$2.50 CounterPunchTells the Facts and Names the Names February, 2006 Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair VOL. 13, NO. 3/4 Is Chavez Hitler or Did Oprah Pick Another Fibber? Father Christmas? Venezuela’s Handout Truth and Fiction in Wiesel’s to Uncle Sam’s By Alexander Cockburn Shivering Poor hen in trouble, head for truth-or-fiction issue to the ground. Oprah By Larry Lack Auschwitz, preferably in the turned on Frey. On her show on January 26, t’s an odd, almost surreal scenario. W company of Elie Wiesel. It’s he clung to the ropes, offering the excuse IThe richest nation on earth is receiv- as foolproof a character reference as is that the “demons” that had driven him to ing millions of dollars in foreign aid available today, at least within the Judeo- drink and drugs had also driven him into this winter. And it’s coming from a Christian sphere of moral influence. One claiming that everything he wrote about head of state who Donald Rumsfeld has can easily see why Oprah Winfrey and her himself was true. Publishers including compared to Hitler and a government advisers saw an Auschwitz excursion in the Random House, which has made millions that a recent U.S. army report calls “the company of Wiesel as a sure-fire antidote off him, had rejected the book when he’d largest threat since the Soviet Union to salve the wounds sustained by Oprah’s initially offered it as a “fiction novel”. and Communism.” Book Club when it turned out that James Oprah brushed this aside. With well publicized support and cooperation from several U.S. Sena- Frey had faked significant slabs of his own “Say it’s all true” is what demons tors and more than a dozen members supposedly autobiographical saga of moral often whisper in an author’s ear. Ask T.E. of Congress, Venezuelan heating oil regeneration, A Million Little Pieces. Lawrence. Did the Bey of Deraa really rape marked down to 40 per cent below the Published in 2003, Frey’s irksome him? Lawrence suggests it in the Seven market price is warming the homes book swiftly became a cult classic. (The Pillars of Wisdom in paragraphs of fervent of more than 150,000 low-income present author was offered it in the summer masochistic reminiscence. This and other residents of nine northeastern states of 2004 by a young relative, presumably to adventures in Lawrence’s account of Brit- this winter. assist in his moral regeneration, but after ish scheming in Mesopotamia against the Citgo, the U.S. oil refiner and dis- glancing through a few pages returned it, Ottomans met with the ecstatic admiration tributor owned by the government of on the grounds that it “wasn’t his kind of of the Oxford-based equivalent of Oprah’s Venezuela, is also selling oil to Native thing”.) Winfrey picked it for her Book Book Club back in the early 1920s, after American communities at this same Club in September 2005, and it rocketed Lawrence had the 350,000-word “memoir” discounted rate, and is providing heat- to the top of the bestseller lists. privately printed and circulated. He’d writ- ing oil to soup kitchens and emergency For Frey the sky fell in when, on ten an earlier version in 1919 but claimed shelters in five states without charge. January 7, 2006, the Smoking Gun website this had been stolen while he was changing By mid-February Venezuela, the published documents showing that Frey trains in Reading, on the way to Oxford world’s fourth largest oil producer, which sells almost 50 per cent of the had fabricated many facts about himself, from London. (Reading has surely been oil it produces to the United States, including a criminal record. There were the site of more supposed thefts and losses had authorized heating oil discounts later charges of plagiarism. Frey ran of “completed manuscripts” and PhD dis- worth more than $30 million for low- through a benign gauntlet of trial-by-Larry sertations (“I didn’t make a copy!”) than income households and communities King on January 11, and Oprah called in any railway station in the world.) in the U.S. Fadi Kabboul, an energy to stand by her Pick of the Month. She Just over half a century later it occurred specialist at the Venezuelan embassy said that what mattered was not whether to Colin Simpson and Phillip Knightley of in Washington, estimates that by April Frey’s book was true (the Fundamentalist the London Sunday Times to ask the sup- his government will have given a total claim for the Holy Bible) but its value as posed rapist for his side of the story. They of about $50 million in price discounts a therapeutic tool (the modern Anglican hurried off to Turkey and tracked down to charitable groups, Indian tribes and position on the Good Book). the town to which the Bey had retired, impoverished Americans who use oil But by now every columnist and books arriving at his home only to learn he’d (Oil continued on page 8) page editor in America was wrestling the died not long before. Relatives told the 2/CounterPunch British reporters that the Bey would not sodes are open to serious question. Below, the new edition of Night under “fiction have found Lawrence appetizing prey. The I cite views, vigorously expressed to me and literature” but, under the categorical Turk was a noted womanizer, and when in in recent weeks by a concentration camp imperative of Kakutani’s “memory as a Mesopotamia was always getting the clap survivor, Eli Pfefferkorn, who worked sacred act” or a phone call from Wiesel’s from consorting with whores on his excur- with Wiesel for many years; also by Raul publisher, hastily switched it to “biography sions to Damascus. Hilberg. Hilberg is the world’s leading au- and memoir”. Within hours it had reached It’s fun to think of Oprah grilling Law- thority on the Nazi Holocaust. An expanded number 3 on Amazon’s bestseller list. That rence about his claims, freshly exposed on version of his classic three-volume study, same evening, January 17, Night topped Smoking Gun, telling him she felt “really The Destruction of the European Jews, was both the “biography” and “fiction” best- duped” but that, “more importantly, I feel recently reissued by Yale University Press. seller lists on BarnesandNoble.com. that you betrayed millions of Orientalizing Wiesel personally enlisted Hilberg to be Nonetheless, over the next few days masochists who believed you”. the historical expert on the United States there were articles in the Jewish Forward But hardly had Frey been cast down Holocaust Commission. and in the New York Times, also a piece from the eminence of Amazon.com’s If absolute truth to history is the stand- on NPR, saying that Night should not be top bestseller before he was replaced at ard, Pfefferkorn says, then Night doesn’t taken as unvarnished documentary. In the number one by the new pick of Oprah’s make the grade. Wiesel made things up, in Forward article, published January 20, Book Club, Elie Wiesel’s Night, which a way that his many subsequent detractors challengingly titled “Six Million Little had the good fortune to see republication could identify as not untypical of his modus Pieces?”, Joshua Cohen reminded Forward at this fraught moment in Oprah’s liter- operandi: grasping with deft assurance readers that in 1996, Naomi Seidman, a ary affairs. Simultaneous with the Night what people important to his future would Jewish Studies professor at the Graduate selection came news that Oprah Winfrey want to hear and, by the same token, would Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and Elie Wiesel would shortly be visiting not want to hear. had compared the original 1956 Yiddish Auschwitz together, from which vantage version of the book with the subsequent, point Oprah, with the lugubrious Wiesel he book that became Night was origi drastically edited translation. at her side, could emphasize for her ABC- Tnally a much longer account, pub- “According to Seidman’s account, TV audience that there is truth and there is lished in Yiddish in 1956, under the title Un published in the scholarly journal Jewish fiction, that Auschwitz is historical truth at di Velt Hot Geshvign (And the World Re- Social Studies”, Cohen wrote, “Wiesel its bleakest and most terrifying, that Night mained Silent). Wiesel was living in Paris substantially rewrote the work between is a truthful account and that Wiesel is the at the time. By 1958 he had translated his editions — suggesting that the strident and human embodiment of truthful witness. book from Yiddish into French, publishing vengeful tone of the Yiddish original was The trouble here is that in its central, it in that year under the title La Nuit. Wiesel converted into a continental, angst-ridden most crucial scene, Night isn’t historically says it was severely cut down in length by existentialism more fitting to Wiesel’s true, and at least two other important epi- Jerome Lindon, the chief editor at Editions emerging role as an ambassador of culture de Minuit. In 1960 came the English trans- and conscience. Most important, Seidman Editors