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Simon Wiesenthal 1908-2005
Holocaust Survivor, Nazi War Criminal Investigator,
Campaigner against Antisemitism & Racial Prejudice
"Justice, not Revenge"
Simon Wiesenthal was born in December 1908, in Buczacs, Ukraine, then
part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but today in the Lvov [Lviv] Region.
Wiesenthal's connection to Vienna goes back to his childhood, when his
family lived in the capital city for a while, but later returned to Buczacs,
where he completed his schooling. He graduated in Civil Engineering from
Prague Technical University in 1932 and returned to Lvov to work in an
Architecture office.
Wiesenthal married Cyla in 1936. Until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in
1939, he worked and lived in Lvov, but the family suffered under the antisemitic
purges and persecution at the hands of the Soviet NKVD. With the German
invasion of 1941, the area came under Nazi law and he was imprisoned in
the Janowka and Ostbahn camps; most of both familes were annihilated in
the Nazi camps. He escaped before the Ostbahn camp was liquidated in 1943,
and he arranged his wife's escape to Poland, with the Polish underground.
Recaptured in 1944 and sent back to Janowka, he survived the forced march
via Buchenwald to Mauthausen, but was barely alive when the US liberated
the camp in May 1945. He and his wife were re-united and their daughter
Pauline was born in 1946.
Wiesenthal's work in collecting evidence for the US Nazi War Crimes Unit,
to prosecute Nazi War Criminals, became legendary (1945-1947). He later
opened the Jewish Documentation Center in Linz, but there was little support
for this and it closed; almost all its files were donated to Yad Vashem
in 1954 www.yadvashem.org One of
the investigations, however, continued , namely the whereabouts of Adolf
Eichmann, and from 1951-1961 Wiesenthal was the leader and catalyst in
the campaign to uncover information about him, locate him and bring him
to justice. The Eichmann trial took place in Jerusalem, in 1961.
This success led to the reopening of the Jewish Documentation Center,
this time in Vienna. In all, Simon Wiesenthal brought 1,100 Nazis to justice,
authenticated the Anne Frank Diary, analyzed tens of thousands of files
and documents, wrote books, consulted for and introduced films on the
subject of Nazi-hunting, and received international awards for his work.
He continued working in Vienna into his 90s, retiring only after his wife
died in 2003. He died after a long illness on Tuesday, September 20th,
2005, having outlived his persecutors and those of both their families.
Simon Wiesenthal will be remembered for his leadership and courage in
bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, for transforming the way the world
commemorates the victims of the Shoah, as well as for his campaign for
tolerance and understanding.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is named for Simon Wiesenthal and is an internationally
recognized NGO. It was launched by him in 1977, as a Memorial to the Shoah
(Holocaust) and a Human Rights Center, confronting Antisemitism, Racism,
Terrorism, Genocide*. It can be considered the forerunner and leader of
the international movement to bring Holocaust Memorial to the wider public,
and to establish official Memorial Days.
Today, in addition to the Los Angeles site, there are museums in Miami,
Toronto, New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, Jerusalem, alongside other major
institutions, such as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,
DC www.ushmm.org , and all the major
Holocaust Museums and Centers: Yad Vashem, The Anne Frank Museum
http://www.annefrank.org/ , Ghetto Fighters' House www.gfh.org.il
, Memorial Museums in France, the UK, Germany, and many other countries.
*The SWC website online Museum of Tolerance is at http://www.museumoftolerance.com/site/pp.asp?c=arLPK7PILqF&b=249627
The SWC-MoT's Learning Center offers an extensive digital archive resources
about the Shoah
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=358201
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394659
.
Simon Wiesenthal's official biography at the Simon Wiesenthal Center
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=242921
Further resources about his life and work – with photos –
see:
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=242614
Biography and tribute, details of wartime imprisonment, Eichmann investigation
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/627079.html
Extended References
A. Biographies and Obituaries
BBC - Overview of Wiesenthal's life, with photos
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1170395.stm
Times Online - Focus on details of Wiesenthal's Nazi hunting cases
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1789575,00.html
USA Today - Voice of 6 Million: Wiesenthal's sense of mission and endurance
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-09-20-wiesenthal-edit_x.htm
Wikipedia - Beyond biography: focus on Austria, critics, links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Wiesenthal
B. Special Interest
Simon Wiesenthal's Speech in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, 1995
["I have survived"]
http://www.mikis-theodorakis.net/wiesen-e.htm
AFP: World leaders pay tribute to Simon Wiesental
http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/{DFD2AAC1-2ADE-428A-9263-35234229D8D8}/article-international.html?SMContentIndex=0&SMContentSet=0
Jerusalem Post - Readers write personal tributes to Simon Wiesenthal
[English, German, Spanish, French, etc.]
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1127182725626
C. Bibliography, Filmography
Books by and about Simon Wiesenthal and his work; some books by the SWC.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=stripbooks:relevance-above&field-keywords=Simon%252520Wiesenthal&search-type=ss&bq=1&store-name=books/ref=xs_ap_sai1_xgl14/103-0294237-6273450
International Film Database - list of films associated with Simon Wiesenthal
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0927622/
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