Discovered! Iconic photo in Buchenwald is dishonest photo-fakery

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

By Carolyn Yeager
copyright 2012 carolyn yeager

This is the photograph that Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight David Eisenhower ordered, in April 1945, to be posted in every German town and city 1 to show the defeated population the “true meaning of Nazism.”

Was this photo made to order according to Ike’s specifications?

A huge blown-up version then went on tour in the United States for the same purpose, to impress on the American people what evil they had gone to war against; why the sacrifice of blood and treasure was justified! Left: “A traveling exhibit of larger than life size photographs was first shown in St. Louis, MO in summer 1945 and then taken to Washington, DC.

It was plastered on the front pages of newspapers across the country. Thus it became one of the most iconic images representing WWII and of what later came to be known as “The Holocaust.” The intention was to portray the war as a noble effort to “save the Jews from enslavement and extermination,” just as the equally bloody American Civil War had come to be taught as a war “to free the slaves,” i.e. the Negroes who were not citizens of the country they were living  in.

Both are black propaganda campaigns that still use whatever is at hand, whether it be subterfuge or not.

In the case of the above photograph, we have learned that the standing figure, the part that makes the biggest, most memorable impact on the viewer, was added later – it was not in the original photo allegedly taken by Private H. Miller of the Civil Affairs Branch of the U.S. Army Signal Corps on April 16, 1945, five days after the “liberation” of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp by American forces.

A blogger, the owner of the Winston Smith Ministry of Truth website who goes by the nickname Black Rabbit,  decided a week or so ago, out of curiosity, to order the New York Times newspaper article from May 6, 1945 in which this photo was published, and when it came the photo looked like this:

Here is  page 2 and 3 of the New York Times article (click to show entire page):

What a shock to see only an empty dark space, and in the New York Times no less!

What happened to the standing man? I was the first to bring it to the attention of the participants in the comment section of furtherglory’s Scrapbookpages Blog after Black Rabbit posted a link to the original article there, and then we quickly began noticing the tell-tale signs of FORGERY about this strange figure who had always appeared odd to me  standing there naked as he is, but did not arouse enough suspicion amidst all of the onslaught of “holocaust” imagery, stories and news articles with which we are constantly being bombarded. We see what we are supposed to see, what we’re told we’re seeing, and almost always leave it at that.  It is also one of the better photo-forgery jobs of Allied holocaust black propaganda – could that be because it was being done at the behest of the Supreme Commander himself?

But let me point out some problems with this figure:

1. His position in relation to the post is an impossible one (see top photo; click once on image and then again for full enlargement). He is not leaning against the post, but neither is he standing in front of the post.  His feet are in line with the base of the post, but his left shoulder and arm are in front of the post – without any shadow of any kind. There is something ghostly about this figure, as though he’s an apparition.
2. The edge of his left arm is fuzzy, as if it is drawn or painted where it meets the post (detail right).  The rest of the outline of his shoulders and arms is very sharp, as though cut with scissors.  [In most large-scale reproductions of this photo we have seen (as shown on the Winston Smith Blog), the left edge of the arm is cropped because the larger the image the more noticeable it is.
3. Notice the blinding whiteness of his torso, and how different it is from his face, hands and legs which are darker (top photo again). The more one studies the torso and arms, the more they look like a drawing rather than a photograph. Notice how faint are the nipples and definition on his chest compared to the man in the lower bunk who is pushing himself forward the better to be seen.
4. Notice the relaxed, almost dreamy expression on the face of the standing man (detail below):  his lips are parted in a smile; his eyes are looking off into the distance, not at the photographer. He appears in an untroubled  state of mind, unsuited to the environment he’s in and unlike the other men .
5. 5.  A light source seems to be coming from above right as we face the photo, but the shadows on the legs and feet suggest a light source directly from above. Also, the angle of the shadows on the floor made by the post and by the right leg of the standing figure are not aligned. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6.  Ask yourself why he would be standing there completely nude, with that unlikely expression on his face, five days after the liberation? Also ask yourself why these men would still be lying in these bunks fully dressed, though some having taken their shirts off for effect, five days after the liberation? The only answer is that it’s a staged, arranged photo-shoot for propaganda purposes, not an impromptu entry by a photographer right at the time of liberation – as we are led to believe (because we are supposed to believe it) by the captions that accompany the photo. For example, in the Moberly (Missouri) Monitor-Index on April 30, 1945, the caption to this photo reads: “Slave laborers in their crowded rough bunks in the Buchenwald concentration camp near Jena, Germany, as they were found when U.S. troops of the 80^th Division entered the camp.”

