than 6 million people died then.” The Center devoted a lot of effort to creating the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

Despite his advanced age and serious illness, Wiesenthal continued to lead the branch of his center in Austria. IN lately"Simon Wiesenthal Center" carries out operation " Last chance", aimed at finding the remaining Nazis who escaped justice. Its leader, Dr. Ephraim Zuroff, believes that due to their age, in five years, none of the Nazis will be alive. “We must get information about them now, before it is too late,” - he states. A year ago, “Last Chance” was launched in the Baltic countries - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. At the end of last year, Austria, Poland and Romania took up the baton. In these countries, advertisements are published in newspapers promising a reward of 10 thousand dollars for information about it. Nazi criminals. Next in line are Germany, Hungary, Belarus and Ukraine.

Based on materials from publications

Tom Segev

Simon Wiesenthal. Life and legends

Simon Wiesenthal has told his life story to a number of journalists, but this is the first biography of him based entirely on documents. It uses information from tens of thousands of documents stored in sixteen archives in Austria, Germany, Poland, Great Britain, the USA and Israel. I am grateful to all these archives for their help.

Wiesenthal's private archive, kept at the Documentation Center in Vienna, was kindly and unconditionally opened to me by Wiesenthal's daughter Paulinka Kreisberg. His granddaughter, Rachel Kreisberg, helped me navigate the labyrinthine family genealogy. I am grateful to both of them. The Wiesenthal Documentation Center also houses personal files of war criminals and other materials with which he worked. During my work in the archive most materials has not yet been cataloged and numbered. I have copies of all documents cited in this book.

I am very grateful to the archivists Michaela Wocelka, Brigitte Lehner and Gertrude Mergili, who helped me knowledgeably, patiently and kindly. I am especially grateful to Rose-Maria Austraat, who has worked with Wiesenthal since 1975. She told me about her admiration for “bossy,” as she sometimes called him, and about her great love to him. I learned a lot from her. I found part of Wiesenthal's working archive in the basement of the house of the Jewish community of Linz. The Jewish community of Vienna also provided me with generous assistance.

In the Bruno Kreisky archive I gained access to previously unknown scientific materials, which I really appreciate. Kurt Schrimm, attorney general Germany, leading Central Administration for the investigation of Nazi crimes in Ludwigsburg, and the German Ministry for the Protection of the Constitution provided me with access to several documents that were previously closed to researchers.

Materials related to the search for Adolf Eichmann, previously also prohibited for publication, fell into my hands thanks to a special decision Supreme Court in Jerusalem, and for this I am grateful to the head of the Supreme Court Division of the Israeli Prosecutor General's Office, Osnat Mendel. The report of the Israeli agent Michael Bloch was provided to me by his sons Doron and Yuval. I am also grateful to Michael's brother, Ambassador Gideon Yarden. I am grateful to a number of people who interacted with Wiesenthal during his time working for the Mossad: Meir Amit, Dov Ochovsky, Rafi Meydan, and the man who asked to be referred to here by the name under which he worked in Vienna, “Mordechai Elazar.”

I am also grateful to many other people - acquaintances of Wiesenthal and those who survived the Holocaust, who live in Lviv, Vienna, Linz, Bad Aussee, Berlin, Paris, London, Oslo, Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires , Sao Paulo, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: Avi Avidov, Evelina Adonka, Inez Austern, Dan Ashbel, John Bunzel, Icaros Bigi, Yehezkel Beinish, Yehuda Bloom, Asher Ben Nathan, Hani and Paul Gross, Cecilia Gruenwald, Frank Grelke, Eva Dukes, Dan Diener, Marvin Hayer, Swanee Hunt, Avshal Odick, Jules Goof, Roni Hof, Elie Wiesel, Aaron Weiss, Efraim Zuroff, Mario Himanovich, Bina Tyschler, Richard Trank, Walter Tare, Michael John, Peter Marbo, Jose Moskowitz , Martin Mendelsohn, Gaavard Nygaard, Paul Seals, Gelmar Sartor, Avner Anbar, Sarah Postavsky, Hans Popper, Gelle Pick, Alexander Friedman, Tuvier Friedman, Ingo Zechner, Leon Zellman, Abraham Kushnir, Claudia Kühner, Erich Klein, Omri Kaplan-Feureisen , Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, Peter Kreisky, Oliver Rathkolb, Doron Rabinovich, Martin Rosen, Tsali Reshef, Peter Schwarz, Michael Stergar, Heinrich Schmidt, Mark Schraberman. Without their help, information and advice, this book would not have been born.

