I did a little to add to an article that made little sense. Much more work needed here.....DW

It has come to my attention that by restoring the criticism section of Elie Wiesel, I may have inadvertently endorsed the view that the Holocaust was somehow a myth. I just want to make it clear that this was ABSOLUTELY NOT MY INTENT. My intent was to simply restore what I saw as straw man rhetoric back to critics like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein in their own words. As can be found out from the page history, THAT original section was contributed by Bogdangiusca. -- Dissident (Talk)[[]] 23:47, 19 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism

Tom Sawyer, a stupid kid who cannot spell his own name, thinks that Elie Wiesel is a weasel because he looks just like one.

Do we need to include this paragraph if Tom Sawyer does think so? Certainly not. Because it's totally groundless. However, IMHO, Chomsky's criticism is not without a point. If the IDF does cause excess innocent Palestinian civilian deaths, why can't we criticize Elie Wiesel over his silence? After all, he's a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He's supposed to stand out to say something if his some of people is now doing something horrible.

-- Toytoy

Is Wiesel or Wiesenhtal who claimed that Christopher Columbus was a converso?

I am moving the section on the Kosinski Hoax here. Given the total length of the article I don't think this subject warrants more than a couple of sentences, what was written seems like a rant written by someone who cares about Wiesel only because he is somehow related to this kosinski guy. It is very badly written and although I don't know anything about the content, it seems very POV. The article it links to has been marked for POV GabrielF 00:45, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Elie Wiesel played an important role in Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird (novel) hoax. The book describes Eastern European peasants engaging in incest, drowning, and meaningless violence - such as eyeballs being plucked out. Kosinski shows his deep hatred toward peasants and his complete ignorance about their life. He describes them using the same paint as Anti-Semitic books described Jews.

The real wartime experiences of Jerzy Kosinski were as follows: he survived under forged identity in the family of Catholic Poles in relatively safe and warm conditions. A Catholic priest had issued a forged baptism statement, that was the common practise in the Polish Catholic Church during the WW2. He was reunited with his parents after the war, but he has never showed any gratitude towards his rescuers. According to Kosinski's biographer, his family survived the war by pretending to be Christians, and this may have instilled in him a propensity to dissemble.

According to Janusz Glowacki, the idea to pretend that Painted Bird is based on his experience came to Kosinski, when Elie Wiesel informed him, that the review he wrote would not be very positive. During private meeting, Kosinski was able to convince Wiesel that his novel is one of the documentary about the horrors of Holocaust. Based on this assumption, Wiesel wrote enthusiastic review, that made Kosinski's novel famous. Painted Bird was even used during official lessons on Holocaust. This contributed to the false impression, that cruel peasants of Eastern Europe were one of the important actors of Holocaust. Reality was quite opposite: 98% of Jews were killed either in Gas chambers or killed by special squads of German police ("Einsatzgroupen") formed mostly by city dwellers from Germany. -- Completely biased, added by dimwitted Slavic editor Cautious

The editor that added the last comment, please sign it by your name. I added rephrased version to the main article. Cautious 00:14, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I removed the bit about Noam Chomsky because I can't find a citation for it anywhere and, frankly, it doesn't sound like something he would say. I replaced it with a cited bit from Norman Finkelstein. If someone can track down and verify the source, please feel free to put it back. AaronSw 08:58, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I take issue with the Finkelstein section. What Finkelstein said was unreasonable and unfair. Maybe its because I come from a tradition where ad hominen attacks on survivors are considered extremely unjust or maybe because my Dad knows Wiesel slightly and considers him a tremendously nice guy but Finkelstein's criticisms just don't seem to be all that notable. Are we really obligated to include every nasty thing someone has said about the subject of an article? Chomsky I can understand, he's a household name and his criticisms were at least intellectual in nature, but a guy who makes a quip "There's no business like Shoah-business?" Are we really obligated to include that? I don't want to censor the article, I have no problem presenting criticism of Wiesel, but can we at least present legitimate criticism from legitimate sources? GabrielF 05:45, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, even though Finkelstein's criticisms on this, and most topics, are more hysterical than factual, he has a following, and is reasonably well-known. Jayjg | (Talk) 17:38, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)