 Fakery such as this is common in war propaganda; it just usually doesn’t last so long

We not only have the NYT newspaper article showing the photograph without the standing man, but we can also point out tell-tale signs that this figure was added to the photo … and that it was itself doctored to show a very skinny torso of a “starving” man. What deceit! If Eisenhower propaganda specialists had really found such scenes, they would not have had to invent them!

And yes, I’m asking how many personnel were aware, had to be aware, of this type of forgery. And some still living who are still perfectly aware that “The Holocaust” was and is a post-war intelligence operation with no holds barred. For example, so many of the photos that are archived and sold to the gullible public by the propaganda mill that goes by the name of  the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) (using your tax dollars) are wildly mislabeled. The USHMM identifies this very photograph as follows:

Former prisoners of the “little camp” in Buchenwald stare out from the wooden bunks in which they slept three to a “bed.” [Photograph #74607]

Elie Wiesel is pictured in the second row of bunks, seventh from the left, next to the vertical beam.

The man in the bottom left hand corner has been identified as Michael Nikolas Gruner, originally from Hungary, Gershon Blonder Kleinman or Yosef Reich. Isaac Reich is in the bottom row, second from the right and Max Hamburger is on the bottom row, fourth from the left. Perry Shulman from Klimitov, Poland is on the top bunk, second from the left (looking up). The man in the second row, third from left has been identified as Dawid Najman. The man in the second row, fourth from the left has been identified as Abraham Hipler; Berek Rosencajg from Lodz or Zoltan Gergely from Cluj. The man on the third bunk from the bottom, third from the left, has been identified as Ignacz (Isaac) Berkovicz, Abraham Baruch and Paul Argiewicz . Juraj (now Naftali) Furst is pictured in the third bunk, fifth from the left. Standing on the right is Chaim David Halberstam.

Others say the standing man is Simon Toncman, who after the ‘Liberation’ returned to his home country The Netherlands, started a family and became a successful businessman. He refused to talk about this photo until the day he died. 2 (Why would that be? Because he knew it was a fake! And because he had been told to keep quiet about it. That’s the best,  and only reasonable explanation.)

Of the identified men, one is definitely mis-identified! — and that is Paul Argiewicz. The real Paul Argiewicz was discovered by furtherglory;  I picked up his work here (scrowl down to the German drivers license).  How could the “Jewish Organizations” with access to Bad Arolson get that so wrong? They all do it all the time. For example, the ‘meantime -Allen Hall”  article says that “Red Cross records show Heiman Leefsma survived Barrack 56 as a 20-year-old.” Yet when we see who he is identified as in the Flicker picture, he has a balding head and looks like the oldest man there.

And then there is Elie Wiesel! Please see especially here for proof that the man in the bunk is NOT Elie Wiesel. So that is more fakery surrounding this photo, but in this case the person was really in the original photograph, but is an unknown person. The decision to call that man  Elie Wiesel was only made around 1983, with a Nobel Prize in mind.

Both the USHMM and the Allan Hall article are full of errors. There is no need for holocaust “historians,”  filmmakers, or “researchers” to be concerned about accuracy — it doesn’t matter how iconic or world-famous they are. Sloppiness goes unpunished, especially since so much of it is on purpose — to deceive and keep the myth going.  I will be posting about some other fraudulent pictures from Buchenwald in the future.

 

End Notes:

1. “US army commander General Dwight Eisenhower ordered this picture to be posted in every German town and city to show the defeated population the true meaning of Nazism,” writes Allan Hall.   http://www.meantime.com.au/mean-time-articles/2008/8/12/60-years-on-the-faces-of-nazi-shame-get-their-names-back/

2.  Same source (meantime.com):  Quote – “Now, 63 years after they were liberated, they have been united again in print by a German newspaper granted rare access to the files of the Red Cross Tracing Service at Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Using the original German SS registration cards and the camp’s “Todesbuch” – book of death – researchers were able to match up names with Jewish organisations around the globe.

Paul Argiewicz, 82, is now living in the US. He lost his parents in the gas chambers and is a regular on American TV shows talking about his experiences.

