Owens claimed that Wiesel—author of the memoir Night, human rights activist, and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize—was an impostor who had never experienced the horrors of the Holocaust, and who had stolen the identity of a true survivor of Auschwitz, which she described as a “Polish work camp.” She then described Wiesel, who died in 2016, as being the cousin of Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, the late publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell.
“So, who is this Elie, Elie Wiesel, who allegedly steals this identity?” Owens said. “Who steals identities, no less, and then makes up these stories—which, by the way, it is confirmed, the fictionalized stories in his book Night. Well, as I’ve told you guys before, Elie Wiesel was the cousin of Robert Maxwell. … And therefore,” she added, “Elie Wiesel becomes a very curious piece of the Epstein story.”
When Wiesel was 15 years old, he and his family were sent to Auschwitz, where his mother and sister were killed. Later, as Allied troops drew closer to Poland and Auschwitz, Wiesel and his father were transferred to another concentration camp, Buchenwald, in Germany. While his father died soon after their transfer, Wiesel survived the Holocaust and was liberated by U.S. forces in April 1945.