In Vienna I was received by the International research center cultural studies. The staff of the Center greeted me warmly, and Dr. Luz Mosner helped me useful tips. Avi Katzman, as usual, edited my manuscript carefully and skillfully. It is my pleasure to express my gratitude also to my literary agent and friend Deborah Harris.

Introduction. Glass sarcophagus

The world has never seen such a funeral: never before have so many remains been buried in one grave. large quantity people. This funeral took place on June 26, 1949. They started in Tel Aviv.

An atmosphere of almost unbearable horror reigned in the Great Synagogue; Hysterical screams were heard from the crowd gathered on the street. Newspapers reported that tens of thousands of people attended the funeral and described heartbreaking scenes. There were shouts of “Dad!”, “Mom!”. People fainted. There were also small children in the crowd.

In the main hall of the synagogue they placed a glass sarcophagus one and a half meters long, and in it were thirty porcelain urns with blue and white stripes. Newspapers wrote that the urns contained the ashes of two hundred thousand Jews killed during the Holocaust. The ceremony was attended by the mayor of the city, prominent public figures and rabbis. After speeches and prayers, the sarcophagus was loaded onto a police car and driven through the city streets. The car had difficulty making its way through the crowd. Everywhere she passed, people closed shops and workshops, lined the road and stood in mournful silence.

From Tel Aviv, the sarcophagus went to Rehovot, where President Chaim Weizmann lived. School classes were cancelled; the students were sent to watch the funeral cortege. The elderly, frail and almost blind Weizmann said only a few words, after which the sarcophagus was taken to Jerusalem. Thousands were waiting for him at the entrance to the city. crying people. Some of them brought bars of soap with them. They mistakenly believed that it was made from the fat of dead Jews, and wanted to bury it along with the glass sarcophagus in the Sanhedria cemetery, next to the crypts carved into the rock two thousand years ago.

The man on whose initiative this historic funeral was organized was Simon Wiesenthal. He was then forty-one years old. After his release from the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen, he lived in the nearby city of Linz and searched for Nazi criminals. The ashes of the victims were collected on his own initiative in concentration camps and other places of detention located in Austria.

“The glass sarcophagus,” he later wrote, “suddenly turned into a kind of mirror, which reflected many faces: comrades from the ghetto, friends from concentration camps, people beaten to death, starved to death, driven onto barbed wire with current running through it. I saw fear on the faces of the Jews, who were driven with whips and sticks into the gas chambers by animals in human form, devoid of conscience and feelings and who did not want to hear their only plea: to let them live.”

By that time, Wiesenthal already knew several Israelis, but few in Israel knew him. The mayor of Tel Aviv, Israel Rokeach, also did not know who Wiesenthal was when he sent him a letter in Yiddish a few months earlier. Apparently, Wiesenthal's decisive tone impressed Rokeah. Wiesenthal wrote that the Austrian Organization former prisoners concentration camps “decided” to transfer the ashes of the saints to Israel and “decided” to honor the Tel Aviv mayor’s office with the honor of accepting these ashes. It didn't seem like a question, a request, or a suggestion; it almost sounded like an order. It was impossible to refuse, and Rokeah wrote back that Tel Aviv would accept the urns with “sacred awe,” although in fact he had no idea what to do with them.

The genocide of the Jews alarmed and pained many people in Israel. For the first time, ashes brought from Polish camp death, was buried in Palestine already in 1946. Yet even in 1949, no one really knew how to mourn the six million dead or how to memorialize them. The law on bringing the Nazis and their collaborators to justice was passed only a year later, the national day of remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust was established two years later, and the law on the creation of the state memorial Yad Vashem appeared only five years later.

