Posted on November 18, 2011 at 10:53 pm

by Carolyn Yeager

Myklos Grüner will finally get his day in court!

This writer spoke on the telephone with Grüner in Sweden in September 2010, at which time he assured her he would challenge Wiesel’s identity in a court in Budapest the following January. We know how court dates can be postponed, and even cancelled, but Grüner has proved himself to be a persevering man, and though a year late, it now seems he will indeed present his evidence in court. However, the defendant will not be the highly protected Elie Wiesel himself, but Hungarian rabbi Slomó Köves, who invited Wiesel to Hungary in 2009 while “knowing that (he) is not a genuine Holocaust survivor” but “stole the identity of an inmate,” according to Grüner.

In a news story written by Stefan J. Bos for the BosNewsLife service, dated Friday, Nov. 18, Grüner (pictured right) is reported to have said, “It’s better to sue Wiesel directly, but that is impossible. After 26 years of research, the Hungarian court provides the first opportunity to present my case, which I hope to do by suing the rabbi.” Grüner explained, “Elie Wiesel, who lives in the United States, is a very hard man to get. The whole world is protecting him, from [U.S. President] Barack Obama to [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel. They are all scared the truth will come out, because of prestige and money. I am also pressuring the German Bundestag to show me archives about Wiesel’s past. ”Grüner is quoted by Stefan Bos in a private interview on Friday as saying, “I don’t seek financial compensation, but I want [Köves] to tell the world who his friend Elie Wiesel really is. Wiesel was never born in Hungary or Romania as he claims and was not in a concentration camp. He doesn’t even speak Hungarian.” (I don’t know what evidence Grüner has that Wiesel was not born in Hungary or Romania, but I will surely be pleased if he has some.) Köves denies the accusations against Wiesel. “I was with him two days and Wiesel spoke with me in Hungarian. He also addressed parliament in Hungarian. These allegations are of an elderly man with some kind of complex,” he told BosNewsLife. Köves also told Bos he had not been invited yet for the January 24 court hearing. The 82-year old Grüner has said he is angry at Köves for accusing him of “falsifying history,” and comparing him to American academic Norman Finkelstein who wrote ‘The Holocaust Industry.

Elie Wiesel with Slomo Köves (center) in Budapest in 2009.

It’s possible this could deteriorate into a circus, but one hopes not. Grüner views the court case in Budapest as a giant leap in a long, painful, personal journey, according to the BosNewsLife story. As a 15-year-old boy in Auschwitz whose father had died, he “befriended Lázár Wiesel, who was among those protecting him. In January 1945, as the Russian army was coming, the inmates were transferred from a satellite camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau to Buchenwald in Germany.” The satellite camp was Monowitz, or Auschwitz III, for workers at the IG Farben plant.

Grüner exaggerates the length of time it took the Auschwitz inmates to get to Buchenwald, but he indeed was on that march. (The march itself was only one day, after that they went by train.) Grüner, as well as Lazar and Abram Wiesel, were registered at Buchenwald, but the man we know as Elie Wiesel never was. This is proved by the documents held at Buchenwald. Grüner states in the Bos article that Abram Wiesel, Lazar’s older brother, died on the way, but this is not as he described it in his book Stolen Identity, nor according to Buchenwald records which record Abram Wiesel’s death on Feb. 2, 1945 in Barracks 57.

Miklos Grüner, like most holocaust survivors, has memory problems and embellishes his facts … however, he was there and he is in the famous photograph (far left, lower bunk) while Elie Wiesel is not the man at the far right (upper bunk) that he claims is himself. This has been proven on this website Elie Wiesel Cons The World, most recently and thoroughly here.

According to Bos, Grüner still says that when he was invited to meet Nobel Prize winner Wiesel in 1986, he thought he would be meeting his old friend. Instead it was a man who Grüner claims he never saw before. “Wiesel refused to show me his tattoo. It was a very short meeting.” Grüner said he “doesn’t mind that Wiesel earns 25,000 dollars” for a 45 minute speech.” But I don’t want him to make money on the deaths of my family members and the millions of others who perished in the Holocaust,” he said, his voice trembling. “I want to leave this world knowing that I have told the next generation the truth…I even want a dialogue with Anti-Semites and the Catholic Church, for I later painted as an artist.”

Swedish newspaper article from 1986 of Grüner-Wiesel meeting. Grüner, on left, greets Wiesel, right, in a friendly fashion but is inwardly wondering who he is!

It is our hope that Mr. Grüner succeeds in having his day in court and that he will be able to make his case. It appears that at least the BozNewsLife news service will cover it, and that is good news for us. We know what he is up against, but still we hope.