New York Rabbi’s Funeral: The “Nazi Death Camp” Survivor Who was Never Even in a Concentration Camp, and Who was Only Ever Arrested by the Communists

The huge funeral of famous New York Rabbi Yisroel Avrohom Portugal has provided yet another example of the outrageous lies which the media perpetuates about the holocaust—in this case, claiming that he “survived the Nazi death camps,” even though he was never in any camp whatsoever, and in fact was only ever detained by Communists after the war.

The funeral of Rabbi Portugal, who died recently aged 95, was attended by tens of thousands of wailing Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn—but the media coverage of that event and his life provided the grotesque exaggerations which have become typical of any coverage of World War II.

First off the mark was The Jewish Press, which set the tone for the rest of the media. The Jewish Press is a weekly newspaper in New York, and describes itself as “America's Largest Independent Jewish Weekly.”

According to that newspaper’s article,titled “Skulener Rebbe, zt’l, is Laid to Rest,” Rabbi Portugal was “Born in Romania to the previous Skulener Rebbe, Rabbi Eliezer Zusia Portugal zt’l and Rebetzin Shayna Rochel, the Rebbe came to the United States as an immigrant together with his father in 1960 after having survived the Nazi death camps in World War II.”

This claim was then instantly repeated by the rest of the media. The Daily Mail, in its extensive coverage of the Rabbi’s funeral (“Tens of thousands of HasidicJews crowd Brooklyn streets for funeral of popular rabbi, 95, who survived theHolocaust and despised the internet—and no one with a smartphone could touchthe coffin”) announced that “the popular Rabbi had survived the Nazi death camps and came to the United States in 1960.”

ABC News’s local broadcaster, Eyewitness News ABC 7, followed up in its coverage (“Thousands crowd Brooklyn streets for grand rabbi's funeral; 2officers hurt”) by repeating this claim that “The rabbi came to the United States in the 1960s after surviving Nazi death camps and was a mainstay in Borough Park and Williamsburg for decades.”

News12 Brooklyn’s coverage (“Thousands line the streets ofBorough Park for rabbi's funeral”) claimed that the “rebbe survived the Holocaust and went on to lead the Skulen synagogue for many years.”

USA Today’s coverage was provided by its local affiliate, the Rockland/Westchester Journal News, (“Large crowds mourned rebbe in Monsey today”) which said that “According to the Jewish Press, Portugal was born in Romania, in what is now Moldova, and immigrated to the United States with his father, Rabbi Eliezer Zusia Portugal, in 1960 after surviving the Holocaust death camps and an imprisonment by Romanian authorities for teaching Torah. The United Nations and U.S. officials intervened on their behalf to have them released.”

However, the Jewish Daily Forward—a “left wing” Jewish paper in New York, inadvertently exposed all these controlled media claims as lies. As the Daily Forward’s headline accurately revealed (“The Last Holocaust-Era Rebbe Dies, And ANeighborhood Shuts Down To Mourn”), Rabbi Portugal was never in a concentration camp, and was never even detained by the Germans during the war.

The Daily Forward revealed that “Portugal and his father left Sculeni, the community in Moldova from which their sect derives its name, before the outbreak of the Second World War.

“They spent the war in the Ukrainian city of Chernowitz, facing persecution there from both the Germans and the Soviets, who occupied the city at different times.
“After the war they traveled to Bucharest, Romania, where they sought and cared for Jewish war orphans, and aided the small remaining Jewish communities. Portugal’s father was arrested multiple times by the Soviets, who occupied Romania until 1968.
“In April of 1959, Romanian authorities arrested both Portugal and his father for suspected treason. Jewish groups in the U.S. raised concerns about the arrest. According to a 1960 report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, United Nations officials intervened to secure the release of the two rabbis, and the U.S. State Department offered them citizenship. They were released in September of 1959, and arrived in the U.S. in August of 1960.”

In other words, Rabbi Portugal never even saw a concentration camp, much less “survived a death camp” and was ever only detained by the Communists.

Even though the facts are readily available, the media chose instead—as always—to simply repeat the outrageous lies.

This is in keeping with their standard line on the holocaust, which is to just repeat the “six million murdered” story no matter what the facts might show, hoping that endless repetition will smother any counter arguments.