When Wiesenthal arrived in Israel, the topic of the Holocaust was still shrouded in deep silence: parents did not tell their children about what happened to them, and their children did not dare question them. Holocaust survivors were fearful, alienating, shameful, guilty, and difficult to deal with. How to live in the same house with such neighbors? How to work with them? How to go to the beach or to the cinema with them, fall in love with them, marry them? How to treat their children at school? It is unlikely that there was another country that had to endure a more difficult and painful encounter with the “others,” as they would say later.

Simon Wiesenthal is a cult figure of the official West. This liar, a Mossad agent, died 10 years ago, but today in everything Western world work so-called “Simon Wiesenthal Centers”, where lies are declared by the Jews to be the official truth.

***

Simon Wiesenthal is living legend. At one ceremony in August 1980, President Carter tearfully presented the most famous Nazi hunter in the world with gold medal on behalf of Congress. On November 3, 1988, President Reagan hailed him as a "true hero" of this century.

He was given highest order Germany, one of the most important organizations The world's Holocaust research center bears his name, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. He was played by the late Laurence Olivier in the 1976 fictional film The Boys from Brazil. On April 3, 1989, he was played in the film commissioned by television, "Murderers Among Us: The Story of Simon Wiesenthal" by actor Ben Quigsley.

Wiesenthal's fame is undeserved. This man, known as the “Angel of Holocaust Vengeance,” has also established himself as a shameless violator of the truth. He lied about his own experiences during the war, lied about his post-war “Nazi hunt,” and spread disgusting insinuations about alleged terrible German atrocities. He is in no way an example of moral purity.

"Nazi Hunter" - a simple deceiver

Wiesenthal received the undeserved fame of the most famous "Nazi hunter" in the world. The culmination of his thirty years of activity in the search for “Nazi war criminals” was his alleged participation in the location and capture of Adolf Eichmann. (During the war, Eichmann headed the SS department for the Jewish question.) In 1960, Israeli intelligence agents kidnapped him in Buenos Aires and transported him to Jerusalem for trial. This trial gained worldwide fame. According to the court's verdict, Eichmann was hanged.

However, Isser Harel, the Israeli officer in charge of the operation, stated that Wiesenthal "had nothing to do" with Eichmann's capture.

“All the information that Wiesenthal gave before and during the preparation of the operation was completely unnecessary, and sometimes even just misinformation,” said Harel. (Harel is a senior figure not only in the Mossad, but also in Shin Bet, Israel's foreign and domestic security service.) Arnold Forster, attorney general of the Anti-Defamation League B'nai B'rith, an influential Zionist organization, wrote in his book "The Square" number one," that shortly before the Israelis captured Eichmann in Argentina, Wiesenthal assumed that he was somewhere in Japan or Saudi Arabia.

One of the victims of Wiesenthal's unheard-of atrocities was a Chicago resident named Frank Walus. In his letter dated December 1974, Wiesenthal accused Walus of handing over Jews to the Gestapo in the towns of Czestokowa and Kielce during the war in Poland. This letter prompted American government begin an investigation and legal process against Valus.

The Washington Post published an article in connection with this case in May 1981 entitled “The Nazi Who Wasn’t a Nazi.” The article was about how "judges, the press and the police hounded an innocent man and labeled him a 'war criminal.'" This long article, which the American Bar allowed for free publication, contained the following information:

In January 1977, the US government accused Chicago resident Frank Walus of committing crimes against humanity during the war in Poland. Over the ensuing years, the retired worker went into debt to pay more than $60,000 for his defense. 11 Jewish Holocaust survivors turned on him alone in the courtroom. They claimed that during Nazi occupation In Poland they witnessed how he killed children, one old woman, one young woman, a hunchback and others. However, there is indisputable evidence that Walus was not involved in Nazi war crimes, and that he was not in Poland at all during World War II... In an atmosphere of hatred and disgust bordering on hysteria, the government persecuted an innocent man.

