History teacher who outed holocaust fraudster Joseph Hirt calls for apology or criminal prosecution

Sunday, June 12th, 2016

Joseph Hirt points to a number that he had tattooed on his own arm while pretending to be a holocaust survivor at one of the many classrooms in which he has spoken. Hirt was never incarcerated in a concentration camp.

BY CAROLYN YEAGER

Andrew Reid, the New York public school history teacher who says he “believes in truth” has posted his own account of his very thorough investigation into the tales of holocaust survlievor Joseph Hirt on Scribd. online and it is a bombshell. Reid has done in this instance what the media and the schools continually fail to do before they publish a story or allow someone to speak to their students – scrutinize and vet the extravagant claims of holocaust survivors.  Of course, the media doesn’t do that because they know the claims won’t hold up; thus one can only conclude the media is helping to defraud the public on the subject of Holocaust. The schools are doing the same out of laziness and mental incompetence.

On pages 27-29 of his document, Reid lays out his idea that Mr. Hirt should have an opportunity to publicly retract his claims and admit his fraud, ask for forgiveness and cease his involvement in any further public presentations. If Hirt refuses to publicly recant, Reid recommends that law enforcement in both Lancaster County, PA and Lewis County, NY should pursue a criminal investigation. Right on, Mr. Reid! It has been the case ever since 1945 that only one side was punished; it’s about time these surlievors are held to legal account too. If they were, there would be a lot fewer of them.

Also at Scribd. Mr. Reid posted a letter he wrote to Joseph Hirt informing him of the above expectations. In it, he said,:

“If I do not see evidence of such a public repentant response in the near future, I will petition the District Attorneys in Lewis and Lancaster Counties to proceed with a criminal investigation, as much of your activity fits the legal definitions (in both the states of New York and Pennsylvania) of felonies and misdemeanors such as fraud, identity theft, and forgery.”

Well, I think Hirt should be prosecuted whether he recants or not. A crime is a crime, and saying you’re sorry doesn’t get a criminal off the hook in any other field.  Why should Holocaust hoaxers get special treatment – or continue to, I should say. I also think his family members should be cited for aiding and abetting his fraud by not speaking up. They’ve known for fifteen years that he was lying in schools and public forums, but said nothing until they were asked by Reid.

Interestingly, Reid wrote at Scribd. that “I am not a Holocaust denier – I believe in truth, and if someone is not telling the truth, I wonder what the lie is covering (the”real” truth.)” We have a lot in common! I believe in truth too, and this site Elie Wiesel Cons The World is “A blog dedicated to finding out the truth about Elie Wiesel’s tattoo,” and other aspects of Wiesel’s testimony. Truth is what we’re after. So I am hopeful Mr. Andrew Reid will continue along this path of investigating holocaust survivors. If he does, he might be in for some unpleasant surprises.

We must get as many people as possible to read the several items that he has posted at Scribd. His main report contains photographs and background material that is not included in the regular news reports which, however, are very scanty – in fact, I do not see any major media outlets reporting on it yet. That says a lot, doesn’t it. It looks like we’ll have to push it into the news.

According to an early local news story, Joseph Hirt has been an active holocaust surliever since at least 2001 when he conducted a 10-week adult night school class about his experiences during the “holocaust.” That led to other speaking engagements and “paved the way for a more intense catharsis: putting pen to paper.” This is a reference to a memoir that he has said he was writing, but obviously with no intention of ever finishing or publishing it. He is smart enough to know it would give him away.

Joseph Hirt speaking to Boyertown High School students in April, 2016. On June 8th, Andrew Reid published the results of his investigation, proving Hirt to be a fraud. No more school talks for him.

He gave as a flimsy reason for remaining silent so long (until 2001) that no one would or could comprehend the horror he had to tell.

“Even today . . . the mere mention of Auschwitz – the name, the word, conjures up images of whippings, of beating, of hunger, of cruelty, of horrible odors and smells, of burnings, of hanging and shootings, of death and destruction,” Hirt writes (in 2006).

Even a friend who became a county court judge continued to believe him. Hirt said that his family is what inspired him to finally speak out. “With two daughters, a son, and six grandchildren, Hirt realized that future generations needed to hear his story.” It’s a fitting irony that today Joseph Hirt has been ostracized by his immediate family and none of his three children will have anything to do with him, according to his nephew. His brother, a retired clinical Psychologist, thinks that Joseph may be delusional and that he actually believes his own stories now.

