This question is on a sensitive topic, and I would like to say up front that I am not looking for holocaust denial. My grandfather was a Nazi slave, my family on my mother's side was all but wiped out, and the denials are a stain on humanity.
Elie Wiesel presents an account of Auschwitz in his book Night.
The account is based on an earlier, longer, Yiddish account, Un di Velt Hot Gesvign (trans: And the World Remained Silent), which is attributed to Lazar Wiesel. Lazar is documented in camp accounts.
Elie consistently has claimed that he was in fact this very same Lazar Wiesel. Lazar is the Jewish name "Eli'ezer", which can be shortened "Elie". Elie claims, in Night, that he has Auschwitz tattoo number A-7713 - the same as Lazar. While originally published as a novel, Elie recategorised it as an autobiography in 2006.
However, there is some doubt over some of the claim.
Some of the details between Elie's accounts and the camp records don't match:
- Lazar is older than Elie.
- Lazar was a fluent Yiddish-speaking Hungarian Jew, while Elie is fluent in French.
Many details are not consistent with other accounts of the camp (a particularly lucid one is provided by Primo Levi in If This Is a Man.)
Miklos Gruner, a camp inmate who appears in the Buchenwald photo where Elie also (extremely dubiously) claims to appear, has recently made public his claim that Elie Wiesel is not a Hungarian, not a fluent Yiddish speaker, and certainly not the Lazar Wiesel who Miklos knew intimately at Auschwitz.
- There are claims that Elie Wiesel does not have a distinctive Auschwitz tattoo given to all prisoners.
There are many further places to read about these, unfortunately many of these items are linked to neo-Nazi and holocaust denial sites:
- Fester's blog
- Further Glory blog
- Miklos Gruner articles at Elie Wiesel Tattoo
- Lazar Wiesel articles at Elie Wiesel Tattoo
- YouTube video
Is there any actual, real evidence for the person who calls himself Elie Wiesel ever having been at Auschwitz? At Buchenwald? In any camp whatsoever? Is he an imposter?
EDIT: It seems that Gruner wrote a whole book about this, and the pdf can be downloaded through a link on this page