In 1974, Simon Wiesenthal, that famous "Nazi hunter" from Vienna, stated about Walus that this Pole, now living in Chicago, was sent on instructions from the Gestapo to the ghettos of Czestokov and Kilche and handed over a large number of Jews there into the hands of the Nazis." Others in words, even though Wiesenthal’s “information” about Valus was in fact empty woman’s gossip, he continued to throw mud at the innocent man.

Only after a grueling process and numerous attacks did the man who was nicknamed the “executioner from Kilche” get the opportunity to prove that during the war he was a peaceful worker on a farm in Germany. In theory, Wiesenthal's irresponsible and shameless behavior only in the Walus case should have fundamentally undermined his credibility as a reliable witness. But his “reinforced concrete reputation” withstood this blow.

Injustice in the Mengele case

The myth of Wiesenthal is largely based on his hunt for Josef Mengele, a doctor who worked at Auschwitz during the war and was nicknamed the "Angel of Death" there. Wiesenthal repeatedly claimed that he was following Mengele's trail. He said that his informant had seen the elusive doctor in Peru, Chile, Brazil, Spain, Greece, and half a dozen places in Paraguay. But he could have been wrong. In the summer of 1960, Mengele managed to escape from there, as Wiesenthal said. Wiesenthal then stated that Mengele had taken refuge on a Greek island, from where former doctor managed to get away in an incomprehensible way. And Wiesenthal continued to spread his stories, supplied with all the details, even when the journalist he assigned to double-check it all told him that the whole story was a complete innuendo.

In 1977, Wiesenthal claimed that Mengele regularly appeared in the most prestigious restaurants in the capital of Paraguay, Asuncion, and, perhaps, with him in his black Mercedes, a whole bunch of heavily armed bodyguards drove around the city; in 1985, Wiesenthal told the world that he was “one hundred percent sure” that Mengele had been hiding in Paraguay until at least 1984 and stated that the Mengele family living in West Germany, knows his exact location.

As it turned out later, Wiesenthal was talking complete nonsense. Some time later it was proven that Mengele died in Brazil in 1979, where he lived for many years under an assumed name and in dire poverty. Thus, in fact, it turned out that the thick folder with the Mengele case, located in Wiesenthal’s Vienna “documentation center,” was a concentration of useless information, which, according to the London Times, only contained evidence of his (Wiesenthal’s) myth and could not help in any way a person who wants to understand the fate of Mengele."

Even former ambassador Israel in Paraguay Benjamin Varon cautiously criticized the deceitful campaign to capture Mengele in 1983:

"Wiesenthal constantly states that he is about to catch Mengele. Perhaps Wiesenthal needs it for his activities more money. And Mengele is suitable to eliminate this monetary deficit."

Soap made of people

Wiesenthal also spread around the world one of the most vile tales about the Holocaust - the claim that the Germans made soap from the corpses of murdered Jews. According to this story, the letters "RIF" standing on the pieces german soap, meant pure Jewish fat (Rein judishes Fett). In fact, these letters stood for "industrial fat supply department" (Reichsstelle für industrielle Fettversorgung).

Wiesenthal gave this legend about “human soap” to the world in 1946 in the Austrian-German newspaper “Der Neue Weg” (“ New way"). In an article entitled "RIF" he wrote terrible things:

“For the first time, rumors about “soap wagons” began to spread in 1942. It happened in the (Polish) General Government, and this factory was located in Galicia, in the town of Belcech. From April 1942 to May 1943, as raw materials for production 900,000 Jews used soap there."

Wiesenthal continues: “After cutting up the bodies for various purposes, the fatty residue was used to make soap...” After 1942, people already knew well what the letters “RIF” on bars of soap meant. Perhaps the civilized world will not believe how joyfully the Nazis and their henchmen in the General Government accepted the idea of such a soap. Each piece of such soap meant for them one Jew, as if by witchcraft, planted in this piece, and thus the appearance of a second Freud, Ehrlich, Einstein was prevented."