But no … because his nephew Michael says: “When I confronted him (a couple years ago) he basically claimed that the stories were taken out of context, or that the authors fabricated the stories,” which Michael didn’t believe. However very recently, when reached by phone and asked about Reid’s accusations, Hirt, who lives in the Adamstown area now, stood by his story.

“There’s nothing to defend. I was there and I don’t need to defend it. This is like being forced to defend being raped.”

Hirt has also said he is not Jewish, but is a Polish Christian. However, it is known that he was born to a Jewish family in Poland in 1930, making him 86 years old today, not 90 as he claims. (Another one who can’t tell the truth about his age.)

When it comes to the number Hirt had tattooed on his own arm, 194517, he not only put it in the wrong location on his arm but Reid discovered from Auschwitz-Birkenau records that this number belonged to a man named Kazimierz Sikorski, and it was not assigned until 1944, long after Hirt had “escaped.”

On April 10, 2014, more than 200 students participated in Wilson Southern Middle School’s third annual “Holocaust Hall of Memories.” Joseph Hirt was there, pictured here poisoning the minds of 6th grade girls Samantha Godal, 11, and Jaylinn Maurer, 12.  The students do research on a holocaust victim (I guess it was him) and read the story of the victim to family and members of the community. It’s pretty disgusting to see this sick old liar hanging out with tender young girls, filling their minds with horrible stories that have nothing at all to do with their lives. Yuk. The schools are responsible for pushing this unhealthy agenda.

On Tuesday, April 20, 2016, Joseph Hirt, who claims to be 90 though he’s only 86, now a resident of Lancaster County, told his emotional story of surviving the Holocaust to students at the Boyertown High School. He holds a photo that he claims is himself as a teenager, weighing only 60 pounds, sleeping on a stretcher in the Auschwitz concentration camp. And he tells the students that while in that condition he crawled under a fence, talked a German guard into letting him run away very fast before the guard could shoot him, then traveled to Yugoslavia to find his family. Yikes. Just how stupid are we supposed to be? What does this do to the minds of America’s youth who are told to respect and believe what he says?

Another picture of Hirt with that photo of a typhus victim at Dachau taken after the liberation, that Hirt tells his young audience is himself in Auschwitz in 1942, a victim of starvation! Why should young people be subjected to such gruesome images that will give them nightmares.

Holocaust “experts” like Deborah Lipstatdt, who took over from Ken Waltzer as the go-to person when frauds pop up (as I wrote about here), are only concerned about how it affects their precious and increasingly fragile Jewish myth. To them it’s sad only because it gives food for argument to “deniers.” They don’t care that schoolchildren are being lied to in their classrooms by speakers they’re told to view with reverence and awe. No, it’s not looked at that way. They believe that everything Hirt says did happen … just not to him. And this is what Hirt believes too, and how he justifies his lies. But I say it did not happen at all since most every surlievor is testifying to things that s/he may have heard about, but did not ever personally experience.

What does Deborah Lipstadt have to say about the outing of Joseph Hirt as a liar?

“The saddest thing is that it causes doubt about other survivors’ stories, which we know are true. The guy is a fake, is a fraud. Had people stopped to check the historical references he made it would have been clear that he was making it all up.”

Why then was it never clear to Lipstadt? As a “holocaust historian,” she has never questioned a single surliever story. Not a single one! She is only concerned with holocaust deniers.

Neither did Aaron Breitbart, a senior researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, ever look into Hirt’s story that he’s been telling for 15 years. Breitbart said:

“…you’re always going to find someone out there that makes up a story or embellishes a story.”

So what, huh? He added:

“Holocaust deniers, when they find a story that proves not to be true, they use it to deny the entire Holocaust,” he said. “Because you find one thing wrong, everything else is wrong, too.”

But wait. In Hirt’s story, a few things were discovered to be wrong, and it is agreed by all concerned that those crucial errors discredit his entire story. Why then does Aaron Breitbart say it doesn’t work the same with the official Holocaust narrative? Certain crucial errors should bring about the questioning of the entire narrative. The narrative has to withstand scrutiny in every part if it deserves to be believed. And it is the responsibility of those who claim themselves experts, like the Wiesenthal Center, Aaron Breitbart and Deborah Lipstadt, to police their own “industry,” yet they are absolute failures in this regard. The reason why is clear — they know the whole she-bang is a fraud that it is their job to keep propping up. They approve of people like Joseph Hirt and never question them unless they are forced to.

So kudos to Mr. Andrew Reid, a man who cares about the truth. I really hope that, along with following up on Hirt, Reid gets interested in some other surlievors and continues bringing the true facts to light. Be sure to read his report here.

