In a posting Tuesday on the anti-Zionist Web site ZioPedia, a writer using the name Eric Hunt takes credit for the attack: “After ensuring no women would be traumatized by what I had to do (I had been trailing Wiesel for weeks), I stopped the elevator at the sixth floor. I pulled Wiesel out of the elevator. I said I wanted to interview him.”

Wiesel grabbed at his chest and yelled for help, according to the posting. “I told him, ‘Why don’t you want people to know the truth?’ His expression changed, and he began screaming again. …” the posting reads.Police reported that the suspect tried to force Wiesel into one of the rooms, but ran away when Wiesel started yelling.

The online posting states that the writer intended to “bring Wiesel to my hotel room where he would truthfully answer my questions regarding the fact that his non-fiction Holocaust memoir, Night, is almost entirely fictitious.” Later in the posting, the Holocaust is portrayed as a “myth.”

Elie Wisel is the author of 40 books, a Holocaust survivor, winner of the Nobel Peace prize, and founder of the US Holocaust  Memorial museum.

Holocaust denial groups - or some Holocaust revisionists state the Holocaust is a hoax arising out of a deliberate Jewish conspiracy to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other peoples. While denial and revisionism is seen as hate speech or libel(and a criminal offense) in many countries, freedom of speech in the US constitution makes it difficult to track the number of groups that deny or fall under anti-semitism and neo-nazi beliefs.

The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Centre are two groups that track holocaust denial and anti semitic groups.