In another article teeming with similar fantasies, entitled “The Beltsece Soap Factory” (published in 1946), Wiesenthal claimed that Jews were being exterminated en masse by electric showers:

“People huddled together are being pushed towards the “bathroom” by the SS, Lithuanians and Ukrainians and pushed into open door. The “bathroom” floor is metal, and water faucets are installed on the ceiling. After the room was filled, the SS man served to the floor electric current at 5,000 volts. At the same time, water was supplied from the mixers. A short scream and it's over. Chief physician, an SS man named Schmidt, checked through the peephole whether the victims were dead. The second door opened and the “team of corpse bearers” quickly removed the corpses. Everything was ready for the next party of 500 people."

Today, no self-respecting historian believes stories about Jewish corpses in Beltsece or elsewhere being boiled into soap or about Jews being electrocuted.

Completely different stories

Despite all that has been written about Wiesenthal, it is still not clear what Wiesenthal did during the war and German occupation. He told three versions of his activities during the war, which are strikingly different from each other, and this is thought-provoking.

Soviet engineer or mechanic at a factory?

During interrogation in 1948, Wiesenthal confirmed under oath that “between 1939 and 1941 he worked as a Soviet chief engineer in Lvov and Odessa.” In his autobiography, Murderers Are Among Us, written in 1967, Wiesenthal argued that 1939-1941. he spent working as a mechanic in a furniture factory in Soviet-occupied Lviv. After the Germans took control of the province of Galicia in June 1941, Wiesenthal was sent to the Janowska concentration camp near Lvov. A few months later he was transferred to a camp associated with the repair workshops (OAW) of the Eastern railway" and located in Lvov in German-occupied Poland.

A partisan fighter?

The subsequent period of Wiesenthal's life was from October 1943 to June 19944. - the most confusing, his own memories of this time are very contradictory. During his interrogation in 1948, he said that he had escaped from a camp in Lvov and “joined a partisan detachment operating in the Tarnopol-Kamenopodolsk region,” and he also said that from “the sixth of October 1943 to mid-February 1944 he was a partisan.” He explained that his unit fought against Ukrainian armed forces- both against the SS division "Galicia" (14th infantry division of the SS field troops, recruited mainly from Ukrainian volunteers), and against independent partisan detachments fighting against the communists.

Wiesenthal claims that he was a lieutenant and then promoted to major, and that he was responsible for the construction of bunkers and defensive positions. He hints that this partisan detachment(whose existence has not been documented) was part of the Army of Ludova (" People's Army"), communist Polish army, supplied and controlled by the Soviets. He claims that he and other partisans made their way to Lvov in February 1944, where they were hidden by supporters of the Army of the People. According to him, on June 13, 1944, his group fell into the hands of the German field gendarmerie.

Wiesenthal told almost the same story in January 1949 under oath. He said that in October 1943 he escaped and then for eight months led an armed struggle against the Germans in the forests along with partisans. This happened from October 2 to March 1944. After that, from March to June 1944, he was hidden in Lvov.

In his 1967 autobiography, he told a completely different story. He writes in particular that after escaping from repair shops Eastern way from October 2, 1943 to June 13, 1944 he hid with various friends, where he was eventually discovered by Polish and German police and returned to the concentration camp. He did not say a word in his autobiography about any partisan activity or about fighting as part of a partisan detachment.

Both during interrogation in 1948 and in his 1967 autobiography, he spoke about the suicide attempt he made on June 15, 1944, by opening his veins. Noteworthy is the fact that his life was saved by an SS doctor, and after that Wiesenthal was also treated in a hospital for SS men. Then he was kept on a “double ration” for some time in a concentration camp near Lvov, and then, as he writes in his autobiography, he was transported from camp to camp. Last months war - months of chaos and agony - he spent in different labor camps, he was eventually released on May 5, 1945 American troops in the Mauthausen concentration camp (near Linz).

Was Wiesenthal's past that of a partisan hero? Or was he trying to hide his past? Or true biography Wiesenthal is completely different, too piquant to be exposed?

Did Wiesenthal voluntarily work for his captors during the war? This is the opinion of former Federal Chancellor of Austria Bruno Kreizki, who is himself partly Jewish and for a long time leads the socialist party of his country.

In an interview with foreign journalists in 1977, Kreizki accused Wiesenthal of using "mafia methods" and sharply criticized the latter's claims to "moral authority", pointing out that Wiesenthal served the Germans during the war.