Red Cross records show Heiman Leefsma survived Barrack 56 as a 20-year-old. A Dutch national, he vanished shortly after liberation and inmate 130305 has not been heard from since.

Nikolas Gruener, now 80, is a Hungarian Jew who was suffering from TB at the time of liberation. “We warmed ourselves on the bodies of the dead before they cooled down,” he said. A successful businessman after the war, he took part in a number of interviews recently for director Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust archive. He lost his parents and two brothers in the camps.

Max Hamburger is now 88. He was active in the resistance in Amsterdam. He survived the death factory of Auschwitz because he was employed as a medic and went on to Buchenwald, where he weighed just 19 kilograms at liberation. After the war he settled in Belgium,where he became a psychiatrist. He speaks regularly to universities about the Holocaust and his experiences.

Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel is one of the most well-known Holocaust survivors. Wiesel, who coined the phrase “never again”, is now 79. He was awarded the peace prize in 1986. “That is me,” he said, when shown the photo in the 1960s.

Simon Toncman, a Dutch Jew, was 28 at the time of liberation. He married a survivor from Auschwitz and went on to have a successful career in accountancy in his homeland before dying from a genetic bowel complaint in 1975. He never spoke about his Holocaust experiences but revelled in his “wonderful family life”. He had nine grandchildren before his death.

Mel Mermelstein, 81,  is a Hungarian Jew whose whole family perished in Auschwitz. He was portrayed by Leonard Nimoy in a 1991 movie called Never Forget, about his lawsuit against Holocaust deniers in America who suggested the gas chambers were a myth. His autobiography is called By Bread Alone and he too speaks regularly about his time in the camps. Of the photo, he said: “We were alumni of some of the most terrible places on earth. This picture and the men in it mean more to me than I can say.”

 

Guest editorial: Elie Wiesel wins new literary honors

Sunday, August 5th, 2012

By furtherglory

(First published at Scrapbookpages Blog on August 2, 2012)

Yesterday the online Chicago Tribune had an article which reported that “In recognition of [Elie] Wiesel’s vast contributions to the art of the printed word, which includes more than 50 works of fiction and nonfiction, he has been named winner of the 2012 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize.”

[Photo of Wiesel at left is from December 2009 in Budapest, Hungary. ]

After reading this article, I immediately checked out Carolyn Yeager’s website Elie Wiesel Cons the World to see what she has to say about this new honor for Elie Wiesel.  I found a video which explains the whole story of Elie Wiesel in great detail.  The video starts out with the sound of an old fashioned typewriter as the keys hit the paper, typing out the URL of the website.  I love it!

The sound of the typewriter keys brought back a flood of memories; I was alive during World War II and I saw the news reels of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and read about the liberation of Dachau.  Yet I didn’t get interested in the Holocaust until many years later.  My lack of interest in the Holocaust was nothing unusual, as the video on Yeager’s website points out.

The article in the Chicago Tribune also points out that there was very little interest in the Holocaust as late as 1960 when Elie Wiesel’s book Night was first published in English.

This quote is from the Chicago Tribune:

After the war, [Elie Wiesel] worked as a journalist in France for Yiddish and French publications. The noted French writer and Nobel laureate Francois Mauriac urged Wiesel to write his Holocaust memoir, and Mauriac “went from one publisher to another,” said Wiesel, to persuade them to take on Wiesel’s book.

At first, “Night” generated little interest, and the English-language publication in 1960 “sold 5,000 copies in three years,” Wiesel said. “And the same thing, by the way, in France — everywhere.”

Why was the world slow to recognize the book’s value?

“Maybe it needed — the world itself needed maybe a whole generation for readers to realize that they must know something more” about the Holocaust, Wiesel said.

As a person who was alive and well between 1945 and 1960, I can tell you why no one was interested in the Holocaust during that period.  The years after World War II were the best of times.  During the 1950s, everyone was extremely happy to be living during peace time; no one wanted to re-live the war.  I was writing and selling magazine articles during the 1950s, but not stories about the Nazi concentration camps, which would not have been of interest to very many people at that time.  There were thousands of Holocaust survivors in American during those years, but they were keeping their mouths shut and hiding their tattoos.

