He was famous as a victim of the Holocaust. He would have escaped from Auschwitz and gave speeches about his horrific experiences during the second world war. But now Joseph Hirt admit that he has lied a lot.
"I offer my apologies to publicly today for the pain I got worried by telling others that I've experienced life in Auschwitz", writes the 86-year-old Joseph Hirt in an open letter. "I was there no prisoner."
Meeting with Hitler for years told the American Hirt in public about his life during the second World War: how his family fled from Poland; how he was arrested by Nazis and was sent to Auschwitz; how he got there the infamous doctor Josef Mengele met; and how he eventually escaped through under an electric fence by to crawl.
He also told Hirt that Adolf Hitler had seen at the Olympic Games in 1936 in Berlin, and that he is the American first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and athlete Jesse Owens met when he had fled to the US. A historian earlier this year expressed doubts about the tall tales of Hirt. So would Hirts tattooed camp number actually of another survivor.
Ask for forgiveness it was not his intention with his lies ' compromising what really happened there, ' says Hirt now. He wanted to correct that the terrible history of the concentration camp not be forgotten. "I decided at that time to do everything to prevent the truth about life in Auschwitz would be lost."
Said he was shocked to see that Auschwitz now a ' attraction for tourists ' where visitors laugh and make jokes. He finds it terrible that the information there is given by some tourists is dismissed as ' propaganda '.
"That denial of the truth made me determined to keep alive the memories of that place," says Hirt. "But that was a bad reason, with which I correct could tarnish the truth that I wanted to share. What I did was wrong. I ask for forgiveness. "
By editorial RTL News Photo: Getty Images
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