The suspect in the Feb. 1 assault of Elie Wiesel in San Francisco’s Argent Hotel may hail from New York.
That’s the word from Jonathan Bernstein, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. San Francisco police have confirmed an “East Coast” suspect may be responsible for dragging the 78-year-old Holocaust survivor and scholar out of an elevator following his speech at a peace and tolerance seminar.
Police are not commenting on whether the assailant is the same man who subsequently posted an alleged account of the attack on an anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist Web site. That posting, by a man claiming to be named Eric Hunt, explained the attack followed weeks of stalking Wiesel in an attempt to coerce him into admitting the Holocaust never took place.
In interviews following the attack, Wiesel has said the attack left him as terrified as he’s been since 1945, when he was liberated after surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California