Jews to the Gestapo." (Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters,
1988, p. 193)
Walus, in turn, was convicted by judge Julius Hoffman, who
ran the trial with an iron hand and an eccentricity that bordered on the
bizarre. He allowed government witnesses great latitude, while limiting
severely Korenkiewicz's cross-examination of them. When Walus himself
testified, Hoffman limited him almost entirely to simple yes and no answers.
(Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 193)
Despite weaknesses in the prosecution case, Judge Hoffman went on to convict Walus, and later
despite accumulating evidence of Walus's innocence, refused to reconsider his verdict. But
then a formal appeal was filed. The process took almost two years, but in
February 1980, the court ruled. It threw out Hoffman's verdict and ordered
Walus retried. In making the ruling, the court said that it appeared the
government's case against Walus was "weak" but that Hoffman's handling of the
trial had been so biased that it could not evaluate the evidence properly.
(Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 195)
In view of irrefutable documentary and eye-witness evidence that Walus had served as a farm
laborer in Germany during the entire war, he was never re-tried. And what, we may ask, was the
occasion for Simon Wiesenthal's fingering Walus in the first place?
Only later was the source of the "evidence" against Walus that had reached
Simon Wiesenthal identified. Walus had bought a two-family duplex when he came
to Chicago. In the early 1970s, he rented out the second unit to a tenant with
whom he eventually had a fight. Walus evicted the tenant, who then started
telling one and all how his former landlord used to sit around and reminisce
about the atrocities he had committed against Jews in the good old days.
Apparently one of the groups to which he told the story was a Jewish refugee
agency in Chicago, which passed the information along to Simon Wiesenthal.
(Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 195)
For a statement concerning the Walus case made by Frank Walus himself, please read Frank Walus's
letter to Germany.
The Deschenes Commission
But is the Walus case a single slipup in Simon Wiesenthal's otherwise blemish-free career? No,
other slipups can be found - in one instance a batch of 6,000 others. Simon Wiesenthal kicked
the ball into play with the accusation that Canada harbored "several hundred" war criminals
(Toronto Star, May 19, 1971). The Jewish Defense League caught the ball, found it soft and
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