The media quoted above will also never “retract” or “correct” their lies, another typical tactic of just leaving an “impression,”something which is another long-standing ploy in their holocaust story-tellingtechnique.

Alois Brunner and the “I Would Do It All Again” Lie

The announcement by the Simon Wiesenthal Center that one of their most sought-after “war criminals,” Alois Brunner—the so-called “right hand man to Adolf Eichmann—died four years ago, has brought forth the usual outpouring of Holocaust stories about how he was responsible for “deporting tens of thousands of Jews to death camps during the second world war.”

These stories have included the usual rehashing of a supposed interview he gave with the Chicago SunTimes in which Brunner was claimed to have said:

“All of [the Jews] deserved to die because they were the Devil's agents and human garbage. I have no regrets and would do it again” (“Nazi Butcher in Syria Haven”, Nov. 1, 1987).

This incredible quote has been reused time and time again, and has once again made its appearance with the latest reports of Brunner’s death.

Most media outlets—following the Holocaust Storyteller line—just repeat the quote without questioning its origin—even though Brunner denied ever saying such a thing.

So who actually conducted the interview? The article was written by a Chicago Sun-Times journalist named Chuck Ashman. He claimed he had conducted a telephone interview with Brunner in Damascus, “in front of a witness.”

So who exactly was this “Chuck Ashman?”

According to an article in the Chicago Reader magazine, titled “Ashman: Adventures of anUninteresting Person,” all of Ashman’s stories were well known in the Chicago newspaper world to be “hyperbolic” and “selective in its facts.”

However, this is not the worst of it: Ashman was also a convicted fraudster who had spent time in a lunatic asylum.

According to the Chicago Reader, Ashman was a “habitual embellisher of reality, among whose many spurious claims were a law degree from the University of Tennessee and postgraduate study at Oxford University, schools that told the Press-Enterprise they had no record of him.

Most tellingly, the paper [the Press Enterprise] examined his past. At the age of 21, when an aide to Senator George Smathers, he'd been named the Miami Beach Jaycees' outstanding young man of the year. But in 1964, seven years later, he was convicted of three counts of passing fraudulent checks. He avoided prison by pleading insanity and undergoing two years' confinement in a Florida state mental hospital.”

After writing a whole series of outrageous stories about then Austrian president Kurt Waldheim—which were attacked by Clemens Coreth, the Austrian consul general in Chicago, in a letter to the Chicago Sun-Times in which he accused Ashman of "misrepresentation" and "malicious" insinuations—“The Sun-Times dropped him like a hot potato after finding out a few things about Ashman's highly erratic personal and professional history,” the Chicago Reader revealed.

This “quote” therefore comes from a “journalist” who was not only a convicted fraudster, and a certified lunatic, but who was also fired by the Chicago Sun-Times for making up news stories.

In fact the only correctly related interview with Brunner—who left his native Austria after the war and eventually settled in Syria—took place in July 1987. It was conducted by Austrian journalist Gerd Honsik, and published in his book Freispruch für Hitler (Burgenländischer Kulturverband, Wien, 1988).

Honsik’s book was a series of interviews with some thirty-six witnesses, including six former concentration camp inmates and several historians on the topic of the war and the alleged mass-extermination story.

Honsik actually travelled to Damascus where he interviewed Brunner in person.

Brunner as a young man, left, and in 1987, right. Picture from Honsik's book.

In the interview, Brunner denied ever saying the infamous quote attributed to him, stating specifically that he had only said that he would “do it again” in reference to his attempts to resettle Jews outside Europe.

When Honsik specifically asked Brunner about gas chambers, the former senior SS man replied that he had “first heard about them in newspapers after the war” and had never heard of such a thing during his period of service.

Instead, he continued, he had been actively involved in the project to create a Jewish homeland in Madagascar.

It is an indication of the mass hysteria and media propaganda around the Holocaust that the word of a certified lunatic fraudster is taken to be true without question—even though Brunner denied ever making it.

* The Austrian journalist Honsik suffered the fate of many honest people in Europe. His book was outlawed, and he was sentenced to five years imprisonment for his “crime.” His book is available on the Archive.org site, free, at this link.