lation, Night, published by Hill & Wang. wrote that Wiesel altered several facts in Alexander Cockburn The 2006 edition of Night is translated from the later edition, in some cases offering ac- Jeffrey St. Clair the 1958 French version by Wiesel’s wife, counts of pivotal moments that conflicted Marion, and in the introduction Wiesel says with the earlier version. (For example, in Business he has “been able to correct and revise a the French, the young Wiesel, having been Becky Grant number of important details”. liberated from Buchenwald, is recuperating Deva Wheeler In the New York Times for January 17, in a hospital; he looks into a mirror and Assistant Editor Michiko Kakutani wrote in her usual plod- writes that he saw a corpse staring back at Alevtina Rea ding prose, with her usual aversion to any him. In the earlier Yiddish, Wiesel holds unconventional thought, that “Mr. Frey’s that upon seeing his reflection he smashed Counselor embellishments of the truth, his cavalier the mirror and then passed out, after which Ben Sonnenberg assertion that the ‘writer of a memoir is ‘my health began to improve.’)” Published twice monthly except retailing a subjective story,’ his casual That said, Cohen emphasized that August, 22 issues a year attitude about how people remember the whereas “Frey, for one, seems to have past — all stand in shocking contrast to falsified the facts of his life in order to CounterPunch. the apprehension of memory as a sacred satisfy ego and the demands of the market, All rights reserved. act that is embodied in Oprah Winfrey’s Wiesel’s liberties seem more like reconsid- CounterPunch new selection for her book club, announced erations, his process less revision than in- PO Box 228 yesterday: Night, Elie Wiesel’s devastating terpretation. Reading Night, one encounters Petrolia, CA 95558 1-800-840-3683 (phone) 1960 account of his experiences in Ausch- the birth of thought about the Holocaust [email protected] witz and Buchenwald.” — the future of history, concomitant with www.counterpunch.org Amazon.com got the message quickly its study. In both versions, the book’s intent enough. The site had been categorizing is to engage not the undeniability of the 3/CounterPunch Holocaust, but the man who has undeniably context offered by Kenneth Waltzer, pro- in Night as a distant figure, armed with a emerged from its horror.” fessor of Jewish Studies at Michigan State truncheon. This reverent tone about Wiesel and University, who is writing a book called “After January 1945, the underground his work is customary. People mostly write The Rescue of Children at Buchenwald and concentrated all children and youth that about him and his work with the muted awe whose interesting letter was published in could be fit into this windowless barracks of British tourists reading a guidebook to Forward at the end of February: — more than 600 in total. Younger children each other in a French cathedral. In The “The January 20 article on Oprah were protected elsewhere. When the U.S. Jewish Press for February 1, Andrew Silow Winfrey’s selection of Elie Wiesel’s Night Third Army arrived April 11, 1945, more Carroll was a bit friskier. He cited Wiesel for her Book Club was on the mark (‘Six than 900 children and youth were found as declaring to the New York Times that Million Little Pieces?’). Any memoir is among 21,000 remaining prisoners. Night “is not a novel at all. All the people a reconstruction shaped by purpose and “Wiesel since has acknowledged the I describe were with me there. I object audience rather than a direct statement of role played by the clandestine underground angrily if someone mentions it as a novel.” memory — and even Wiesel’s Night is not but did not attend to it in Night. Fellow And yet, Silow Carroll went on, “in the an exception. barracks members recall being protected past, Wiesel hasn’t helped matters in this “Night focuses primarily on the rela- from work and getting extra food. They regard. In 1972, Hill & Wang packaged tion of father and son in Auschwitz and in recall efforts by their mentors to raise their Night with two other books, Dawn and The Buchenwald. When Wiesel loses his father horizons. They also recall heroic interven- Accident, which Wiesel clearly identified as in January 1945 at Buchenwald, he drifts tion by Kalina or by Schiller during the novels. The set’s cover refers to the works into a listlessness and fog from which he final days to protect them. as ‘Three Tales by Elie Wiesel.’ In a later emerged only after liberation. He recalls “Even then, many boys were lined up edition of the same volume, Wiesel refers in Night only the terrible final days of the at the gate, to be led out April 10. However, to all three books as ‘narratives,’ although camp, in April 1945, when the Nazis sought American planes flew overhead, sirens he calls Night a ‘testimony,’ and the other to evacuate Jewish prisoners and then all sounded, the guards ran and Kalina, who two ‘commentaries.’” Though sales have now soared, I’m not sure how many people will read it now, If absolute truth to history is the beyond buying the new edition as a gesture standard, Pfefferkorn says, then Night of solidarity with Oprah and survivors of the Holocaust. It’s certainly a strong piece doesn’t make the grade. Wiesel made of writing about the central terrible experi- ence of Wiesel’s youth, but it doesn’t take things up. prisoners. was with them, ordered the boys back to the a background in literary criticism to see “Wiesel writes of his relation with his barracks. They were still in the barracks the that it’s artfully and carefully fashioned as father, the presence of God, and his own next day when units of the U.S. Third Army a kind of symbolic narrative about the re- survival and its meaning. He does not broke through the barbed-wire fences. lationship between sons and fathers (there describe the social context in which he “Wiesel’s Night is about becoming are four such portraits in the short book) existed during the final months. The bar- alone. But Wiesel was also among hun- and, crucially, between the Christian God racks, his place in the camp, his relation dreds of children and youth aided by a (the Father) and his Son. The style seems to others — other prisoners, Jews, boys purposeful effort at rescue inside a con- influenced by Albert Camus, particularly — remain murky. centration camp.” L’Etranger. Camus won the Nobel Prize “What is omitted in Night is that the 16- Forward slightly trimmed Waltzer’s for literature in 1957, one of the youngest year-old was placed in a special barracks contribution, from an article to a letter. recipients ever. This was the time during created by the clandestine underground as In the fuller version, which he has kindly which Wiesel was reworking his Yiddish part of a strategy of saving youth. Block supplied, Professor Waltzer wrote his last narrative into the far more terse, Camusian 66 was located in the deepest part of the paragraph as follows: work, with its Camusian title. disease-infested little camp and beyond the “In Night, Wiesel writes about viewing As a piece of historical witness to the normal Nazi S.S. gaze. It was overseen by himself in the mirror after liberation and experience of the inmates, the doomed Czech Communist Antonin Kalina and by seeing a corpse gazing back at him. But and those who survived inside Auschwitz his deputy, Gustav Schiller, a Polish Jewish another picture taken after liberation shows and Buchenwald, its focus is extremely Communist. Wiesel marching out of the camp, fourth on narrow, primarily on the main character, “Schiller, who appears briefly inNight , the left, among a phalanx of youth, moving Eliezer, and his father. One learns with a was a rough father figure and mentor, together, heads high, a group guided by certain surprise that though Wiesel’s sister especially for the Polish-Jewish boys and prisoners who had helped save them.” Tzipora died in the camps, two other sis- many Czech-Jewish boys; but he was less A photograph accompanying Waltzer’s ters survived. In the new edition, Wiesel liked, and even feared, by Hungarian- and text, credited to Jack Werber, of Great doesn’t mention them. Romanian-Jewish boys, especially reli- Neck, New York, shows exactly that. The Night certainly contains none of the gious boys, including Wiesel. He appears young Wiesel’s head is high, like the oth- 4/CounterPunch ers’. But this parable of a triumph for hu- done to survivors, 35 per cent of them the reader for if Wiesel were to provide man solidarity was absolutely contrary to below the poverty line in the US.” an answer, the veracity of the story would the parable Wiesel was set on rewriting in There are piercing passages in Pfeffer- dissolve like the morning mist in the Sinai French from the Yiddish volume. In the late korn’s memoir concerning Wiesel’s artful desert. Maintaining hold on a violin as 1950s a man with instincts as finely tuned pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize which he one marched the March of Death is highly as Wiesel’s to useful frequencies on the po- was awarded in 1986, of his opportunism improbable. However, a violin in the midst litical dial probably would not have thought and betrayals in the murky battles over the of human debris strains the imagination it advantageous to dwell on the heroic role design of the Holocaust Museum. and questions memory. How did Juliek of Communists in the death camps. All In Night, Pfefferkorn isolates a number hold on to the violin on the death journey? the more is this true in recent years, when of episodes in which he makes a strong Deprived of food and drink, when each step Wiesel’s most celebrated moments have case that Wiesel departed the shores of stubbornly refused to follow the next one, come when hunkering down for sessions of historical veracity for fiction. The two I how did Juliek manage to clutch the violin amiable moral counsel with Ronald Reagan cite here involve a boy playing a violin in his numb fingers? Would the SS escorts (who wanted to pretend that the SS should amidst a death march, and the second is have let him keep it? be retrospectively forgiven because, after one of Night’s most powerful scenes, the “And from this anus mundi, suddenly all, they weren’t Communists and fought hanging of three inmates. the melody of a Beethoven concerto is the Great Satan) and George Bush, on Of the first episode, Pfefferkorn writes: heard, wafting through the corpses, the whom Wiesel urged the war on Iraq as a “The story of the ‘violin episode’ takes groans of the dying, the stench of the necessary moral act. place during the death march from Ausch- dead. Eliezer had never heard sounds so witz to Buchenwald with a short gap at pure. ‘In such a silence. It was pitch dark. ne of the perennially fascinating Gleiwitz in January of 1945. Mercilessly I could only hear the violin, it was though Othings about Wiesel is the preter- driven by the SS guards, stragglers were Juliek’s soul were the bow. He was playing natural alertness of his antennae for the shot at and shoved to the side road. The his life. The whole life was gliding on his opportune audience, his sense of what will, columns of inmates arrived in Gleiwitz, af- strings -‑ his lost hopes, his charred past, so to speak, “play” usefully for him. This brings us, by way of Eli Pfefferkorn, to “The unspoken, the mute, the covert Francois Mauriac. These days Eli Pfefferkorn, age 77, are his metier; albeit an ambiguity lives in Toronto. A man, on the evidence of several phone conversations, of alert intel- laced through with shrewd intelli- ligence and charm, he too is a concentration camp survivor. Originally from Poland, he gence that would make many a pro- spent some of the war years in Maidanek, fessional diplomat envious.” then three labor camps, then Buchenwald. ter having dragged themselves through the his extinguished future. He played as he Near the end of the war he endured a death snow‑swept roads in freezing temperatures would never play again.’ This powerful march to Theresienstadt in Moravia, where for about eighty kilometers. Immediately and emotionally moving scene, celebrating the surviving inmates were liberated by the upon arrival, they were herded into barns. the triumph of the human spirit over the Red Army on May 8, 1945. Pfefferkorn’s Drained, they dropped to the floor — the grinding SS machinery is the very stuff that parents perished in other camps, and he dead, the dying and the partially living heroic fiction is made of. But is it a memoir tells me he owes his life to his mother, who piled one on the other. factually recorded? Obviously, Wiesel’s shook his hand loose from hers when the “Under this heap of crushed humanity putative memoir, written while on a boat family was about to be deported, and told laid Juliek, cradling a violin, which he to Brazil, is but a recollection of experi- the 13-year-old to scram. has carried all the way from Auschwitz ences seen through the eye of his creative Pfefferkorn eventually came to the to Gleiwitz. Eliezer, somehow, stumbles imagination. And yet, the melancholy United States, taught, and spent some time on Juliek, “...the boy from Warsaw who melodies that came out of Juliek’s violin working as an assistant to Wiesel on the played in the band at Buna... ‘How do were the first strains of a myth orchestrated Holocaust Memorial. Once an uncritical you feel, Juliek?’ I asked, less to know the by Wiesel and his disciples, over a period admirer, his present estimate of Wiesel is answer than to hear that he could speak, of thirty years.” not favorable, and he sets his views forth that he was alive. ‘All right, Eliezer ... I’m A major scene in Night, one that con- at length in a fascinating manuscript he is getting on all right ... hardly any air ... worn tributed hugely to the book’s success in the preparing to submit to publishers. He was out. My feet are swollen. It’s good to rest, West, and its impact on many Christians kind enough to send me some chapters. By but my violin...’ starting with Francois Mauriac, was the no means short-changing Wiesel on what “Eliezer -‑ the inmate -‑ wonders, execution of three inmates in the Buna he regards as his genuine achievements, Pf- ‘What use was the violin here?’ Wiesel - work camp. As Pfefferkorn writes, “The efferkorn can be unsparing: “He’s become ‑ the memoirist -‑ does not find it necessary fascination of Christian theologians with a eulogist of the dead but he doesn’t raise to give an answer to the question. Such an the Wiesel phenomenon must be traced (Night continued on page 10) his mellifluous voice against the wrong answer, I assume, should be of interest to 5 / CounterPunch The Endangered Visigoth The Rise and Possible Fall of Rick Pombo

By Jeffrey St. Clair

he banner stretched across the en even in this arena Pombo’s future seemed be restricted. Later, Pombo said he ran for trance to the Crobar – a trendy uncertain: he was not a particularly gifted office because the family ranch had been T New York nightclub –read, “Wel- public speaker, nor possessed of an [espe- designated “critical habitat” for the San come to the Pombo-Palooza”. At the door, cially] engaging personality. Joaquin kit fox, the world’s smallest wild members of the Rockettes handed out Pombo likes to describe himself as canid and an endangered species. cowboy hats to the A-list invited guests. a rancher. He shows up to congressional Both stories are embellished to the Inside, a model clad in rhinestone hot pants hearings in cowboy boots and a Stetson. point of fantasy. Pombo’s ranch was never and a cleavage-enhancing top that might He owns a ranch, but spends less time at risk from either action. The allegation have chastened a Hooters waitress rode a on it than Bush does clearing sagebrush about the kit fox driving his family from mechanical bull. On the stage, the Charlie in Crawford. Pombo did place photos of their homestead is particularly outlandish, Daniels Band cut loose with fiddle-driven himself on his website constructing a pink since the feds have never designated criti- Southern funk as lobbyists and lawyers, barn for his children’s pet pigs over the cal habitat for the tiny vulpine. politicians and tycoons danced the two-step last Christmas break. Pombo used to sport Real ranchers tend to look kindly on the and drank iridescent blue martinis. a thin Brokeback Mountain moustache. kit fox, since it feeds almost exclusively Such was the scene in 2003 at Con- These days he brandishes a manly goatee. on rodents regarded as crop pests. In any gressman Rick Pombo’s coming out party. The new growth was detected shortly after event, the habitat designation wouldn’t The young legislator from Tracy, California the movie premiered. have restricted ranching operations but had just been appointed the new chairman Western myths aside, the Pombo fam- development. And, indeed, that’s precisely of the House Resources Committee. At 42, ily didn’t make their fortune selling milk what ticked off Pombo. He paid $5,137 into he was the youngest chairman on Capital from their small herd of dairy cows. They a regional conservation fund as an impact Hill. Bush couldn’t attend the hoedown got rich by buying up ranchlands and fee for houses he built on his “ranch”. The but he sent a herogram congratulating the subdividing them into ranchettes for Bay houses went up; kit fox populations went congressman he calls “Marlboro Man”. Area commuters. As a member of congress, down. That night money flowed faster than Pombo pushed for freeway projects that In 1992 Pombo won his seat in Con- champagne. Before Charlie Daniels had caused the value of properties owned by gress after narrowly defeating Democrat finished his first set, Pombo’s campaign his family to soar. Patty Garamendi, daughter of the hugely war chest had been fattened by more than Some thought that young Richard unpopular state insurance commissioner $250,000, courtesy of an