Is Ken Waltzer on the outs; or is he in hiding?

Saturday, June 29th, 2013

By Carolyn Yeager

Deborah Lipstadt slammed leaders of the Claims Conference on June 26, 2013. (Getty Images)

Prof. Kenneth Waltzer used to be the man to go to when the press wanted to know what to think about any “holocaust” scandal. An example is the book, that was ready to be made into a movie, by Herman and Roma Rosenblat, Angel at the Fence.  Waltzer gained a lot from his role in debunking the story (even though it was easy to do),  receiving attention in the press as an “honest holocaust historian. “

Waltzer teaches German history at Michigan State University and is also director of its Jewish Studies Program since 1992 (with some time off).

When he was interviewed by Harper’s magazine about the Rosenblat fraud in December 2008, it boosted his reputation and standing.  But for some time now, the only one getting the media attention is Deborah Lipstadt, professor of Jewish Studies at Emory University. I have not seen a word written, nor any kind of announcement from Waltzer about his main project for months.  He spent 2011-2012 as the Winegarden Visiting Professor at UM-Flint during which time he worked with students creating their own papers to add to the overabundance of holocaust lore & trivia already in existence. [An interesting sidelight is that his students were directed to use “testimonies and memoirs”  as primary sources, and “books and articles” as secondary sources. There is obviously no need for original documents  in Prof. Waltzer’s classes.]

I have been scrutinizing Waltzer on the pages of Elie Wiesel Cons The World (EWCTW), not only for mistakes in his holocaust historical account,  but also for deception and cover-ups. Can it be that, from this, Ken Waltzer has come to be seen as more of a liability than an asset to other holocaust historians? I can only say it is possible, and Deborah Lipstadt is one who would make such a determination faster than many others.  Lipstadt is like a pitbull when it comes to fighting to keep her Jewish Holo Legend afloat; like a hound dog when it comes to sniffing out dangers to it.

Could it be that she has smelled a bad odor coming from Waltzer’s repeated screw-ups as revealed right here at EWCTW, and perhaps has even had a private “scholar to scholar” meeting with him?

Imagined Scenario

“You’re going on the sidelines, Kenny,  and I will take over. I don’t want to hear a peep from you until I can assess things and come up with the way forward. Because of your stupid “Rescue of the Children of Buchenwald,” Elie may now be damaged beyond repair … and even he is not more important than preserving the integrity of our sacred Holocaust narrative. If Elie Wiesel is not more important – then you, Ken Waltzer, are certainly not!”

Lipstadt’s special relationship with the Claims Conference

In any event, Lipstadt has taken it upon herself to go after the Jewish Claims Conference officials who handed out hundreds of millions of dollars of German taxpayers’ money to fake holo survivors for 8 years before they “discovered” in 2009 what they had been warned about  in 2001.

You can read about her reaction here. The failure on the part of the Claims Conference is certainly bad,  but my concern here is more with why Waltzer has nothing to say about it, or why news reporters are not seeking his remarks on Lipstadt’s comments. Has Kenny been put in the dog house?

Lipstadt has come out slugging as the “honest holocaust historian” on a new “Jewish Facebook” page on June 26.  She is listed as a poster on this page, along with Rabbi David Wolpe.

She wrote dismissively of the Claims Conference, saying that “No one will resign. No one will admit that they screwed up… big time.”  This informs us that in spite of her show of outrage, she considers it just a screw-up … not a crime! (Jews don’t commit crimes.)

But still and all, she remains a “great fan” because of  the CC support of survivors and historians. Historians?

Lipstadt said the Claims Conference funded the translation of portions of her website, Holocaust Denial on Trial, into Arabic, Farsi, Russian, and Turkish. “I remain tremendously grateful to The Claims Conference for this and other important educational and humanitarian work it has done,” Lipstadt said.

So the Claims Conference, that was instituted to provide a lifetime allowance for “holocaust survivors” who allegedly meet the requirements, also gives German taxpayer money to historians for their websites on which they promote a pro-holocaust narrative and belief. And attack those who are skeptical about it, as Lipstadt does on her “Holocaust Denial on Trial” website.

Is the Claims Conference to be a supporter of pro-holocaust propaganda, or is it to be the administrative arm for determining who is an eligible survivor? It seems to me that Deborah Lipstadt is as guilty of mishandling these funds as anyone! However, on the Claims Conference web site on the “What We Do” page we find:

We fund social services that assist elderly, needy Nazi victims, and allocate limited funds to support Holocaust education, documentation and research.