I lived in Germany for two years after World War II, but I didn’t bother to go to see the former Dachau camp. When I went back to Germany for the first time in 1995, I didn’t go to see the Dachau Memorial Site.  The Holocaust did not become as popular as it is now until many years later.  If only I had anticipated the Holocaust mania, I could have written a novel about Auschwitz and Buchenwald and become a millionaire. Many people have urged me to write a fake Holocaust memoir, but I think it is too late for me; there are too many fake memoirs on the market.

I was one of the first to put the information on the Internet that Elie Wiesel could not have been in the famous photo taken in Barrack 56 in Buchenwald on April 16, 1945 because, by his own account as written in his book Night, he was in the camp hospital on that date. You can read that page on my website, which I updated 3 years ago, here.

Ken Waltzer Replies to My Question

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

By Carolyn Yeager

(Last edited on July 3 and added to on July 9)

In my previous blog of June 14, I asked the question “What happened to Waltzer’s book about the ‘boys of Buchenwald?’” On June 27, Ken Waltzer (pictured right) answered me … sort of. He said he was not having any trouble with the book, but he didn’t say when we could expect to read it. Not a word on that. But he assured Elie Wiesel Cons the World readers that we will find it a powerful story when we do.

Being a person who likes to stick with the practical and real, I’m not satisfied with Prof. Waltzer’s answer because it avoids the real questions in favor of repeating his claims without supporting them. On top of that, he called me a bigot. This is a grievous fault, it seems to me, in a man who is a Professor of Jewish Studies and German History at Michigan State University. Let’s take a look at what he’s said.

Before writing a comment to my blog, Waltzer first wrote a comment on June 26 to Scrapbookpages Blog. The blogmaster there, who goes by the name of “furtherglory,” had blogged June 16 on my ‘boys of Buchenwald’ article. He checks out new articles about Holocaust on the Internet daily, and seems pretty interested in Elie Wiesel. He added an update to the original blog and asked the question: “Has Ken Waltzer finally figured out that there were three separate people involved in this controversy and all three are named Wiesel.” No, he hasn’t. Waltzer continues to insist that they are all Elie Wiesel.

This is what Ken Waltzer said on Scrapbookpages Blog:

All the ridiculous claims that Wiesel was not Wiesel, Wiesel was not at Buchenwald, Wiesel was a different Wiesel are false, There was one Lazar Wiesel at Buchenwald. He arrived with his father, who appears as Abram, born 1900, and who died shortly after arrival. (He signs his name Shlomo.) Wiesel was then moved to block 66, the children’s block, part of a large child-saving operation by people aligned with the German-Communist led international underground in the camp. He is there with others from Sighet who affirm he is there. He is there until liberation. He is interviewed by American military authorities there. He goes to France.,…

There is no question, indeed there is firm proof, Elie Wiesel was at Buchenwald. And the sections of Night written about Buchenwald are generally accurate and conform to the experience he had.

Comment by Ken Waltzer — June 26, 2011 @ 6:53 am

 

And this is what Furtherglory said in reply:

 

Thanks for your comment. A man named Lazar Wiesel was given the tattoo number A-7713 at Auschwitz. A man named Abram Viesel was given the number A-7712 at Auschwitz. Both of them were transferred to Buchenwald in January 1945. Lazar Wiesel, born at Maromarossiget on 4 September 1913, an apprentice locksmith, political detainee and Hungarian Jew, was registered at Buchenwald on 26 January 1945 and assigned the ID number 123565. This must be the man whom you have identified as Elie Wiesel and Abram Viesel is the man that you have identified as Elie’s father. In the records at Auschwitz, Abram Viesel was born on 10 October 1900 at Marmarosz. He was old enough to be Elie Wiesel’s father, but not old enough to be the father of Lazar Wiesel, who was born in 1913, according to the records.

Elie’s full name is Eliezer Wiesel and he was born in Sighet, Romania (Marmarossiget) which was a part of Hungary in 1944. Elie claims he was born on September 30, 1928. Are you saying that his birthdate was mistakenly written as Sept 4, 1913 at Buchenwald?

A man named Lázár Wiesel, (note difference in spelling) born 4 October 1928, was also registered at Buchenwald and given the ID Number 123165. Are you saying that this man did not exist?