assortment of might get a job selling real estate for his John Garamendi. real estate barons, oil and mining company uncle, who owned one of the largest bro- executives, timber lobbyists and casino op- kerages in the Central Valley. But Pombo n 1996, Pombo published a book- erators. Many of these contributors would never passed the real estate exam. Ilength screed against the Endangered turn out to be the cream of lobbyist Jack Politically, however, his uncle proved Species Act and environmentalists. Titled Abramoff’s clientele. (Abramoff now faces to be a huge help. The red and white Pombo This Land is Your Land, the book was many years in prison for his corrupt deal- real estate signs are ubiquitous across the ghost written by rightwing columnist ings.) And that was just their opening bid. congressional district. Thus, Rick Pombo, Joseph Farrah. Woody Guthrie wouldn’t Over the next two and half years, Pombo’s a tubby and slick-haired man of Portuguese recognize many of the sentiments set forth political accounts would be fattened by an descent, enjoyed huge name recognition in the Pombo-Farrah tract, which called additional $2 million from an ever-expand- before he ever considered running for for the dismantling of the Endangered ing retinue of lobbyists, real estate barons office. Species Act and disposal of public lands to and corporate PACs. Pombo has told various stories about private interests. Though not a bestseller, Pombo’s is an unlikely success story. the event that prompted him to run for the book acquired the allure of a Gnostic He is a college drop-out from a dusty Congress. For years he claimed that he gospel among the “Wise Use” crowd, ranching town in California’s Central was enraged by plans to turn an abandoned whose concept of wise use derives from Valley. He showed no particular flair for railroad near his family ranch into a bi- God’s commandment to Adam in the book politics during his early days and, when cycle trail which — he fumed — would of Genesis to pillage the earth’s natural given the chance, bankrupted the family lead to the entire valley being designated resources as he thinks fit. The book put dairy ranch. Politics was a last resort, and a “viewshed” where development would Pombo on the ledger as an apex berserker 6/CounterPunch in what Ron Arnold, the P.T. Barnum of the more to his enemies than to the shock mental community who think the answer Wise Users, has billed as the War Against troops of the property rights movement. is just no to any change, and I think that’s the Greens. Plucking bellicose quotes from his book a problem.” But the Wise Use Movement’s back- and his stump speeches, the Sierra Club At those words from a politician once ing of Pombo certainly doesn’t explain turned Pombo into the personification of regarded by greens as the most enlightened his rise to power. The Wise Users have environmental villainy. In dozens of mass member of the House, critical habitat went had their congressional champions in the fundraising appeals, Pombo was presented extinct without a fight. There were warn- past, notably Helen Chenoweth, of Idaho. as the new James Watt, the dark agent of the ing signs of Miller’s impending collapse. But they’ve tended to labor in obscurity, looting of the public estate. Pombo glories Shortly after the Democrats lost control of deemed as coarse Visigoths even in their in his role. “I’m their bogeyman”, Pombo the House, Miller gave up his leadership own party. For his first few years, Pombo gloats. “They need me to raise money.” position on the Resources committee. toiled in a similar kind of isolation. His The Sierra Club’s threat inflation of Friends said he was too tired to fight the speeches at property rights confabs de- Pombo almost certainly factored into likes of Don Young and Pombo. nouncing Bruce Babbitt as an agent of the Tom DeLay’s decision to catapult the Another Democrat, Dennis Cardoza, United Nations and the reintroduction of congressman over the heads of more sen- Representative in California’s 18th District, wolves to Yellowstone as an example of ior members to the chair of the Resources worked closely with Pombo to craft his as- “political paganism” garnered only the oc- Committee, one of the most prized seats sault on ESA, including a provision that is casional comical notice in the gossip pages in Congress. likely to bankrupt the U.S. Treasury faster of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Pombo also got help from the Demo- than Halliburton’s Iraq contracts. Pombo’s Times. His bills to dismantle the Endan- crats. His rewrite of the Endangered Spe- bill calls for the federal government to gered Species Act rarely attracted more cies Act, which eliminates the designation pay off developers for not violating the than a few dozen co-sponsors and usually of “critical habitat” for listed species, sets law. Under this rule, the feds would have went extinct without a hearing. in legal stone many of the practices im- to compensate property owners for value Lately, though, Pombo has been on a plemented administratively by his former of a “proposed use” for land inhabited roll. His McCarthyesque hearings on the nemesis Bruce Babbitt when he served as dangers of “eco-terrorism”, where envi- ronmentalists were hauled up before the House Resources Committee and forced Since 2001, Pombo has paid his wife to endure harangues from both Democrats and his brother at least $465,000 in con- and Republicans, have now culminated in a series of arrests by the FBI of nearly a sulting fees from his campaign fund. dozen environmental activists on charges of sabotage, conspiracy and arson. Rod Clinton’s Interior Secretary. by endangered species. It’s a shakedown Coronado, an editor of the Earth First! In Clinton-time, Babbitt simply refused provision. A Central Valley rancher could Journal and probably the most famous ani- to designate critical habitat for dozens of proposed to build a casino in kit fox habi- mal rights activist in North America, was at-risk animals and plants, forcing envi- tat, and the feds would be required to pay also arrested for giving a speech in 2003 at ronmental groups into court to compel the out millions to keep them from building UC San Diego where he demonstrated how Fish and Wildlife Service to live up to its it. Then the next year the same landowner to make and use a Molotov cocktail. legal obligations. The suits were slow in could come back with new plans for a golf Pombo’s scheme to sell off millions of coming while Clinton was in office, but course and get another payoff. acres of federal forest and range lands, an they began to proliferate after Bush came Sound absurd? A similar law was idea once considered political poison, was to power. passed by the voters of Oregon two years adopted by the Bush administration this Bush and Pombo used those lawsuits, ago. The law was initially stuck down by fall, with a proposal to dispose of 200,000 most of which resulted in favorable ver- a state court as unconstitutional, but last acres of public land to mining and timber dicts for the greens, to charge that the law month the Oregon Supreme Court rein- companies and real estate speculators, all was outdated and was being exploited by stated the statute, which virtually wipes in the name of funding rural schools. militant environmentalists and litigation- out the state’s vaunted land-use planning This fall Pombo came close to realizing happy lawyers. They got some unexpected regulations. his wildest dream when the House of Rep- help from one of the liberal lions of the Pombo’s bill is currently stalled in the resentatives passed his bill to annihilate the House, George Miller, the former chair Senate, where Lincoln Chaffee, the Repub- Endangered Species Act by a hefty margin House Natural Resources Committee. This lican from Rhode Island, has vowed to keep of 229 to 193. Soon after this mighty tri- summer Miller said that the law needed to the Endangered Species Act from being umph, the Washington Times announced be reworked. “Pomboized”. (It may be a coincidence but the onset of “Pombomania” among young “There is a recognition that the cur- one of the only zoos in the country that has Republican ultras. rent critical habitat arrangement doesn’t a kit fox exhibit is the Chaffee Zoological Ironically, Pombomania may owe work, for a whole host of reasons,” said Gardens in Fresno.) Miller. “There are some in the environ- Chaffee may resist his fellow Republi- 7/CounterPunch can, but you won’t hear similar objections the reimbursement, Pombo said he was super lobbyist. “I think I met the guy a from California’s senior Senator Dianne doing research. And perhaps he was. A few times”, Pombo said last month. “But Feinstein. She and Pombo have worked few weeks later after he returned from his he never stepped foot in my office. Never closely over the years on everything from grand tour, Pombo’s office leaked a white lobbied me about anything.” water policy in the