They have snuck those words into the third item of the four, after the part about funding social services for elderly, needy victims. If it’s legitimate, why do they have to sneak it? Why not make it an item of it’s own.

Lipstadt’s relationship with Ken Waltzer

On Dec. 28, 2008, Deborah Lipstadt wrote this on her blog about Waltzer’s work:

“Professor Ken Waltzer, who did the research that essentially confirmed that Herman Rosenblatt’s memoir was fabricated, has issued the following statement. It is exceptional in its sensitivity and its focus on the real culprits in this entire messy saga.

    I have learned tonight that Penguin Berkley Press has pulled the memoir, Angel at the Fence, which I and others have been investigating, from publication. Herman Rosenblat has shared the news that he invented the false story with Harris Salomon, president of Atlantic Overseas Pictures, and Harris Salomon has told the publisher. Penguin Berkley Press will seek restitution.  [The second sentence is awkwardly written, something that is common in Waltzer’s writing, showing he was not well educated before his admission to the graduate History program at Harvard. You decide for yourself how he got in. -cy]

I am saddened by the whole thing. First, Herman and Roma Rosenblat are of course to be faulted for making up a Holocaust love story and seeking fame and public attention, but their lying and dissimulating are actually understandable. Less understandable is the widespread belief in their story by the culture makers, including the publisher and movie maker and many thousands of others who have encountered it over a decade.

Second, such belief suggests a broad illiteracy about the Holocaust and about experience in the camps — despite decades of books, serious memoirs, museums, and movies. This shakes this historian up.

This memoir was at the far end of implausibility, yet until yesterday, no one connected with packaging, promoting, and disseminating it asked question about or investigated it. It is same with Elie Wiesel, exactly! Some actively resisted such investigation and tried to shut mine down. [Yes, indeed, investigation into Elie Wiesel’s Night is just as necessary as into the Rosenblat story.-cy]

The idea of a prisoner autonomously going to the fence daily, every day, in a Nazi concentration camp and meeting a young girl at the guarded, electrified fence who was allegedly hiding under false identity with her family in the nearby village and who threw him food beggars the imagination. Prisoners in konzentrationslager could not approach guarded fences; persons in hiding with a primary family group would not risk detection by going daily to a camp where SS guards were concentrated. The actual fence in Schlieben was right next to the SS barracks.

So Herman and Roma overreached and actually demeaned their own Holocaust stories — Herman forgot his brothers who kept him alive in the camps, Roma forgot her own remarkable and sad family story hiding not in Schlieben but elsewhere more than 200 miles away.

But where were the culture makers on this one? What kind of questions did Penguin Berkley Press bring to bear regarding a memoir about a love story set in a concentration camp? What kind of strategy did Harris Salomon embrace to elevate a candy coated Holocaust love story to bring Holocaust education to Middle America? This was not Holocaust education but miseducation. Holocaust experience is not heartwarming, it is heart rending. All this shows something about the broad unwillingness in our culture to confront the difficult knowledge of the Holocaust. All the more important then to have real memoirs that tell of real experience in the camps. [But real memoirs are called Holocaust Denial by D. Lipstadt! -cy]

I want to thank those who have worked with me – particularly forensic genealogists Sharon Sergeant and Colleen Fitzpatrick, and amateur Schlieben historian Uwe Schwarz and his associate Jean-Luis Rey.  I also want to thank the many survivors, including Ben Helfgott and Sid Finkel, who put their trust in me and shared their knowledge. Gabe Sherman’s reportage at the New Republic has been remarkable, and there will be more to say in the coming days. [See all the help he needs! LOL -cy]

Ken Waltzer
Director, Jewish Studies
Michigan State University

Finally,  a podcast produced by Lipstadt’s denial website:

It carries no date, but would be from 2008-09, or early 2010 at the latest! The interviewer’s name was Leshem.

Q. [Leshem]

Finally, finally, can you just tell us what the title of your forthcoming book is and when we might expect it?

 A. [Waltzer]

Well, I’ve got probably another year of writing to go. [At that time! So what happened? Give an explanation please. Where is the book?] The current title is The Rescue of Children and Youths at Buchenwald, and it tells the story of the communist-led underground in the camp who in ’43 and ’44 evolved a response to the rise of young children and youths inside Buchenwald. They tried to protect them; they tried to increase the likelihood or probability that they would endure until the end of the war. They did it in an ad-hoc (very specific) way because they didn’t have control of the transports and they didn’t know who, or what number, would be coming.   And initially they didn’t save very many. Many were sent to the outlying camps and died doing harsh work. [How does he know?] But from summer of  ’44 on, against the backdrop of the Allies coming closer from both East and West, which the underground knew about, the underground kept large numbers of boys inside the camp, kept them from being sent out to the outlying sub camps, sheltered them in barracks under underground control — a kind of tough love disciplined control — and gave them access to extra clothing and food, and even in a couple of cases in some barracks conducted schools that lifted their minds beyond the everyday nastiness of the camp. [This all comes from testimony – not under oath – of communists, jews, and communist Jews, not from records. Furthermore, it would not have been possible, and also was not necessary.]

