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BUCHENWALD 132: On Elie Wiessel and Bill Quick

Bill Quick ico Puerto Rico

For those following this series on THE Ave, Bill Quick is sadly familiar.  He is my brother in law, the author of a slanderous website that demeans my father’s role in WW II, and claims my father plagiarized the pictures. Dr. Quick is also the author of slanderous charges against THE Ave and me .. claiming TA is pornographic and racist and that I have a major mental illness.  He even tried to have me fired as Professor of Pathology by accusing me of faking my CV and used a public records request to make my emails public.

On FACEBOOK:

Bill Quick responding to a post about Buchenwald:

It is so sad that Stephen continues to mislead readers with these statements.

(1) There is no documentation that I am aware of that Dr. Robert Schwartz actually provided “medical care” at Buchenwald. There is a letter that he wrote to his wife in which he states that he “visited” Buchenwald — as did many other US soldiers — but the letter never mentions anything about providing medical care.

(2) Stephen’s brother Hugh has NOT “tried to destroy my father’s pictures.” Most of them are safely stored in the Boston area awaiting an agreement to donate them — which Stephen has refused to sign; however, Stephen has an unknown quantity of pictures and other WWII memorabilia in his possession that he refuses to return despite having signed an agreement to do “so.”

Just some facts

My brother Hugh Schwartz has explicitly threatened, in a recorded  message to my attorney, to “let the pictures rot.”   

Hugh has made good on that threat by refusing any effort, even at my expense, to have the pictures archivally processed and digitized. He has allowed this to happen for so long that there must have been further deterioration of the pictures and, worse,  many of the elderly survivors who might have been able to add commentary to the collection are now dead. 

As to Bill’s claim that “Stephen has an unknown quantity of pictures and other WWII memorabilia in his possession”  my wife went to an extensive effort to provide Bill and Hugh with an inventory of everything we have ever gotten form my father.  We also offered to add anything in our possession  a museum that wanted our items added to the gift.  Despite many requests Bill has never told us what the “unknown quantity of pictures and other WWII memorabilia in (my) possession might be. ”

Hugh and my sister Stephanie (Bill’s wife) have not only tried to destroy the pictures they have, to an unknown degree, succeeded.  For the last six years, since the pictures were discovered. Hugh and Stephanie have refused to allow the pictures to go into a proper facility to be properly treated for preservation.  For the last three years Hugh has taken possession as executor and during that time he has refused to even do an inventory.  Because the pictures have never been properly processed they are fading.  Hugh has not allowed me or any expert to even see the collection and, contrary to Bill’s claim, will not even say where or how he is storing them.

Elie Wiesel

Recently the most eminent survivor, Eli Wiesel, died.  Offering the collection to  Elie Wiesel  was one of my goals.  That will now never happen.

Hugh and Stephanie are also in violation of a contract.   After my father’s death  we, the three children, all signed a contract agreeing to transfer the collection to a museum or university for preservation and display. This contract included a payment, by our step mother, to Hugh of property worth over $100,000.

Despite the contract and that payment, Hugh and Stephanie refused an offer by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to take part of the collection and do the work of preservation for the rest.  My siblings decided instead to gift the collection to Hugh’s Alma Mater, Brandeis.   To keep the peace, I agreed to a contract written by Hugh’s wife, Attorney Janet Linn.  This contract would have transferred the materials to Brandeis.  Hugh and Stephanie, not I, have refused to sign and, therefore,  to gift the pictures to  Brandeis. 

At this point, since Hugh has refused to allow an inventory, we do not even know how many of the images still exist.  Moreover,from the beginning my goal was to have everything digitized so that the images could be sent to survivors who might answer Bill’s questions about what my father did and saw in those three days when he was one of the few Americans in the camp before General Patton’s official arrival.  Sadly, these elderly survivors are dying,  

 


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