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Lubomyr Prytulak   NOT The Toronto Star   03-Nov-1998   Deschênes excoriates Wiesenthal and Littman
Mr. Littman cites the Deschênes Commission Report as if it supports his views on Nazi war criminals, when in fact the Report excoriates not only Sol Littman, but also Simon Wiesenthal himself
Additional information on both Sol Littman and Simon Wiesenthal (because Sol Littman is director of the Canadian Simon Wiesenthal Center) is available on the Ukrainian Archive.

In the case of Simon Wiesenthal, the reader will find an introduction to him within The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes � once in that article, click on SIMON WIESENTHAL in the yellow CONTENTS box.  For more information beyond that introduction, the reader can consult the Simon Wiesenthal page on the Ukrainian Archive.

In the case of Sol Littman, the reader will find him discussed toward the bottom of the same SIMON WIESENTHAL section within The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes already cited in the preceding paragraph, particularly within a subsection titled "Sol Littman's Mengele Affair."  One way to get to that subsection is to click on The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes, and once within that document, to hit CTRL+F on one's keyboard, and then search for "Mengele Affair" (don't type in the quotation marks).  Or, NetScape browsers will take the reader directly to Sol Littman's Mengele Affair when the link in the present sentence is clicked, though Microsoft's Internet Explorer will manage only to take the reader to the top of The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes, from whence the reader will have to make his way down to "Sol Littman's Mengele Affair" by other means.  Incidentally, starting at the top of The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes and repeatedly employing CTRL+F to search for "Littman" will take the reader to the several locations at which he is mentioned, where is provided some indication both of the frequency and of the quality of Sol Littman's contributions to the debate concerning war criminals.

Another insight into Sol Littman can be found in a letter to him from Neal Sher from which arises the hypothesis that the two live within a subculture in which lies circulate freely, such that if we hear any member of that subculture � for example Sol Littman � say something untrue, we cannot know whether he is lying or whether he has merely been lied to by some other member of that subculture.

Still more insight into Sol Littman can be found in the letters to the editor of The Toronto Star written by Walter Halchuk, Christopher Moorehead, Mary Radewych, and Matthias Schlaepfer.

And a veritable deluge concerning Sol Littman has more recently been added to the Ukrainian Archive, and can be accessed from the Sol Littman page.
Submitted to



but never published

THE TORONTO STAR, submitted Tuesday, November 3, 1998

 LETTERS

Deschênes excoriates Wiesenthal and Littman

Re Do our jurists need Holocaust classes? by Sol Littman (Oct. 20).

I suppose that when Sol Littman, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, refers to the "Royal Commission of Inquiry," he means the Jules Deschênes "Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals" whose public report was issued in 1986.  Mr. Littman cites the Deschênes Commission Report as if it supports his views on Nazi war criminals, when in fact the Report excoriates not only Sol Littman, but also Simon Wiesenthal himself.

Commissioner Deschênes excoriates Sol Littman particularly for Littman's headline-grabbing claim that Dr. Joseph Mengele had attempted to gain admission to Canada from Buenos Aires in 1962:

All that Littman could rely on was "speculation, impression, possibility, hypothesis".  Yet he chose to transmute them into statements of facts which he publicized....  This is a case where not a shred of evidence has been tendered to support Mr. Littman's statement to the Prime Minister of Canada on 20 December 1984....  (p. 82)"

And Commissioner Deschênes excoriates Simon Wiesenthal, whose accusations were responsible for convening the Deschênes Commission in the first place, for going into hiding when the time arrived to produce his evidence:

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).

By taking a report that undermines his own views on Nazi war criminals, not to mention those of his mentor, and by citing this report as if it supported those views, Mr. Littman demonstrates his readiness to mislead the Canadian public.

Lubomyr Prytulak
Vancouver

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