Did Wiesenthal Commit Holocaust Heresy? : Books: ‘Betrayal’ accuses the famous Nazi-hunter of failing to uncover Kurt Waldheim’s past despite access to incriminating evidence.

Like a nuclear calamity of the soul, the Nazi Holocaust spread misery over so much of the human map that damage assessment continues a half-century later.

Death camp survivors still nurse psychic wounds.

The hunt for war criminals presses ahead--in the United States alone, 400 alleged Nazi offenders are under investigation--and Jews everywhere must contend with the unyielding weight of remembrance and grief.

There are moments, too, when the pain of history is compounded by clashes among even the most committed individuals--internal disputes of the kind prompted by a new book called “Betrayal.”

While author Eli Rosenbaum, a U.S. Justice Department attorney, focuses primarily on the wartime activities of former U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, he launches a shocking parallel thesis--one challenging the effectiveness, and motives, of Simon Wiesenthal, a death camp survivor who became the world’s most renowned Nazi hunter.

Rosenbaum says the title of his book refers to acts of betrayal by both Waldheim and Wiesenthal--Waldheim because the former U.N. chief obscured insidious aspects of his record in the German army, and Wiesenthal because he failed to uncover Waldheim’s past despite access to incriminating evidence and then compounded the error by defending Waldheim in an effort to protect his own reputation.

“He owes the world an accounting and an apology for his conduct in the Waldheim case,” said Rosenbaum, 38, during an interview in Washington, where he works as principal deputy of the Office of Special Investigations, the Justice Department branch that pursues alleged Nazi war criminals living in the United States.

Rosenbaum, who investigated Waldheim while general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, says that in addition to committing what amounted to “malpractice” on the Waldheim case, Wiesenthal has overstated his role in capturing high-profile war criminals like Adolf Eichmann and that he functions more as a “publicist” than the “Jewish James Bond” many believe him to be.

This, says Wiesenthal, is hardly the thanks he might have expected after so much time in the Nazi-hunting wars.

Speaking by phone from his office in Vienna, Austria, Wiesenthal, 84, said Rosenbaum’s charges are baseless, though distressing. “When neo-Nazis attack me, it doesn’t matter,” Wiesenthal said. “But when a Jew attacks me, I have pain.”

Wiesenthal, who is Austrian, contends that he never gave Waldheim the “clearance” Rosenbaum claims and, in fact, called for him to resign the Austrian presidency in 1988. As for past accomplishments, Wiesenthal said his efforts have helped authorities capture many war criminals and that a number of governments have recognized his work. “You think these people are giving me decorations only because I am a good publicist?”

Rosenbaum’s brief against Wiesenthal emerges from a heavily documented assault on the wartime record of Kurt Waldheim that he says proves Waldheim was not the anonymous army officer he claimed but an ambitious Nazi sympathizer who supported actions against civilians in Greece and Bosnia.

In 1979, the author says, Wiesenthal demonstrated his incompetence by failing to recognize the explosive nature of material on Waldheim he obtained from a French-run archive in Berlin. The report disclosed that Waldheim had been in the German army longer than he acknowledged, Rosenbaum said, and served on the staff of a German commander later hanged for war crimes.

Wiesenthal might have partly redeemed himself during Austria’s 1986 presidential campaign by admitting his error, Rosenbaum says. Instead, the author says, Wiesenthal tried to mute criticism of Waldheim, who won the election.

“I realized that he was not just defending Waldheim,” Rosenbaum writes. “He was defending Wiesenthal!” Rosenbaum says his indictment of Wiesenthal is not gratuitous nor intended to enhance the market value of his book, but vital to one of his central themes--that society is at risk when it fails to carefully examine political leaders and private crusaders.

“I would hate to see the message of the book get lost in the furor over Simon Wiesenthal,” said Rosenbaum, who wrote the volume with William Hoffer, author of “Midnight Express” and “Not Without My Daughter.”

But that may be the fate of “Betrayal.”

Wiesenthal, who defended himself in a letter to the New York Times, says he has been receiving messages of support from around the world.

Rosenbaum has allies, too.

Elie Wiesel, a scholar and death camp survivor, wrote a dust jacket blurb for Rosenbaum and so did Alan Dershowitz, the prominent defense attorney. Dershowitz says Rosenbaum raises disturbing questions about Wiesenthal’s handling of the Waldheim affair.

“On the basis of (Rosenbaum’s) indictment, it certainly appears that Wiesenthal was too close to Waldheim and to Austrian politics and Austria to render an objective assessment of criminality,” Dershowitz said.

Also backing Rosenbaum is Beate Klarsfeld, a Nazi-hunter living in the Netherlands, who believes Wiesenthal was swayed by his acquaintance with Waldheim and by their shared national heritage.

“Wiesenthal was compromised with the Waldheim case, yes,” said Klarsfeld in an overseas telephone conversation.

Another anti-Nazi activist, Shelly Shapiro, director of Holocaust Survivors & Friends in Pursuit of Justice in Latham, N.Y., agrees that Wiesenthal sometimes grabs more glory than he has earned. “I don’t think he’s God,” she said.

Wiesenthal may not be a candidate for deification, but many feel he rates respect and gratitude.

“He single-handedly kept the memory alive in 1945 when no one talked about the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, a human rights organization named after the Nazi-hunter but with no ties to him. “That is an enormous contribution.”

Regarding Wiesenthal’s performance during the Waldheim investigation, Hier said, there is room for honest disagreement. “Mr. Wiesenthal deserves the benefit of the doubt,” he said. Historian Robert Edwin Herzstein of the University of South Carolina, who has written a book about Waldheim, said: “I personally don’t think Wiesenthal had anything but the best of motives.”

Does a debate of this sort help Jews, or hurt?

Rosenbaum insists that truth--not sentimentality--must be the only issue, and Dershowitz says Jews should not shrink from self-criticism. “We are prepared to say our heroes have clay feet,” Dershowitz said. “It’s a sign of strength, not weakness.”

Still, for Simon Wiesenthal, “Betrayal” represents an unhappy turn of events and a boon to enemies who will see the book as “something they can use to attack me.”

On one principal concern, however, Rosenbaum and Wiesenthal concur. Both say the world must stand strong against racial and ethnic hatred--and that no nation dares overlook the sins of its past.

“We should fight against forgetting,” Wiesenthal said.