inflated it to "maybe 1,000" (Globe and Mail, July 5, 1983) before tossing it to Edward

Greenspan. Edward Greenspan mustered enough hot air to inflate it to 2,000 (Globe and Mail,

November 21, 1983) before tossing it to Sol Littman whose lung capacity was able to raise it to

3,000 (Toronto Star, November 8, 1984). The ball, distended beyond recognition, was tossed back

to Wiesenthal who boldly puffed it up to 6,000 (New York Daily News, May 16, 1986) and then made

the mistake of trying to kick it - but poof! The ball burst!

Judge Jules Deschenes writing the report for Canada's Commission on War Criminals first

certifies that the ball had indeed reached the record-breaking 6,000 Canadian war criminals:

The Commission has ascertained from the New York Daily News that this figure is

correct and is not the result of a printing error. (Jules Deschenes,

Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 247)

But now the big ball was gone, and all that was left was the deflated pigskin which Mr.

Wiesenthal lamely flopped on the Commission's table - a list of 217 names (which in other places

becomes a list of 218 or 219 names). The list was focussed on Ukrainians - Mr. Wiesenthal's

Vienna Documentation Center Annual Report for 1984 claimed that "218 former Ukrainian officers

of Hitler's S.S. (elite guard), which ran death camps in Eastern Europe, are living in Canada."

Upon subjecting the deflated ball to close and prolonged scrutiny, Judge Deschenes, arrived at

the following conclusions:

Between 1971 and 1986, public statements by outside interveners concerning

alleged war criminals residing in Canada have spread increasingly large and

grossly exaggerated figures as to their estimated number ... [among them] the

figure of 6,000 ventured in 1986 by Mr. Simon Wiesenthal.... (p. 249)

The high level reached by some of those figures, together with the wide

discrepancy between them, contributed to create both revulsion and

interrogation. (p. 245)

It was obvious that the list of 217 officers of the Galicia Division furnished

by Mr. Wiesenthal was nearly totally useless and put the Canadian government,

through the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] and this Commission, to a

considerable amount of purposeless work. (p. 258)

The Commission has tried repeatedly to obtain the incriminating evidence

allegedly in Mr. Wiesenthal's possession, through various oral and written

communications with Mr. Wiesenthal himself and with his solicitor, Mr. Martin

Mendelsohn of Washington, D.C., but to no avail: telephone calls, letters, even

a meeting in New York between Mr. Wiesenthal and Commission Counsel on 1

November 1985 followed up by further direct communications, have succeeded in

bringing no positive results, outside of promises. (p. 257)

From the conclusions of the Deschenes Commission alone, 60 Minutes might have decided that Simon

Wiesenthal is not the kind of person whose pronouncements may be aired without verification.

Had any Ukrainian come to 60 Minutes carrying such a load of hatred toward Jews as Simon

Wiesenthal carries toward Ukrainians, and displaying - or rather flaunting - such credentials of

unreliability, 60 Minutes would never have given him air time, or if it did, it would be only to

excoriate him. Instead of exposing Mr. Wiesenthal, 60 Minutes has joined him in portraying a

world filled with Nazis, and so has lent support to a witch hunt more hysterical than Joe

McCarthy's sniffing out of Communists in the 50's. Consider the following excerpts from cases

submitted to the Deschenes commission for investigation as suspected Nazi war criminals, and see

if you don't agree. In the Commission report, all of the following cases end with the words,

"On the basis of the foregoing, it is recommended that the file on the subject be closed." The