The Myth of Mauthausen

Before he began his career as a Nazi hunter, Wiesenthal was a shameless propagandist. In his sensational book "Mauthausen Concentration Camp", published in 1946, he allegedly quotes " dying confession"by Mauthausen commandant Franz Ziereis, in which the latter spoke about the extermination in the neighboring Hartheim camp four million Human carbon monoxide. This claim is completely absurd, and no self-respecting Holocaust historian will accept it. According to Ziereis's "confession" quoted by Wiesenthal, the Germans killed another 10 million people in Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. In fact, this confession is pure water insinuation.

And years later, Wiesenthal continued to lie about Mauthausen. In an April 1983 interview with USA Today, he recounted his own memories of Mauthausen:

“I was in a group of 34 people, and in total there were 150,000 of us who went through this and survived.”

This is an obvious lie. It is clear that the years have dealt mercilessly with Wiesenthal’s convolutions. He himself wrote in his own autobiography that after the liberation of the camp by the Americans on May 5, 1945, “almost 3 thousand prisoners died there.” According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, at least 312,000 people were liberated at Mauthausen.

Commercialization of the Holocaust

As the director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Center said, Simon Wiesenthal and the center, located in Los Angeles and bearing his name, are “commercializing” and “trivializing” the Holocaust. This accusation was published in December 1988 in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The Brooklyn weekly Jewish Press commented on the accusation: "Yad Vashem's dissatisfaction with what it considers the 'commercialization' of the Holocaust is a long-standing problem, but the issue still remains open."

The Los Angeles Center pays Wiesenthal $75,000 annually for the use of his name," said the director of Yad Vashem. "The Jewish people do many shameless things, but the Wiesenthal Center has taken this practice to the highest level turning such topics into money, and in the most optimal way.

Kreizki's conclusions

Of course, Wiesenthal is not always wrong. In 1975, in a letter published in the British magazine Books and Bookman, he acknowledged the fact "that there were no extermination camps on German soil." Thus, he indirectly confirmed that the conclusions of the Nuremberg court, be it Dachau, Buchenwald, and others German camps were "extermination camps" and were fundamentally incorrect.

In the end, Bruno Kreizki formed the following opinion about the “Nazi hunter”, which cannot be disputed.

Engineer Wiesenthal, or whatever his name is current status, hates me because he knows that I despise his activities.

The Wiesenthal group is a kind of mafia, fighting with all sorts of base means against Austria. Wiesenthal is known for his very free handling of historical truth. For him, the end justifies the means; he often resorts to various kinds of tricks. He poses as a “hunter for Eichmann,” although everyone knows that the capture of Eichmann was the work of the special services. Wiesenthal strives with all his might to achieve fame.

It's hard to say what's driving this strange man. The desire for fame and recognition? Or does he want to hide undesirable aspects of his biography from others in this way? It is clear that Wiesenthal enjoys the fame he enjoys. As the Los Angeles Times wrote, “this is a man suffering from pronounced selfishness and a desire for signs of deference and respect.”

Kreizki gave a simpler explanation. He said that "Wiesenthal is driven by hatred." In the light of his documented mistakes and insinuations, instead of a man caressed by glory, we saw a man mired in corruption and a painful desire for self-affirmation.

This article is a shortened version of an essay published in the journal "Historical Review" (winter 1989-90, edition 9, number 4). A full index of sources is published there. This magazine is published once every two months. Mark Weber, member editorial board, studied history at the universities of Illinois (Chicago), Munich, Portland and Indiana. In March 1988, he testified for five days as an expert witness on " final decision Jewish question" and the Holocaust in the District Court of the City of Toronto.

Wiesenthal's private archive, kept at the Documentation Center in Vienna, was kindly and unconditionally opened to me by Wiesenthal's daughter Paulinka Kreisberg. His granddaughter, Rachel Kreisberg, helped me navigate the labyrinthine family genealogy. I am grateful to both of them. The Wiesenthal Documentation Center also houses personal files of war criminals and other materials with which he worked. During my work in the archive, most of the materials had not yet been cataloged and numbered. I have copies of all documents cited in this book.