Central Valley (more paper to the Washington Times calling on Unfortunately for Pombo, Abramoff water for farms, less for salmon) and log- the Bush administration to sell off a dozen has left a distinct paper trail across Capital ging in the High Sierra near Lake Tahoe. national parks. Hill, with much the forensic evidence to The real estate caucus clings together. What about Pombo’s wife, Annette, be found in the chambers of the Resource Pombo says there are other laws he whose recipe for Apple-Walnut Crosscut Committee, where the business of his wants to obliterate in the next few years. Pie is the most popular page on the con- clients was so often decided. Duane Gib- At the top of his hit list is the National gressman’s website? Surely, Annette’s son, a former top staffer on the Resource Environmental Policy Act, the law that travel expenses shouldn’t have been cov- Committee, left the committee to work in requires Environmental Impact Statements ered by the committee. It turns out that Abramoff’s firm, where he represented for all federal projects. since 2001 Pombo has paid his wife and mining companies and Indian tribes. Gib- It’s been a dramatic run, but, alas, his brother at least $465,000 in consulting son helped Pombo draft a rider that would Pombo may not survive to witness the fees from his campaign fund. hand over thousands of acres of prime promised land. The ethical noose is tighten- federal lands to mining companies. Three ing around his political career. his wasn’t Pombo’s first infraction. months before Pombo inserted the measure Back in the 90s, Pombo made rich TIn 2004, he used office funds to pay in the budget bill, Gibson hosted a $1,000- sport of attacking Hillary Clinton for her for the printing and mailing of a flier to a a-head fundraiser for the congressman. role in the Travelgate affair. But it now nationwide list of property rights fanatics In 2002, Pombo went to bat for Charles turns out that Pombo’ office has its own urging them to write letters in support of Hurwitz, owner of Maxxam and infamous travel-related problems. Pombo’s political Bush’s plan to let snowmobilers run amok looter of redwoods and of Savings & Svengali is a man called Steven Ding, who all over Yellowstone Park. The Ethics Loans. Pombo and Tom Delay intimidated has long served as his chief of staff. When Committee ruled that the flier violated federal regulators into dropping an inves- Pombo landed the Resource Committee the rules on franking and slashed his mail tigation into Hurwitz’s banking practices. chair, he also made Ding chief staffer for budget. Later that year, Pombo gave all of Most of the legal footwork was done by the committee. Ding was double dipping, the Republican staffers on the Resources Gibson, who is now under legal scrutiny getting paid by both the committee and Committee a paid vacation in October so by federal prosecutors. Hurwitz, of course, Pombo’s office. they could disperse across the country to has been a top contributor to Pombo’s Ding lives in Stockton and travels back work in GOP election campaigns. campaign war chest. to California every week. The Resources In October 2005, the Center for Public Republicans are so worried about Committee picks up the tab. From 2003 Integrity reported that Pombo had taken Pombo’s ethical dilemmas that they’ve through 2004, Ding billed the committee two overseas junkets to New Zealand and recruited an old war-horse to challenge him $87,000 in commuter charges. Some of Japan. Both trips were paid for by a group in the upcoming primary: Pete McClos- those visits may not have been to see Mrs. called the International Foundation for key. McCloskey is a former congressman Ding. Even though he has two positions Conservation of Natural Resources, which and a sponsor of the original version of with Pombo, Ding has enough time to also receives funding from bioengineering firms the Endangered Species Act. McCloskey hire himself out as a private consultant such as Monsanto, also from pro-whaling calls Pombo the “Duke Cunningham of to corporations and lobbyists seeking his interests. Pombo did not report the trip on the environment,” a reference to the now insider knowledge. Last year, Ding earned his income tax form, though the IRS con- imprisoned congressman from San Diego $57,000 in outside consulting fees. On four siders overseas junkets as gifts on which who memorialized his menu of bribes on occasions, the House Ethics Committee has taxes must be paid. his congressional stationery. cited Ding for lowballing or failing entirely “I really have no idea what is going on Add to that the fact that Pombo’s dis- to report such outside remunerations. with that foundation,” said Pombo, when trict is changing, as more and more Bay Ding wasn’t alone, though. He was confronted with the report. “Obviously I Area commuters move onto subdivisions traveling down a trail that was blazed by will have my accountant check into this.” that have sprouted up on the old ranches his boss. Each year Pombo’s office spends Even by the high standards of congres- and farms of the Central Valley. nearly twice as much on travel as the of- sional evasiveness, this was a spectacular If Pombo really wants to keep his seat, fices of the adjacent congressional districts. bout of memory loss. Pombo founded perhaps he should lose the goatee and go The biggest freeloader is Pombo himself. International Foundation for Conservation back to that suggestive moustache. CP Last summer, Pombo took his fam- of Natural Resources and served as its ily on a two-week vacation, touring the chairman until July of last year. Jeffrey St. Clair’s new book, Grand national parks in a rented RV. He sent the Then there’s the Abramoff connection. Theft Pentagon, is now available from $5,000 bill to the Resources Committee. Like Bush, Pombo now pretends to have CounterPunch: call 1-800-840-3683 or When Rep. Ellen Tauscher questioned a foggy recollection of the beleaguered order online. 8/CounterPunch (Oil continued from page 1) holds and communities in Connecticut, man Kabboul says the transit authority to heat their homes. Delaware, Rhode Island and Vermont. is reconsidering and may accept another High oil prices that have hurt low- Most of Citgo’s discount oil sales are offer from Citgo.) income people and communities have being channeled through anti-poverty In February Republican U.S. Repre- been a bonanza for big oil. Exxon-Mobil, groups which coordinate their efforts with sentative Joe Barton of Texas slammed for example, led record performances by state agencies that administer the federal Citgo’s program as “politics, not charity”, U.S. oil corporations last year by posting Low-income Heating Assistance Program and authored a resolution demanding that a profit of over $36 billion. (LIHEAP). Citgo hand over all records pertaining to Citgo has also benefited from rising Citgo plans to offer low-cost oil to its insidious discount fuel oil program to oil prices, and ironically Venezuela’s more Native American tribal govern- Congress. programs of fuel assistance in the U. S. ments and NGOs assisting native groups While Venezuela’s unprecedented — and also in nearly a score of South next winter. Encouraged by contacts with gift of foreign aid to the world’s only su- American and Caribbean nations —have tribal leaders in the Northeast and also in perpower has drawn condemnation from been bankrolled by the company’s 2005 Michigan, Minnesota, and Montana, the right-wing politicians, bloggers and pres- profits of close to a billion dollars. company and the Venezuelan embassy sure groups (and even inspired more than In December 8,000 low-income are inviting Native American tribes and 37,000 email pledges to boycott Citgo), residents of housing projects in the Bronx organizations throughout the U.S. to send it has so far failed to provoke the furi- began receiving the first deliveries of representatives to Washington in March to ous condemnation and interference that Citgo-subsidized heating oil offered in assess their needs for fuel oil or other of might have been expected from the White the U.S. In a deal brokered by Bronx Citgo’s oil products. House. This could be because over10 per Democratic Congressman Jose Serrano, With the market price of heating oil cent of the foreign oil that helps keep about eight million gallons of discounted averaging about 50 per cent higher this the U.S. economy viable is supplied by oil were sold to three non-profit housing winter than it was a year ago, the savings Houston-based Citgo, which operates oil corporations which returned the savings to their tenants through rent reductions. More oil deliveries to church programs for the poor, health clinics, hospitals and “Our objective is simple–to help other non-profits in the Bronx, Harlem and Queens are scheduled to continue people of limited means through the through March. In January, Citgo’s cut rate heating winter,” declares Citgo’s president oil was delivered to some 48,000 