You wrote that Elie Wiesel (Lazar Wiesel) was interviewed by the American military. Lázár Wiesel filled out a US Army questionaire on 22 April 1945 at Buchenwald; he stated on the questionaire that he was born at Màromarossziget on 4 October 1928; he was a student who was arrested on 16 April 1944 and interned at Auschwitz and Monowitz. Are you saying that this man didn’t exist?

The records at the Buchenwald Gedenkstätte show that Lázár Wiesel was sent to Paris on 16 July 1945 with a convoy of surviving children and is registered on the transport list. The name Lazar Wiesel is not on the transport list to Paris, which makes sense since he was born in 1913.

Lazar Wiesel’s name was on the transport list from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, but the name Lázár Wiesel was not. That doesn’t mean that Lázár was never at Auschwitz. He could have been sent, from Auschwitz, to some other camp, such as Gross Rosen, and then sent to Buchenwald when Gross Rosen, or whatever other camp, was evacuated.

Comment by furtherglory — June 26, 2011 @ 3:40 pm

It didn’t take furtherglory long to answer Prof. Waltzer and I thought he did a fantastic job. I mean, he’s got it all right and in order and that’s why I’m copying it here … so I won’t have to do it myself. Furtherglory asked Prof. Waltzer some questions, but Waltzer has not yet answered them. I have a feeling he won’t, either, because he doesn’t like to answer questions that he hasn’t posed himself, or are not easy ones. You see, Waltzer spends most of his time talking to his brainwashed students or to Jewish people at Jewish group events, like at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Did you know that Jews run that museum and make up most of the attendees at its events? See here. They never ask tough questions.

But still, I was very happy to find a comment on my blog from Prof. Waltzer and I thank him for it. I think it says a lot for him that he is willing to engage, even if only to this extent. He wrote:

by Ken Waltzer  On June 27, 2011 at 2:26 pm

Carolyn Yeager suspects that Ken Waltzer is having trouble with his Buchenwald book, esp. proving Elie Wiesel was at Buchenwald as he says he was. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Buchenwald book is drawn on survivors’ experiences interviewed around the world and on documents from the Red Cross ITS and it will tell a powerful story of endurance and rescue inside Buchenwald.

And related to that larger story, in which Elie Wiesel is merely one of many boys who were helped and saved inside Buchenwald, there simply is no mystery whatsoever of Elie Wiesel, as Yeager claims. He arrived from Buna on a terrible transport on Jan. 26, 1945, with many others (including Miklos Gruner); he was accompanied by his father, who was recorded as Abram (but who signed his name as Shlomo); they were initially together in a barrack in the little camp, 59, I think, and then — after his father died — Elie Wiesel was moved in early February to block 66, the kinderblock. Miklos Gruner too was in block 66. Elie Wiesel was there with other boys from Sighet, who knew him; he was interviewed by military authorities after liberation, in order to permit departure from the camp; and he went after liberation in early June, 1945, to France, to Ecouis…. one among 425 boys who did so. He appears in subsequent pictures at Ambloy and Taverny where the religious boys were taken after Ecouis….

More important, Elie Wiesel’s commentary in Night bears fairly close resemblance to the actual experiences he had at Buchenwald — as recorded in camp documents.

He is the truth teller — Carolyn Yeager; you are the dealer in false claims and bigoted charges.

I am a bigot for doubting Elie Wiesel. I guess it’s some form of antisemitism to doubt that every word Elie Wiesel says is absolutely true … because he is the truth teller, according to Waltzer. And he, Waltzer, is going to prove it.

I consider what Prof. Waltzer is doing similar to ‘sleight of hand.’ He‘s repeating what he’s been saying all along … with a few convenient omissions (for example, the paper proving it he promised 6 months ago). We are to believe that 1) Eliezer Wiesel was listed as Lazar when he arrived, and then as Lázár Wiesel after liberation, with the wrong birth date both times; 2) his father Shlomo was recorded as Abram, also with the wrong birth date; 3) Shlomo is short for Abram or Abraham, not Solomon; and 4) those crazy, mixed-up Nazis got their records wrong.

Has Waltzer managed to falsify some document to show that the elder Wiesel was also known at times as Abraham? We’ll see. Then there is the problem with the pictures. He hasn’t told us which of these boys arriving at Ecouis in France in 1945 is Elie Wiesel.  The USHMM tells us Elie is in this picture but doesn’t say where. Can you find him?

