W. worked in Germany during the war and emigrated to the USA in the mid 1940s. He finally settled in Chicago, where he worked in an auto factory until his retirement in 1972. Two years later W. was accused by Simon Wiesenthal of having collaborated with the Gestapo during the war. Vilified by the U.S. media in a campaign as the 'Butcher of Kielce', W. fought against the ' Office of Special Investigations', also known as the U.S. 'Nazi Hunters'. W. was assaulted seven times by Jewish vigilantes, once with acid. 

In a letter dated December 10, 1974, Wiesenthal charged that W. delivered Jews to the Gestapo in Czestochowa and Kielce in Poland during the war. This letter prompted a US government investigation and legal action. In January 1977, the United States government accused W. of having committed atrocities in Poland during World War II. In the following years, this retired factory worker went into debt in order to raise more than $60,000 to defend himself. He sat in a courtroom while 12 Jewish 'survivors' testified as 'eyewitnesses' that W. was a sadistic SS officer murdering two dozen civilians, including young children, an old woman, a young woman, a hunchback and others in the Polish towns of Częstochowa and Kielce.

The bulk of the government's case against W. was the testimony of the twelve witnesses. Ten of the witnesses, David Gelbhauer, Josef Koenigsberg, Moniek Rozanski, Elieser Gliklich, Chaim Beigelman, Beinisz Neuhaus, Isaac Sternberg, Anna Kremski, Frank Silver, and Simon Mlodinow, were confined to the Jewish ghetto in Czestochowa. Two of the witnesses, Meylich Rozenwald and Sara Leichter, were confined to the ghetto in Kielce. Each of the persons testified to having witnessed horrible crimes committed against their people by one particular member of the Nazi Gestapo. According to the witness Gelbhauer, for example, this man beat people during interrogation sessions until they were bloody and had to be carried from the room. The witness Gliklich testified that he saw the man club people, including Gliklich's father, at the Gestapo headquarters. The witness Leichter testified that she saw the man lead a group of young children into a building and that she then heard gunshots and screaming. The witnesses Koenigsberg and Rozanski, responded to an ad in an Israeli newspaper seeking witnesses. The ad mentioned the name Frank Walus, the town Czestochowa or Kielce, and the commission of war crimes. The witnesses Gelbhauer, Rozenwald, and Gliklich were called by an Israeli police inspector on the telephone. The inspector mentioned Czestochowa to Gelbhauer and Gliklich and the name Frank Walus to Gliklich and Rozenwald. 

The government also presented evidence of W.' admissions through the testimony of four witnesses. Two of these witnesses were co-workers of W. with whom he spoke frequently. Both testified that W. said he had been an inmate of a concentration camp and was forced by the Nazis to run naked in the snow. W. also allegedly told these witnesses that he was tricked by the Nazis into turning on the gas chambers and murdering his people.

The court was presided by Julius Hoffman. W. lost the first round of the case and was subsequently stripped of his U.S. citizenship and was ordered to be deported. W. lost his home to pay for his defense, but ultimately won his case, after finally being able to prove that he had spent the war years as a farm laborer in Germany. Only his documents from the German tax department, the Red Cross and the German health plan into which he paid during the Second World War saved W. from being extradited.  Nine of the 12 'eyewitnesses' who said they had been born in Poland and lived there, never did. As a consequence, the U.S. Justice Department reversed its decision, dropped its suit and paid W. $34,000 in legal costs. 

The 'Washington Post' dealt with the case in a 1981 article entitled 'The Nazi Who Never Was: How a witch hunt by judge, press and investigators branded an innocent man a war criminal.' The Chicago weekly newspaper 'Reader' also reported on the case in a detailed 1981 article headlined: 'The Persecution of Frank Walus: To Catch a Nazi: The U.S. government wanted a war criminal. So, with the help of Simon Wiesenthal, the Israeli police, the local press and Judge Julius Hoffman, they invented one.' The article stated: ... It is logical to assume that the reports received by Wiesenthal actually were rumors ... In other words, Simon Wiesenthal had no evidence against W. He denounced him anyway. While Hoffman had the W. case under advisement, 'Holocaust' aired on television. During the same period, in April 1978, Simon Wiesenthal came to Chicago, where he gave interviews taking credit for the W. case. 'How Nazi-Hunter Helped Find W.,' was the 'Sun-Times' headline on a story by Bob Olmstead. Wiesenthal told 'Sun-Times' Abe Peck that he had never had a case of mistaken identity. 'I know there are thousands of people who wait for my mistake,' he said.

W. died after several heart attacks in August 1994, a bitter, financially ruined man. He refused to be buried on U.S. soil because he felt the country had betrayed and failed him. The W. case is seen as important, because it put in discredit the work of Simon Wiesenthal and the use of uncorroborated witness testimony.  
 
Literatur über / Writings concerning W.: 
* United States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Frank Walus, A/k/a Franciszek Walus, Defendant-appellant
* Frank Walus, a frame-up victim of the Nazi hunters, Publisher: Pro-American Educational Foundation (1988), ASIN: B000728VFM

Letzte Änderung / Last update: 05.08.2008 

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