needy households in Maine and 45,000 more in Felix Rodriguez. Massachusetts. The Bangor Daily News reported that the “deep discount” on the Venezuela is offering have been nearly as terminals in 25 U.S. ports, refineries in eight million gallons of oil Citgo sold in popular with some Northern politicians Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, Maine would reduce each recipient’s oil as with their low-income constituents. In Illinois and New Jersey and a network of bill by an average of $100. In addition welcoming Citgo’s assistance Bronx Con- more than 14,000 U.S. gas stations. the tribal councils of each of Maine’s gressman Serrano said “we are truly grate- With a few exceptions, GOP members four Indian tribes (Maliseet, Micmac, ful to Citgo and the people of Venezuela of the House and Senate, like most of their Passamaquoddy and Penobscot) received for their generosity”, and added that “it is Democratic counterparts, have tacitly ac- discounts from Citgo valued at a total of absolutely shameful that no American oil cepted the position that keeping the home $543,000, bringing Maine’s share of Cit- company has similarly stepped forward fires burning for poor Americans trumps go’s price reductions to over $5 million. to help communities struggling with high Bush administration efforts to turn the Also in January, according to the energy costs during the winter heating sea- heat up on the Chavez government. Christian Science Monitor, Citgo de- son.” Massachusetts Congressman Wil- Curmudgeonly grousing that Ven- livered about 12 million gallons of dis- liam Delahunt has frequently expressed ezuela’s oil largesse is simply a publicity counted heating oil to low-income Mas- the view that Venezuelan oil assistance stunt intended to embarrass Bush and sachusetts households. The Boston-based “is about people, not politics”. curry favor with the American people has newspaper said the average Massachusetts Predictably, many American politi- not dampened the enthusiasm of an eager household that received the discounted oil cians do not share this outlook. In De- crowd of state and tribal governments that saved $184 in heating costs, and estimated cember, aware that relatively few Chicago is still lining up to request Citgo’s oil that additional deliveries will bring the residents heat with oil, Citgo offered the discounts for their constituents. total value of the price discounts Ven- city discounted diesel fuel instead, as a It’s difficult for even hard-hearted ezuela is offering to cash strapped Bay way to avoid a planned 25 cent increase conservatives to find a way to argue with Staters at somewhere between $10 and in bus fares. Despite pleas from advocates Citgo CEO Felix Rodriguez’ explanation $14 million. for the poor Chicago’s transit authority, of his company’s oil price allowances for In February, Citgo announced that its with support from Mayor Richard Daley, the poor. At the ceremony celebrating program of 40 per cent oil price discounts refused Citgo’s offer and imposed the his company’s deal with Massachusetts, would be extended to low-income house- fare increase. (Embassy energy spokes- Rodriguez explained that “our objective is simple–to help people of limited means 9/CounterPunch through the winter.” at some of America’s largest oil compa- currently training about 1100 Venezuelan “We aren’t doing this to score points nies, including Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, physicians and 2500 other health care with anyone, and we’re not using oil as a Conoco-Phillips and several others, workers. political weapon” says energy envoy Kab- including Citgo, asking them to consider Turning to education, Gibbs writes boul. “This (U.S. program) is just part of donating a portion of their profits to assist that by employing a Cuban-designed our commitment to assist people in need people and communities suffering from program that teaches basic literacy in throughout the Americas”, he says. “It’s the effects of skyrocketing oil prices. seven weeks the Chavez government has an element of broader hemispheric initia- Only Citgo responded to the letter. reduced the country’s rate of illiteracy by tives that supply oil products at varying The company expressed its willingness to 90 per cent. “This program”, she explains, favorable rates to Argentina, Bolivia, help, setting off a flurry of high-level con- “has also enabled the 1.2 million people Brazil, Uruguay and 15 Caribbean island sultations involving more than a score of who have become literate to continue nations. progressive U.S. politicos including Con- their studies through grade six”, and also “Our motivation is humanitarian, but gressmen Serrano and Delahunt, former to acquire computer skills. truthfully it’s also partly political. With Massachusetts representative Joseph P. Gibbs points out that under Chavez this (U.S.) assistance we’re trying to Kennedy II and independent Congress- 3500 Venezuelan schools have received show that Venezuela has no antagonism man Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Within major renovations, the number of days toward the United. States or its people, weeks initial talks involving politicians that many of the country’s poorest stu- and we also hope to make it clear that and their staffs, anti-poverty activists, and dents attend classes has been increased Venezuela has a different approach to how representatives of Citgo produced a series from 170 to 200, some 770,000 adults businesses should work. Our government of agreements to accept assistance from have completed their secondary educa- believes that business exists first to serve the country that the Bush administration tion, and the Chavez government has human needs, not just to generate profits. was busy demonizing as the totalitarian decentralized higher education, opening We believe in justice and fair trade among twin of the unspeakable communist re- the multi-campus Bolivarian University nations, and oil-producing countries are in gime in Havana. of Venezuela (UBV), where students get an especially good position to accomplish a liberal arts education and train for this, especially now when oil companies ome of Venezuela’s critics have sug professions such as law and journalism are making such large profits. We hope Sgested that its programs of foreign while attending classes in lecture halls our oil assistance program will motivate assistance have ignored the needs of the that were formerly the luxurious offices others in the oil business to be socially Venezuelan people, 70 per cent of whom– of Venezuela’s oil elite. responsible and use some of their profits over 17.5 million–still live in poverty. But The situation of Venezuela’s majority to help people in need.” a close look at the reality of Venezuela poor population is also eased by Petroleos According to Kabboul (whose Arabic under Chavez indicates that this criticism de Venezuela’s policy of keeping the price name derives from his family’s origins in doesn’t seem to fit the facts. of gas in Venezuela at 14 cents a gallon, Lebanon), Venezuela’s program of heating Terry Gibbs, a political scientist at far lower even than the subsidized prices oil assistance for poor people in the U.S. Cape Breton University, Sydney, Nova that consumers pay in other oil producing was first conceived after hurricanes Kat- Scotia travels frequently to Venezuela countries. rina and Rita, when Venezuela provided in an effort to understand the Chavez In the conclusion of her article Terry 2.5 million barrels of gasoline from its government’s so-called “Bolivarian Gibbs portrays Venezuela’s “Bolivarian nearby refineries at market prices to al- Revolution”. In an article in the current alternative” as a different take on globali- leviate shortages during the relief effort in Third World Quarterly , she details how zation, one that “involves a redistribution Louisiana and Mississippi. Then last Sep- Venezuela’s social programs, often carried of wealth to the poorest countries” and tember when President Chavez addressed out in cooperation with the government of is “challenging the control of domestic the summit of world leaders at United Cuba, but largely financed by Petroleos elites” throughout Latin America. Nations headquarters in New York, he also de Venezuela, are benefiting the poor in Little wonder that the Bush adminis- visited some of the city’s poorest neigh- Venezuela. tration sees Venezuela as the biggest threat borhoods and learned about the grinding By 2005, Gibbs notes, the Barrio since Soviet communism. By assisting the poverty that many New Yorkers in the Adentro Mission (program) had under- poor in the U.S. and other countries the city’s housing projects and ghettos face. written the placement of “more than Chavez government confirms the views Subsequently his government decided that 20,000 Cuban doctors, health workers and expressed by Venezuelan-American at- the discounts its oil monopoly, Petroleos physical trainers” in