He also didn’t point out to us which of these ‘religious boys’ is Elie Wiesel. He titled it “In France — religious boys, including Elie Wiesel.” But how can we be sure?

What he seems to be doing is  moving the attention away from these pictures to others of Elie Wiesel at Ambloy and Taverny. If there are such pictures I have never seen them. Have they been newly created? Why keep them hidden all these many years? (post note: See Comments #1,2 and 3) Does this mean that Waltzer is now declining to say that Wiesel appears in the famous Buchenwald photo (below)?

Or in this photo of the boys marching out of Buchenwald after liberation—which he has claimed for several years?

Prof. Waltzer, I know you consider yourself one of the privileged of the world, along with Elie Wiesel, but you must realize that even people of such privilege as yourselves cannot just change Shlomo to Abram as it suits you. When all others who were ‘liberated’ from the German camps are identified by matching their names, birth dates, and prisoner numbers, you cannot decide that in certain cases this formula does not apply and it is YOU who decides who is who.

From your comments, I’m expecting that when your book does finally come out, it will say that Shlomo is Abram and birth dates don’t matter, and this will be a small portion of the book overshadowed by other “powerful” stories of Jewish children. There may be no pictures of Elie Wiesel in France because he is just one of many in your powerful story. It will receive praise, coordinated in advance, from the Jewish media and academic class and no concern whatsoever will be expressed about any contradiction with the facts as they are contained in the Buchenwald archival documents.

But there will be one entity that will not let you alone or off the hook, and that is Elie Wiesel Cons The World website, and maybe some of our readers and followers.  So I say—thanks for the comment but we are still waiting and watching for clarification from you.

UPDATE (July 1st):

Shlomo Wiesel was never at Auschwitz or Buchenwald. If he had been at Auschwitz there would be a record for a man named Solomon Viezel or Wiesel born in 1894, who was 50 years old in 1944.

>>We read in Frank N. Magill, ed., “Great Events from History II: Arts And Culture Series: Volume 4, 1955-1969“, Salem Press, Inc., Pasadena, CA., 1993, p. 1700:

“SHLOMO WIESEL (1894-1945), the father of Elie Wiesel“

>>And in in Michaël de Saint Cheron, “Elie Wiesel : L’homme de la mémoire“, Paris, Bayard (coll. Biographie), 1998, p. 25:

“Quant à son père, Shlomo, il ne fut vraiment proche de lui que dans les camps, ces lieux hors du temps, hors de l’espace des vivants, où ils partagèrent le même sort, le même enfer, ou presque.
Son père, né en 1894, à Màrmarossziget, était un juif tolérant et éclairé, alors que sa mère, née en 1898 à Bocsko, cadette de six enfants devenue orpheline de bonne heure, très pieuse,  (Translation: His father Shlomo, born in 1894, in Marmarossziget, and his mother, born in 1898 in Bocsko.)

>>More importantly, Elie Wiesel filled out a form for the Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel sometime after the year 2000 (as my memory serves me) stating his father died as a holocaust victim.** On that form, he gave his father’s name as: Shlomo Vizel. He didn’t give a date of birth, but he gave a date of death as Jan. 27, 1945 and the cause of death as: Disease. He signed himself as Eli Vizel, son. That form can be viewed at the Yad Vashem archives online; that’s where I saw it.

Nowhere has Shlomo Vizel (Wiesel) ever been called Abram or Abraham, except now by Ken Waltzer in order to fit with the records for Lazar and Abram Wiesel at Buchenwald.

Stealing real victims and survivors identity is one of the lowest forms of behavior, according to holocaust survivor groups … or so they say. What do you think?

** It should be noted that Elie Wiesel did not fill out Yad Vashem forms for his mother or youngest sister affirming them as victims of the Holocaust. Why not? The logical reason is that he does not have any knowledge that they were indeed taken immediately to a “gas chamber” and killed, as the story has been put out for public comsumption. Even on Wiesel’s main page at Wikipedia it says they were “presumably killed.” That is all. Neither did his two older sisters, who were supposedly at Auschwitz for several months before being transferred to a sub-camp of Dachau, fill out this form for their mother and sister even though they are said to have been all together in the women’s line. These two surviving sisters were totally silent about their WWII experience, in spite of their famous brother, until Hilda, the eldest, gave a videotaped testimony to Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation in the 1990’s.