And as a consequence, that helps answer the question how it is that there were 904 boys alive to be liberated  when Patton’s army showed up. They had been nurtured, protected, and helped to be made safe by older men, including Communists from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, and a Polish-Jewish element that worked with the underground to help save the boys. [You see how they have to credit themselves for the survival of youngsters because it doesn’t fit their overall extermination narrative. Yet, the youth were looked after because the German camp administration saw to it that they were looked after. Following the “liberations,” all the German personnel were killed or arrested or were forced to flee, thus the “victims” could tell any story they wished. If there were any honest ones, they were soon silenced. -cy]

Awards people give themselves

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

 Above: U.S. President Barack Obama with U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council Chairman Fred Zeidman (L), Elie Wiesel (2nd from R) and Holocaust Memorial Museum Director Sara Bloomfield (R) at the “Holocaust Days Of Remembrance” ceremony in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol April 23, 2009 in Washington, DC. Established in 1993, the Days of Remembrance are commemorated in April so that they coincide with the observance in Israel. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By Carolyn Yeager

It has just been announced that Elie Wiesel will be the recipient of the FIRST U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Award. Not a surprise. Wiesel is the one upon whom the “Holocaust Industry” feels safe in heaping praise, therefore he has enough “distinguished service” type awards to wallpaper a room.

What has he done to actually deserve them?  He has been in the service of the outlaw state of Israel for most of his long life, condoning the dispossession of the native Palestinian people, and even their destruction by napalm bombing and massacres carried out on a regular basis. He’s not really a very good liar, although a prolific one, and so his self-created life story is not convincing to a mind that has even a little bit of critical capacity.

If we search earnestly for what this man has actually accomplished, we find a mixture of self-promotion and Holocaust “memory” promotion. In other words, Wiesel is a promoter. He’s made his name synonomous with The Holocaust. Of course, he’s been helped in this by powerful organizations, not least of which is the New York Times Corporation. That is a story that is yet to be told on this website, but it has been well-explored by Prof. David O’Connell in his article “Elie Wiesel and the Catholics.”

Wiesel’s so-called “humanitarian work” has been directed almost exclusively to help Jews and Jewish causes. He makes statements now and then about other groups, such as Africans in Darfur, but mostly ignores all those who are currently in distress in the world today in favor of receiving large sums of money to speak about the Jewish past. He will be doing the same when he receives the award from the USHMM on May 16 – an award that may very well have a sum of money attached to it. Money, by the way, that will be coming from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers!

Instead of celebrating this whole hypocritical affair, we should be sickened by it. According to USHMM director Sara Bloomfield, right,  (see Bradley Smith’s youtube conversation with Sara), who will present the award, “no one else has done so much (as Wiesel) to honor the victims of the Holocaust by working tirelessly to create a more just world in their memory.” Hmmm. Once again, a more just world for Jews. She explains he does this by his “conviction that the Museum should be a ‘living’ memorial.” She doesn’t explain what makes it ‘living’ and don’t expect her to. These are just words that are designed to stir emotions or good feelings in the hearer, and is what they expect.  By such words we are to accept that “His legacy to humanity is unique and extraordinary.” Just don’t ask questions.

Those lucky enough to attend this dinner will also be able to hear Deborah Lipstadt, left, who will give a speech to promote her new book The Eichmann Trial. In fact, this year of 2011 was picked for the first award because it is the 65th anniversary of the verdicts at the first Nuremberg trial and the 50th anniversary of the trial of Adolf Eichmann. They can’t let “memory” die out, you know. And there is also that need to mark anniversaries of the most sacred dates in the Holocaust religious calendar.

P.S. A postscript to Seven-up: Here is your chance to leaflet a Wiesel event in person. Hop on a plane and get yourself to the Wardman Park Marriott Hotel in Wash. D.C. by May 16^th and you’ve got it made. Remember, you can download leaflets questioning Wiesel’s tattoo by clicking on the Downloads button on our menu bar—if you don’t have any leaflets of your own. Good luck and let us know how it went.