Fort Lauderdale,FL – A notorious Holocaust denier, convicted of attacking Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel in an elevator, has now set his sights on an 80-year-old Pembroke Pines woman whose memoir recounts her ordeal in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
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In a lawsuit filed in Broward Circuit Court, Eric Hunt alleges that the “The Fifth Diamond: The Story of Irene Weisberg Zisblatt” is full of “vicious lies” and “fantastical tales” that turn Jews into haters and torment non-Jews.
Zisblatt’s son-in-law, who is a lawyer, called Hunt’s lawsuit “absurd,” but expressed concern for his elderly relative’s safety.
“This lunatic has assaulted a survivor in the past,” Stuart Mermelstein of Miami said, “and is posing a danger to my mother-in-law simply for speaking out and writing a book.”
Zisblatt’s autobiography recounts how she, five siblings and their parents were packed into a boxcar for the trip from Hungary to the extermination camp.
Her mother gave Zisblatt, 13, four diamonds. (In her book’s title, Zisblatt herself is the fifth diamond). To keep the gems safe, Zisblatt relates, she repeatedly swallowed them during her time in captivity.
Zisblatt, who appeared in director Steven Spielberg’s 1999 Academy-Award winning documentary “The Last Days,” was the only member of her family to survive World War II. The precious stones she hid are still in her family.
Hunt, 25, of Archbald, Pa. filed the libel suit in Broward Circuit Court and is demanding a jury trial and punitive damages of “not less than $60 million.”
The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Peter Weinstein.
“In terms of the hatred spewed in this complaint, it clearly has no legal or factual bearing whatsoever,” Mermelstein said. “It’s a ridiculous pleading and our concern is really directed not to the complaint, but to the motives and intent of Eric Hunt.”
Also named as defendants in the suit are Spielberg; Zisblatt’s co-author, Gail Ann Webb; Authors & Artists Publishers Inc. of New York; and its CEO Joan Mayor.
“Zisblatt blatantly stole other Jewish people’s experiences during World War II and passed them off as her own in order to further the Jewish political agenda and profit off of these fantastical tales,” Hunt, who is representing himself without an attorney, wrote in his lawsuit. “The defendants must not go unpunished for tormenting Gentiles and instilling hatred in Jews using such hideous lies.”
In 2007, Hunt accosted Holocaust survivor and scholar Wiesel, 81, in a San Francisco hotel elevator in an alleged attempt to force Wiesel to recant his own recollections of the Holocaust.
Hunt was convicted in 2008 of false imprisonment, battery and elder abuse. A judge sentenced him to two years in prison but gave him credit for time served and good behavior. The judge ordered Hunt to undergo psychological treatment.
At sentencing, Hunt apologized and said he had suffered a “severe mental breakdown.” “I had been sucked into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on the Internet,” Hunt said in August 2008. “I don’t believe any of that garbage now that I’m taking my medication.”
“I don’t believe any of that garbage now that I’m taking my medication.”
Must’ve forgotten to refill his prescription.
How come the judge didn’t throw it out & Hunt isn’t being sued for harrasment & thrivules [spell check please] case.
Don’t worry, that guy is having a severe mental breakdown once again and probably forgot to take his medication…
What legal standing does he gave to bring a lawsuit? How was he personally affected by her book?
The case will be thrown out of court, obviously, but the publicity will be good for Ms. Zisblatt and her publisher.
There’s got to be something missing from this story. I read it pretty carefully, and I didn’t see anything to suggest what it is that he’s suing for. I see that he’s calling the defendant a liar, and all sorts of names, but what is the actual suit about? Let’s assume that he’s right, and this woman never saw the inside of a death camp, was never in danger, isn’t even Jewish, and her book is a pack of lies. Let’s even assume she was actually a Nazi’s moll, an active Hitler Youth, and used to taunt Jews as they marched to their deaths. And therefore? Even if all that were true, so what? How does it give the plaintiff any kind of claim against her? Did he spend $10 to buy her book thinking it was true, and now he’s “realised” that it’s fiction? Does he want his $10 back? Or what?
“Tormenting gentiles”? Seriously, he is kidding, right? Judge Peter Weinstein is probably Jewish as well, so good luck to him!
I am going to go buy her book, and so should everyone else.
Relax it will be thrown out of court.
#1 I believe the word you’re looking for is “frivolous”
Someone needs to find out which lawyer is working for Hunt and use legal wrangling to make the lawyer’s life a living hell.
i think Hunt is a menace and danger to society, and sounds delusional…get the men in the lab coats for him
id like to see this guy go through the holocaust and then tell him that hes a liar. yemach shmo
this is what the world has come to?
A post above suggested that this publicity will be good for the author, an elderly Holocaust survivor. Have we sunk to such a cynical level as to suggest that a lawsuit of such nature would be welcome news to this old lady? She may very well be afraid of this disturbed man.
what king of callous moron, would go and sue an old woman who has lived through more than he, in his 25 years can imagine! can you see the chutzpah? he is throwing it in our faces and laughing! i hope he gets a looooooooooooooooooooong jail term!
I just read the article online regarding the law suit brought about against a Holocaust survivor by a denier. As an author of the latest book to hit the shelves nationally, on the life of a Holocaust survivor, called Remember Us by Vic Shayne, I felt encouraged to respond.
For the past four years I worked and researched to bring the story of a Holocaust survivor from Poland to light. What I found, other than the oft-repeated story of atrocities, suffering and loss, was that there are thousands of WWII veterans, doctors and even Germans who attest to the reality of the Holocaust. It is important to remember that the facts about the Holocaust, including logs, lists, documents and death tolls, were not kept by Jews, but rather by Germans, Hungarians, Poles, the armed forces, the USSR, survivors of partisan groups and members of the Catholic church. Further, even through their guilt and reticence to own up to the horrors, all over Poland there are memorial plaques marking the spot of mass murders and mutilation of Jewish victims. These are not Jewish properties.
People such as Tony Bennett, the award winning singer, attest to the validity of death camps, as they came upon these sites after fighting their way through Europe with the United States Army. A major Catholic university not far from me has a professor whose father kept documents of the Holocaust atrocities with his personal belongings, and in my book I republished photographs of murdered bodies of Jews and crematoria taken by a non-Jewish army captain. Still further, the footage taken of dead bodies, prisoners in death camps, the roadside murders by the Einzatsgruppen and the aftermath of the war, are not Jewish films. They were all filmed by non Jews.
It is far too easy for the uneducated to make claims when that person has never visited the sites of the Holocaust, including mass graves and death camps in Europe and who has never interviewed the THOUSANDS of non Jewish survivors and rescuers, as well as guards and accomplices, and partisans and resistance members who will readily attest to the historical accuracy of claims of murder, genocide and brutality.
Ignorance is the only way such law suits are brought about and made to sound viable to an equally uneducated, uninformed populace.
Vic Shayne
author
Remember Us: From my shtetl through the Holocaust, the story of Martin Small