poor communities torney Eva Golinger. who recently said de Venezuela, was offering to low-income in Venezuela and made medical services “the only threat that Venezuela presents people in other Latin America countries available to 17 million Venezuelans who to the United States is that of a good should be extended to needy communities, previously had no access to health care. example.” CP families and individuals in the U.S. Gibbs adds that “in addition to being Meanwhile in late October, when the able to access clinics, poor Venezuelans Larry Lack is a writer based in New aftermath of Katrina and Rita had pushed can now purchase drugs at an 85 per Brunswick, Canada. He can be reached oil prices to unprecedented levels, Demo- cent discount”. To reduce dependence on at [email protected] cratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the Cuban health workers who return to New York’s Hillary Clinton and ten other Cuba after working for several years in U.S. Senators sent a letter to top officials Venezuela, Chavez’ Ministry of Health is 10 / CounterPunch (Night continued from page 4) ferkorn’s words, “a resemblance between the soil of Christian America, Wiesel has back to a hanging that the 16‑year‑old the crucifixion and Wiesel’s description of done his share to encourage the ‘Lazarus Eliezer witnessed in Auschwitz.” the young boy’s hanging. In response to risen from the dead parallel.’ But Wiesel In the incident, two adults and a little Wiesel’s questioning of God’s benevolence has done so more by gesture than act, si- boy are being led to the gallows. The little and man’s humanness, Mauriac writes the lence than utterance, indirection than direct boy refused to betray fellow inmates who following in his Foreword to Night: ‘And I, statement. The unspoken, the mute, the have been involved in an act of sabotage; who believe that God is love, what answer covert are his metier; albeit an ambiguity to protect his fellow inmates, the boy could I give my young questioner, whose laced through with shrewd intelligence that is willing to pay with his life. Each one dark eyes still held the reflection of that would make many a professional diplomat climbs to his chair and his neck is slipped angelic sadness which had appeared one envious.” into the rope’s noose. The scene continues day upon the face of the hanged child? In a letter to David Hirsch dated Octo- as follows in the 1960 English version of What did I say to him? Did I speak of that ber 6, 1994, Alfred Kazin writes that at the Night: other Israeli, his brother, who may have beginning of their friendship, “I liked him “The three victims mounted together resembled him -‑ the Crucified, whose [Wiesel] enormously, and I was in awe of onto the chairs. The three necks were Cross has conquered the world?’” him because of his suffering in Auschwitz.” placed at the same moment within the Pfefferkorn continues: But at the same time “... it was impossible, nooses. ‘Long live Liberty!’ cried the “The hanged child dangling on the rope when he expanded at length about his expe- adults. But the child was silent. is reflected in Eliezer’s eyes, whose image riences under the Nazis, it was impossible “‘Where is God? Where is He?’ some- resembles that of the crucified Jesus. Thus to miss the fact that he was a mystifier”. one behind me asked. At a sign from the in one stroke, Mauriac has drawn a triptych One who says he directly observed head of the camp, the three chairs tipped reminiscent of the medieval paintings, the hanging scene described by Wiesel over. Total silence throughout the camp. On making young Eliezer the link connecting was Zygfryd Halbereich, who testified at the horizon, the sun was setting. the two watershed events in the history of the Auschwitz State Museum on October “‘Bare your heads!’ yelled the head Western civilization, namely the Crucifix- 19, 1973. Halbereich’s testimony was of the camp. His voice was raucous. We ion and the Holocaust. Mauriac leaves no matter‑of‑fact, clear and direct. He was were weeping. ‘Cover your heads!’ Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swol- When it comes making literature Frey len, blue tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was and Wiesel were both in the business of still alive.... For more than half an hour artistic and emotional manipulation, of he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our dressing fiction up as truth. eyes. And we had to look him full in the doubt as to his Christological interpretation acquainted with the three inmates and knew face. He was still alive when I passed in of the Auschwitz hanging. In the year 1960, about their escape plans. front of him. His tongue was still red, his he published a biography of Christ entitled “On the whole,” Pfefferkorn writes, eyes not yet glazed. Behind me, I heard the The Son of Man dedicated to ‘E.W. who “Halbereich’s testimony is in agreement same man asking: ‘Where is God now?’ was a crucified Jewish child, who stands with Wiesel’s narrative, and differs only And I heard a voice within me answer him: for many others.’ in one minor detail. … But this is an in- ‘Where is He? Here He is — He is hanging “Mauriac explains what it was in his consequential disagreement that does not here on this gallows…’” interview with Wiesel that drew him so change the substance of the hanging story. Not surprisingly, the graphically de- powerfully to the young Israeli: ‘That What does affect it, however, is the age of scribed hanging scene has been etched look, as if a Lazarus risen from the dead, one of the condemned, as given by Wiesel. into the imagination of the Christian theo- yet still a prisoner within the grim confines And the age of the condemned is the crux logians because of the numerous parallels where he had strayed, stumbling among the of the matter. to the Crucifixion of Jesus. shameful corpses.’ Wiesel’s painfully gaunt “In the original Yiddish Un di Velt Hot Now, while he was working on the demeanor set against the backdrop of the Geshvign and in the French and the English memoir, La Nuit, Wiesel had cause, on concentration camps’ corpses have inspired translations, one of the three condemned is behalf of an Israeli newspaper, to visit and a generation of Christian theologians to frequently referred to as a child or a young interview Francois Mauriac, the Catholic view Wiesel as a latter day Lazarus. boy. Halbereich is silent about the ages of writer and Nobel Laureate in literature. “It is highly speculative to suggest that the condemned, and this omission is sur- They got on well. Then Wiesel gave him from the very inception of his writing, Wi- prising. For in Wiesel’s painfully elaborate the manuscript of La Nuit. Mauriac found esel consciously laboured to present him- description of the hanging, the young boy’s in it an answer to his own anguish at de- self to the Christian world as a composite execution stirred up deep emotions among scriptions of the mass slaughters in the of a Christ Lazarus figure. However, once the inmates standing on the roll call. The death camps, particularly of children. the seeds of the myth were sown in Paris Kapo who was assigned to administer the Mauriac fastened instantly on, in Pfef- at Mauriac’s instigation, and took roots in hanging ‘… excused himself from serving 11 / CounterPunch as a hangman. He did not want to hang fter talking to Eli Pfefferkorn and witz memoirs”, Hilberg remarked, “not a child.’ A Kapo’s refusal to obey an SS Areading chapters from his memoir, I only because of its brevity but because order was tantamount to a death sentence. called Raul Hilberg, now 80, at his home it has something mystic, surrealistic in His extraordinary behaviour would have in Burlington, Vermont. it.” He mentioned the episode of the little certainly registered with Halbereich, whose “From a purely academic viewpoint”, boy playing the violin, and said how it testimony is meticulously detailed. Hal- Hilberg began, “it would be interesting to evoked images from the Russian-Jewish bereich’s silence on the Kappo’s courage have a scholarly edition, comparing the mystic painter Chagall, also of Fiddler on calls into question Wiesel’s account of the Yiddish version with subsequent trans- the Roof. hanging. One of the skeptics is the known lations and editions, with appropriate “Wiesel comes from Sighet, a city Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg, who is, in footnotes, Wiesel’s comments etc. He was in Romania. In Sighet there were many his own words, a seeker of truth. addressing two entirely different audi- religious Jews, also Ukrainians. Much “Cautious by temperament and schol- ences, the first being the Yiddish-speaking of Sighet was rather primitive at the time arly discipline, Hilberg gingerly raises the Jews, members of the world of his youth Wiesel was growing up. Most roads were issue related to the hanging scene. In a whom he addressed in nineteenth-century not paved. It was shtetl life. However an review written for the Boston Globe about terms. There’s more detail, more comment. assimilated group of Jews was emerging. Wiesel’s autobiographical book All Rivers I made that suggestion to Wiesel and he I went there when I was 11, in 1937, and Run to the Sea, Hilberg makes mention of didn’t react favorably.” spent the summer. There was a tennis the three hangings. ‘Describing the incident Hilberg turned to the crucial scene: “I court, very middle-class. My aunt and her in his [Wiesel’s] book Night,’ Hilberg have a version of the hanging from an old husband, a Sigheti, manufactured violins in notes, ‘he recalled someone behind him survivor with the names of all three adults.” Sighet where there was a major tradition asking: Where is God? At that moment That survivor had said that there was no of violin playing. I heard quartets in our Wiesel believed that one of the three was boy among the three. Hilberg mentioned garden. Wiesel’s parents had a store. So in a boy, and in his mind identified the child this in a review of Night, in which, he told some respects Sighet was very nineteenth with God.’ Citing Kazin’s contention that me, “I made no secret of our differences. century, and in others there were all the the entire event is fiction, Hilberg con- But whereas it [the age of the central figure earmarks of a group of Jews emerging into cludes, ‘To be sure, the doubters may claim in the hanging] may seem somewhat small, the twentieth century who were evidently a concession.’” it makes a very big difference to Christians, wide awake to modern civilization. So was Pfefferkorn’s considered judgement is particularly Catholics, because it’s very the violin scene realistic, or was it a fan- harsh on Wiesel’s claims for the absolute clear that mystics are intensely interested in tasy? Certainly, for Jews the violin was the truth to life of Night: the scene because it seems to replicate the instrument of choice. It was portable. “If the hanging scene turns out contrary crucifixion. It made a considerable impact. “So I would not say that the violin to Wiesel’s description in his purported So the fact that this figure may not have scene is impossible, even though I know memoir Night, a fictionalized episode as been a boy at all is disturbing.” Kazin claimed and surmised from Halbere- “It would appear”, Hilberg went SUBSCRIPTION INFO ich’s testimony, then Wiesel’s entire moral on, “from the record I have, that some and theological edifice collapses, bringing witnesses have questioned whether this Enter/Renew Subscription down with it the ‘Suffering Servant’ theol- scene took place. I have a long statement here: ogy, which first gave him recognition and by an older man, a man whom I judge to One year $40 Two yrs $70 eventually led him to fame. be quite trustworthy, though one must al- ($35 email only / $45 email/print) One year institution/supporters $100 “Though it is virtually impossible to ways remember that things are sometimes One year student/low income, $30 verify the exact ages of the condemned, it observed or heard about later. I talked T-shirts, $17 must be noted, as Hilberg observed, that in recently to a survivor of that section of Please send back issue(s) Wiesel’s recent autobiography ‘the suffer- the camp who said it [the hanging of the ($5/issue) ing body is no longer that of a boy.’” three] didn’t take place, but maybe it took Quite aside from the theological ques- place earlier. I don’t know. Dating these Name tions, part of the impact of the scene derives things is hard for survivors. Some have from Wiesel’s description of this boy doubted this would have taken place. Buna Address whose weight was too insubstantial for the was a work camp, so this other survivor, City/State/Zip noose to swiftly strangle him. Does this, in a PhD in history and an intelligent man, the last analysis, really matter? It does if didn’t believe it. I said to him, ‘How do you are disobligingly contrasting Frey to you know this didn’t happen?’ I consider Payment must accompany order, or dial Wiesel’s “apprehension of memory as a it not only a possibility but plausible. But 1-800-840-3683 and renew by credit sacred act”. All the same, I don’t suppose age is a big issue to some people. That’s card. Add $12.50 for Canadian and $17.50 for foreign subscriptions. If you Smoking Gun would ever gleefully feature something he did not discuss in the new want Counter-Punch emailed to you the third victim’s birth certificate. edition of the book.” please supply your email address. Make “Wiesel’s is the most read of all Ausch- checks payable to: CounterPunch Business Office 12 / CounterPunch someone from the death march who I didn’t press the point, but Hilberg did world, Frey can comfort himself with the said it was utterly impossible. He was in not include Night in this little list. thought that Night is not how “it really Auschwitz, also Wiesel’s age. But that still “In 1981,” Pfefferkorn remembers, was”, and that even though there is a vast doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Nothing is “Wiesel invited me to give a talk to his gulf between what Wiesel actually endured inconceivable. seminar students at Boston University. and Frey’s lies about his own life, when it “The model of all survivor accounts is In the course of my talk, I discussed the comes making literature he and Wiesel of an idyllic childhood, then the hell of the relationship between memory and imagina- were both in the business of artistic and Holocaust, then since they survived they tion in a number of literary works. I then emotional manipulation, of dressing fic- underline the fact that it was only by luck pointed out the literary devices he used in tion up as truth. they survived. With Wiesel, his original Night, devices, I stressed, that make the Beyond that, looking at the man’s title was And the World Was Silent. It’s ac- memoir a compelling read. Wiesel’s reac- career overall, I’d say that as a moral cusatory. Night is more surreal and mystic. tion to my comments were swift as light- fabulist, Wiesel has far more to answer It goes back to Middle Ages. Wiesel fits ning. I had never seen him as angry before for. Should not Oprah ask him about the right into that style. It’s not a novel, but or since. In the presence of John Silber, the millions he could have helped with the what it does have is the imprint of someone then President of Boston University, and moral stature won by the Nobel peace who wants to leave behind the impression prize he so unrelentingly campaigned for, that if you weren’t there, you cannot know but whom he has betrayed for reasons of what it was like, but then that dooms trying Frey and Wiesel are base political calculation? As Pfefferkorn to write what it was like.” stresses, you didn’t survive in the death I asked Hilberg what accounts of the both in the busi- camps just by luck. death camps and the Holocaust did he “Securing a spot in a desirable labor admire most. “That really depends on the ness of artistic and detail, for instance, involved shoving to the reader. I don’t have that kind of favorite. emotional manipu- head of the line, seen as a risk worth taking. For my purposes, obviously they have to Upon encountering opposition, however, be correct. There’s an account by Filip lation. one had to know when to retreat into the Mueller, who was on the gas chamber detail chameleon‑pyjama‑like background of the my own Brown University students whom in Auschwitz in 1942, written in collabora- concentration camp. This was also true I invited, he lost his composure, lashing out tion with two people: Eyewitness Ausch- about lining up for soup. Finding the right at me for daring to question the literalness witz. It has to be read with care. Another spot in the line could mean a thicker bowl of the memoir. In Wiesel’s eyes, as in the book is Rudolf Vrba’s I Cannot Forgive, of soup ‑which may add a week’s longevity, eyes of his disciples, Night assumed a level written with Alan Bestic. Vrba escaped but this entailed rough elbowing, as well of sacrosanctity, next in importance to the from Auschwitz. He became professor of as timing.” giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. In terms pharmacology at the University of British Time and again you look up, and here of veracity, it is a factually recorded work, Columbia. This is the most remarkable of comes Wiesel again, lugubrious as ever, his virtually meeting Leopold von Ranke’s survivors, a man of absolutely incredible eyes filled with timeless suffering, but with benchmark of historical accounts: Wie es energy and abilities. In sheer ability to the thicker bowl of soup. CP eigentlich gewessen, how it really was.” cope with the situation, this man is beyond s he roosts on his pile of gold amid belief.” Athe abuse of Oprah and the literary CounterPunch PO Box 228 Petrolia, CA 95558 Phone 1-800-840-3683 for our new t-shirts and for advance orders of CounterPunch’s new book The Case Against Israel by Michael Neumann.