Elie Wiesel’s sex abuse comes back to haunt his legacy

Tuesday, October 24th, 2017

Which is worse: Grabbing a man’s arm or grabbing a woman’s ass?

By Carolyn Yeager

Attack ‘victim’ Elie Wiesel attacks 19 year old girl and runs away

Elie Wiesel has been accused by a Jewish mother of four, married, a Ph.D from New York University of having squeezed her buttock when she was a vulnerable 19-year-old attending a Jewish charity dinner with her boyfriend’s family. Wiesel, of course, died last year and it’s doubtful his family will comment on the charge.

What it brings to mind for me is this: Elie Wiesel fully cooperated in the prosecution of a 22 year old male, the at-the-time completely unknown Eric Hunt, for grabbing his arm in a hotel elevator in 2007. And now it  comes out that Wiesel is also a perpetrator: guilty of surreptitiously grabbing a young woman’s buttocks at a Jewish charity dinner in 1989.

In 1989, Wiesel was 61 years old and it had been only three years since he won the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo. He was at the height of his fame.

I believed Jenny Listman’s story right away because radio personality Deanna Spingola had told me of her experience meeting Elie Wiesel after a speech he gave as a “Holocaust survivor.” I do not recall where or when this took place, but Deanna claims she went up, along with other audience members, to meet the famous survivor after his speech. As I remember her telling it, he fixed his gaze on her with suddenly aroused interest, and whatever physical contact took place, whether handshake or something more, he held on to her longer than she felt was appropriate. He also engaged in chatty conversation, asking her about herself. Deanna, at the time an attractive single working woman, blonde and blue eyed, felt the unmistakable sexual vibes emanating from Mr. Wiesel toward her. I suppose if she had told him where she would be after the event (in the hotel bar for instance) he would have found a way to show up there. The impression Deanna had then, at a time she was still a believer in the holocaust narrative, never changed: that he’s a womanizer.

I never doubted Deanna’s account; I hope she will come forward and describe this experience in her own words, for the record. I am not the only person she told this to.

Now, hearing Jenny Listman’s story is confirmation for me that Wiesel was just another run-of-the-mill sexual predator from New York City, a breeding ground of such types.

Listman, describing herself as a non-observant Jew, writes about what happened to her in exquisite detail on her own blog page dated Oct. 19, 2017, as part of the #metoo Twitter campaign following the accusations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. She defines herself as a PhD, married mother of 4, New Yorker; data science, data visualization specialist. She begins her long post with a quote from Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1986:

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Listman explains the event as follows: She was participating in a group photo of her boyfriend’s family with guest speaker Elie Wiesel following a dinner given by the Jewish charity to honor their deceased father and husband. Wiesel suddenly said “Wait,” untangled himself from his place in the center of the group, darted in between Listman and her boyfriend at the far end, and then said, “Ok” to the photographer. Listman felt his hand on her shoulder inch down her back until, at the moment the photographer snapped the picture, Wiesel’s hand “squeezed her right ass cheek” and Wiesel “RAN, disappearing into the crowd of over 1000 people.”

When she told her boyfriend what had just happened, he responded with disbelief. Maybe she was mistaken, he suggested, or imagined it. No, she said, she was sure. But she didn’t push the matter any further. She knew it would just upset everyone. And so did Elie Wiesel know that.

The boyfriend, whom she later married and divorced, confirmed this conversation took place, according to Linley Sanders at Newsweek.

Remember that Wiesel’s speaking fee was $25,000 plus chauffeur-driven limousine to and from. Per talk. He was probably not friends of the man being honored, or his family, but was hired by the charity. (That is where so much of your charity money goes – something to keep in mind.) This explains why he was looking to entertain himself while doing a boring job for pay.

Reaction to this revelation

Reaction from the Jews is to downplay, disbelieve or deny. Non-Jews are staying away from the whole story – too hot to handle. They might say the wrong thing and never recover from it.

Commentary, a Jewish publication ran a dismissive article by Daniella Greenbaum the next day, Oct. 20, in which Greenbaum said she didn’t believe Listman’s account, and made her out to be mentally unstable.

The Forward Jewish news organization ran Listman’s accusations when they appeared, but then published a sort of apology/retraction two days later, saying the story “did not meet our journalistic standards and has been removed.”

The far-left Salon website posted the story, concluding that (in my words) there are not just ‘holocaust survivors,’ but there are ‘sex abuse survivors’ too, and we must listen to all of them and sort it out as best we can.

The best coverage of all is what you find right here on Elie Wiesel Cons The World.

Elie Wiesel condemns others but cannot admit his own human failings

To return to Wiesel and Eric Hunt, I think it is the most important moral of the story. Wiesel for many, many years accepted being portrayed as a paragon of blameless virtue and, in turn, portrayed all “holocaust survivors” as blameless victims of totally evil Germans. He was a proponent of the Jewish idea of “Never Forgive, Never Forget” and his infamous sentiment, “Every Jew must set aside in his heart a special place of hate for the German and what the German represents.”

When young Eric Hunt tugged on his arm in a San Francisco hotel demanding to speak to him privately, then let go, turned and walked away when Wiesel began yelling for help, Wiesel called the police and was okay with having Hunt charged with attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and the commission of a hate crime – which would have confined the youth to prison for possibly the rest of his life. Wiesel said he was very frightened, which was clearly an unforgivable thing to do to him.

Wiesel then testified at Hunt’s trial, during which he lied under oath about his purported Auschwitz tattoo and his book Night–no big deal to the blithe and breezy icon who can ‘run away’ from his own unlawful actions. Luckily for Hunt, his age and prior clean record allowed the counts against him to be cut to misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor elder abuse to which he had to plead guilty in order to be let off with time served and probation. A Man of Compassion, Wiesel is not.

How will the Wiesel admirers react to their icon’s sexual abuse of a teenager? Will there be more “#metoo’s” showing up in the near future? I’m sure there are more, but whether they have the will or desire to speak out is uncertain, especially as the majority are probably Jewish. I believe the Jewish power structure will crack down hard on any and all disloyalists. But we will keep watching and reporting it if more develops in this fascinating and unexpected saga.