Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel falsely claimed to have been a prisoner of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, AUR Senator Sorin Lavric claims.
NEWS: The Jewish repression machine targeting right-wing values in Romania bears the name of an ordinary impostor: Elie Wiesel. This chameleon did not spend a second at Auschwitz, but he forged his biography to the point that he took on the identity of another Wiesel, a Hungarian who actually spent time there. Even the liar Wiesel wrote a memoir about how much he suffered as a child in the death camp.
The real Wiesel simply denounced the loafer. The result? That loafer went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming a symbol of universal harmony. Moreover, he stepped into the shoes of a hunter of legionnaire “criminals”. He, the very one who falsified his life records to the point of making it a criminal lie. And his name is on the frontispiece of the institution that made it its mission to discredit Vulcănescu, Gafencu, Ianolide, Ogoranu. All you Masoretic Marxist out there – how much longer do you think we will put up with you?
NARRATIVE: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel appropriated another person's biography, falsely claiming that he had been a prisoner at Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
PURPOSE: To promote legionary, anti-Semitic and extremist rhetoric, to amplify sovereignist and ultra-religious sentiments, to undermine trust in state authorities, stor stir and amplify anti-establishment tensions and social unrest.
A contestation nearly six decades overdue
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: For decades, despite hundreds of authentic testimonies, documents and images, more and more conspiracy theories have been circulating in the public space, questioning the real suffering experienced by Holocaust survivors. One of these theories, which appeared in January 2003, is that Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was not a prisoner at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. The theory was launched by Miklós Grüner, a former Buchenwald inmate, who stated that prisoner number A-7713, which in his memoirs Elie Wiesel claims had been assigned to him, was not his, but actually his father’s, Lazar Wiesel, suggesting that Elie had assumed someone else's identity. Grüner claimed there was no evidence in the archives that Elie Wiesel had ever been registered as a prisoner in Nazi camps. In fact, in addition to the fact that this thesis is false, denying a documented part of history, it is also extremely dangerous because it fuels revisionism and anti-Semitism.
Fortunately, there is a series of undisputable evidence that debunks this lie. According to official documents discovered in Nazi concentration camps, Elie Wiesel was deported in May 1944 from Sighetu Marmației together with his family, consisting of his mother, father and sister. The mother and sister were separated and killed shortly after arriving at the camp, and Elie and his father were immediately sent to work in the Monowitz camp (Auschwitz III). After his incarceration at Auschwitz-Birkenau, he was transferred to Buchenwald in January 1945. Several archive documents, preserved in the collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Buchenwald Memorial, attest to his transfer. One of these is the Buchenwald prisoner register, which contains the name “Lázár Wiesel”, born in 1928 in Sighet. Elie Wiesel has stated on several occasions that his real first name was Eliezer, and that “Lázár” could have appeared in the camp records as spelling mistake, an official name, or even his father’s name. Elie Wiesel can also be seen posing alongside Miklós Grüner, in a famous photograph taken by the American army at the liberation of the camp in April 1945. Grüner claims that the person identified as Elie Wiesel in the photograph was actually his father, Lazar Wiesel. In fact, Lazar Wiesel had died in January 1945, shortly after his transfer to Buchenwald, and it is obvious that he could not have appeared in a photograph taken three months later.
Furthermore, there are countless testimonies from other survivors that confirm the teenager's presence in both camps. In addition, there are a number of personal testimonies, later confirmed by third parties, in the volume “Night”, one of the most important literary testimonies about the Holocaust, in which Elie Wiesel described his experiences during detention. His statements are corroborated by accounts from other survivors of the same transports and camps. Some of them have publicly confirmed that they met him in those circumstances. Also, in 2006, journalist Alexander Cockburn published an article in which he claimed that “Night” contained fictional scenes and literary exaggerations, although he did not deny Wiesel had been an actual prisoner. Cockburn criticized the narrative style and some temporal inconsistencies in the book, but did not deny for a moment that Elie Wiesel was a victim of the Holocaust.
Elie Wiesel and prisoner A-7713
One of the most frequently cited “items of evidence” invoked by Wiesel’s critics is the fact that there is no clear photograph of his Auschwitz tattoo – A-7713. Admittedly, , over the years, Wiesel refused to expose his arm, explaining that the mark was a symbol of trauma, not evidence to show to his deniers.
The number appears in one record as being attributed to Lazar Wiesel, Elie’s father, but he stated that his father actually had the number A-7712. In the broader context of the tragedies that occurred in the extermination camps, however, this statement is irrelevant. The Nazi camps did not always keep all the registers in order, especially for minors or those who were directly sent to work, as was the case with Elie Wiesel and his father. Teenagers were often registered collectively or with incomplete data.
In conclusion, the theory that Elie Wiesel impersonated another prisoner with the number A-7713 is unfounded and based on misinterpretations of Nazi camp archives. The bureaucratic inconsistencies at Buchenwald, which often recorded only the first name and an estimated age, are not evidence of imposture, but a historical reality of a registration system affected by chaos, war, and mass murder.
What we do know about Elie Wiesel, however, is that he was among the children evacuated from Buchenwald to France by the Red Cross. His testimonies, repeated over the years, are almost identical and supported by eye-witness reports. In addition, the dozens of volumes written by Elie Wiesel about his experience in the camps are recognized as valuable literary and historical documents by the entire international community.
Moreover, apart from museum archives, researchers from all over the world, including historians from Yad Vashem, the USHMM, and the Holocaust Memorial, have confirmed the authenticity of Elie Wiesel's presence in the camps. No one from the serious academic community has ever claimed otherwise.
The law on preventing and combating anti-Semitism, a threat to sovereignist rhetoric
BACKGROUND: The narrative in question falls within the broader spectrum of anti-Semitic disinformation spread by Romanian ultranationalists, now amplified by the recent adoption of the law that expands the criminalization of fascist, legionary and anti-Semitic expressions, explicitly targeting symbols, organizations, propaganda materials and the cult of Romanian leaders convicted of crimes against humanity. For the leaders and supporters of the Romanian sovereignist movement, however, this law represents more than a measure to protect the memory of the Holocaust. They consider it a threat to freedom of speech, a political instrument of intimidation and a threat to national identity. For example, they believe that the Legionary Movement should not be judged only in terms of extremism or anti-Semitism, but also as a form of national-Christian resistance against communism and the Soviet occupation. This position is rejected by official historiography and Romanian legislation, but is often invoked by sovereignist rhetoric as part of a lost “golden spiritual age”. Similarly, banning any form of positive reference to this movement is perceived as ideological censorship.
The idea that this piece of legislation does not reflect an internal necessity, but external pressure, especially from international Jewish, Western organizations, controlled by a secretive “cabal” that has Romania in its crosshairs, is also frequently circulated by sovereignist rhetoric. The narrative aligns with the theory that our country is a colony (sometimes French, sometimes Jewish, sometimes Western) “ruled from outside” and that its national identity is under cultural and spiritual siege. Thus, any law that targets the “nationalist” past is seen as an attack on Romanian identity and an attempt to rewrite history.
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