I am very grateful to the archivists Michaela Wocelka, Brigitte Lehner and Gertrude Mergili, who helped me knowledgeably, patiently and kindly. I am especially grateful to Rose-Maria Austraat, who has worked with Wiesenthal since 1975. She told me of her admiration for “bossy,” as she sometimes called him, and of her great love for him. I learned a lot from her. I found part of Wiesenthal's working archive in the basement of the house of the Jewish community of Linz. The Jewish community of Vienna also provided me with generous assistance.

In the Bruno Kreisky archive, I gained access to previously unknown materials for scientists, which I really appreciate. Kurt Schrimm, the German prosecutor general who heads the Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg, and the German Ministry for the Defense of the Constitution gave me access to several documents that were previously closed to researchers.

Materials related to the search for Adolf Eichmann, previously also prohibited for publication, came into my hands thanks to a special decision of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, and for this I am grateful to the head of the Supreme Court Division of the Israeli Prosecutor General's Office, Osnat Mendel. The report of the Israeli agent Michael Bloch was provided to me by his sons Doron and Yuval. I am also grateful to Michael's brother, Ambassador Gideon Yarden. I am grateful to a number of people who interacted with Wiesenthal during his time working for the Mossad: Meir Amit, Dov Ochovsky, Rafi Meydan, and the man who asked to be referred to here by the name under which he worked in Vienna, “Mordechai Elazar.”

In Vienna I was hosted by the International Research Center for Cultural Studies. The staff of the Center greeted me warmly, and Dr. Luz Mosner helped me with useful advice. Avi Katzman, as usual, edited my manuscript carefully and skillfully. It is my pleasure to express my gratitude also to my literary agent and friend Deborah Harris.

Introduction. Glass sarcophagus

The world has never seen such a funeral: never before have the remains of so many people been buried in one grave. This funeral took place on June 26, 1949. They started in Tel Aviv.

In the main hall of the synagogue they placed a glass sarcophagus one and a half meters long, and in it were thirty porcelain urns with blue and white stripes. Newspapers wrote that the urns contained the ashes of two hundred thousand Jews killed during the Holocaust. The ceremony was attended by the city mayor, prominent public figures and rabbis. After speeches and prayers, the sarcophagus was loaded onto a police car and driven through the city streets. The car had difficulty making its way through the crowd. Everywhere she passed, people closed shops and workshops, lined the road and stood in mournful silence.

From Tel Aviv, the sarcophagus went to Rehovot, where President Chaim Weizmann lived. School classes were cancelled; the students were sent to watch the funeral cortege. The elderly, frail and almost blind Weizmann said only a few words, after which the sarcophagus was taken to Jerusalem. Thousands of crying people were waiting for him at the entrance to the city. Some of them brought bars of soap with them. They mistakenly believed that it was made from the fat of dead Jews, and wanted to bury it along with the glass sarcophagus in the Sanhedria cemetery, next to the crypts carved into the rock two thousand years ago.

“The glass sarcophagus,” he later wrote, “suddenly turned into a kind of mirror, in which many faces were reflected: comrades in the ghetto, friends from concentration camps, people beaten to death, starved to death, driven onto barbed wire along which there was current. . I saw fear on the faces of the Jews, who were driven with whips and sticks into the gas chambers by animals in human form, devoid of conscience and feelings and who did not want to hear their only plea: to let them live.”

By that time, Wiesenthal already knew several Israelis, but few in Israel knew him. The mayor of Tel Aviv, Israel Rokeach, also did not know who Wiesenthal was when he sent him a letter in Yiddish a few months earlier. Apparently, Wiesenthal's decisive tone impressed Rokeah. Wiesenthal wrote that the Austrian Organization of Former Concentration Camp Prisoners “decided” to transfer the ashes of the saints to Israel and “decided” to honor the Tel Aviv City Hall to receive these ashes. It didn't seem like a question, a request, or a suggestion; it almost sounded like an order. It was impossible to refuse, and Rokeah wrote back that Tel Aviv would accept the urns with “sacred awe,” although in fact he had no idea what to do with them.