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companions. A house-to-house police search was ordered. Simon reburied

himself several times and was in his makeshift coffin on Tuesday, 13 June 1944,

when more than eight months of cramped and perilous "freedom" came to an end.

As the Gestapo entered the courtyard of the house, the Polish partisans fled,

leaving Wiesenthal trapped beneath the earth "in a position where I couldn't

even make use of my weapon." (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, pp. 52-53)

To remember not only that it was the 13th of June, but that it was a Tuesday - how impressive!

And how appropriate that Mr. Wiesenthal be credited with a photographic memory:

He is helped by his phenomenal memory: Wiesenthal is able to quote telephone

numbers which he may have happened to see on a visiting card two years before.

He can list the participants in huge functions, one by one, and he can add what

colour suit each wore. Although he writes up to twenty letters a day, and

receives more than that number, he can, years later, quote key passages from

them and indicate roughly where that letter may be found in a file. ... A

man's civilian occupation, his origins in a particular region, his accent

mentioned by someone - all these stick in Wiesenthal's memory for years. And,

just like a computer, he can call them up at any time.

This permanent readiness of recall means that the horror is not relegated,

as it is with most people (and increasingly also with victims), to a remote

recess of the mind, but is always at the forefront, at the painful boundary of

consciousness. Wiesenthal possesses what is usually called a photographic

memory: he is a man who cannot forget. (Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon

Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, pp. 20-21.)

But from someone in Mr. Wiesenthal's position, one expects no less one expects just such

exactitude as he is gifted with, just such precision, just such vivid and accurate recall of

detail. All such things are essential when one is entrusted with the grave responsibility of

accusing individuals and ascribing guilt to nations. And precise memory of such events is to be

expected all the more of someone who was young when the events occurred, and when the events

were traumatic and seared into his memory.

As Mr. Wiesenthal has related the story of his life to more than one biographer, it is not a

difficult matter for a reader to compare these stories in order to be further edified by the

demonstration of Mr. Wiesenthal's remarkable memory. Take, for example, this other account of

the same story of being discovered underneath the floorboards:

One evening in April 1943 a German soldier was shot dead in the street. The

alarm was raised: SS and Polish police officers in civilian clothes searched

the nearby houses for hidden weapons. Instead they found Simon Wiesenthal. He

was marched off for the third time to, as he believed, his certain execution.

(Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p.

11)

But this parallel version of the story is not precisely what the claims concerning Mr.

Wiesenthal's memory led us to expect. The astonishingly accurate "Tuesday, 13 June 1944" has

turned into "April 1943," "beaten" has become "murdered," "in a house" has become "in the

street," the "railway inspector" has become a "German soldier," and the "Gestapo" has become the

"SS." The last might seem like a fine point, but in fact the Gestapo and the SS had clearly

defined and mutually exclusive duties: "A division of authority came about whereby the Gestapo

alone had the power to arrest people and send them to concentration camps, whereas the SS

remained responsible for running the camps" (Leni Yahil, The Holocaust, 1987, p. 133). Perhaps

a fine point to someone who had not lived through these events, but to someone who had lived

through them, then one would imagine a memorable point, one that should be easier to remember

than, say, what color suit each participant wore at some huge function.

And so now we are forced to wonder whether this is the same event badly remembered, or whether

Mr. Wiesenthal was discovered twice under the floorboards, once in 1943 and again in 1944. The

more cynical reader might even go on to wonder whether any such event took place at all.

As the above comparison illustrates, and as a reading of Mr. Wiesenthal proves a hundred times

over, Mr. Wiesenthal's salient characteristic is not that he has a photographic memory, but

rather that he cannot tell a story twice in the same way. For a second example, take the case

of the Rusinek slap.

The Rusinek Slap

Former inmates took over command. One of them was the future Polish Cabinet

Minister Kazimierz Rusinek. Wiesenthal needed to see him at his office to get

a pass. The Pole, who was about to lock up, struck him across the face - just

as some camp officials had frequently treated Jews. It hurt Wiesenthal more

than all the blows received from SS men in three years: "Now the war is over,

and the Jews are still being beaten."

... He sought out the American camp command to make a complaint. (Peter

Michael Lingens in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 12)

That is one version, but here is another:

A Polish trusty named Kazimierz Rusinek pounced on Simon for no good reason and