through them, then one would imagine a memorable point, one that should be easier to remember

than, say, what color suit each participant wore at some huge function.

And so now we are forced to wonder whether this is the same event badly remembered, or whether

Mr. Wiesenthal was discovered twice under the floorboards, once in 1943 and again in 1944. The

more cynical reader might even go on to wonder whether any such event took place at all.

As the above comparison illustrates, and as a reading of Mr. Wiesenthal proves a hundred times

over, Mr. Wiesenthal's salient characteristic is not that he has a photographic memory, but

rather that he cannot tell a story twice in the same way. For a second example, take the case

of the Rusinek slap.

The Rusinek Slap

Former inmates took over command. One of them was the future Polish Cabinet

Minister Kazimierz Rusinek. Wiesenthal needed to see him at his office to get

a pass. The Pole, who was about to lock up, struck him across the face - just

as some camp officials had frequently treated Jews. It hurt Wiesenthal more

than all the blows received from SS men in three years: "Now the war is over,

and the Jews are still being beaten."

... He sought out the American camp command to make a complaint. (Peter

Michael Lingens in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 12)

That is one version, but here is another:

A Polish trusty named Kazimierz Rusinek pounced on Simon for no good reason and

knocked him unconscious. When Wiesenthal woke up, friends had carried him to

his bunk. "What has he got against you?" one of them asked.

"I don't know," Simon said. "Maybe he's angry because I'm still alive."

(Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 69)

These two accounts are so different that one wonders whether they are of the same event. In the

first account Wiesenthal is addressing Rusinek when Rusinek slaps him, while in the second

Rusinek pounces on him, which suggests an ambush. But more important, when you have been

pounced on and knocked unconscious, when you become aware that your friends have carried you to

your bunk only after you have regained consciousness, then you would not ordinarily describe

that as merely having been "struck across the face." Mr. Wiesenthal is a skilled raconteur - in

fact an erstwhile professional stand-up comic - so that it is inconceivable that he would weaken

a story, drain it of its significance, by turning a knock-out into a mere slap. With his

training as a stand-up comic, however, it is conceivable that he would turn a slap into a

knock-out.

Mr. Wiesenthal's stories are cluttered with this sort of self-contradiction. Take, for still

another example, the case of the Bodnar rescue: In Justice Not Vengeance, Bodnar saves only

Wiesenthal, and takes him to his apartment. In The Wiesenthal File, however, Bodnar saves

Wiesenthal together with another prisoner and takes the two to the office of a "commissar" which

office they spend the entire night cleaning.

And on top of outright contradiction, there are a mass of details that fail to ring true. For

example, although many Ukrainians did risk their lives to save Jews, the number who knowingly

gave their lives to save Jews must have been considerably smaller - and yet, as noted above,

that is what Wiesenthal seems to be asking us to believe that Bodnar did. And then too,

Wiesenthal tells us that in the execution which he had just barely escaped, the prisoners were

being shot with each standing beside his own wooden box, and dumped into his own box after he

was shot - where we might have expected the executioners to follow the path of least effort, Mr.

Wiesenthal's account shows them going to the trouble of providing each victim with a makeshift

coffin.

And just how did it come to pass that the executioners stopped before killing Wiesenthal