Famed Nazi Hunter, Holocaust Survivor Dies

[Skywatch_NC]

Famed Nazi Hunter, Holocaust Survivor Dies
Man Helped Find Officer Who Sent Anne Frank To Death Camp

POSTED: 7:13 am EDT September 20, 2005

VIENNA, Austria -- Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who helped track down Nazi war criminals following World War II, then spent the later decades of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people, died Tuesday. He was 96.

Wiesenthal, who helped find one-time SS leader Adolf Eichmann and the policeman who arrested Anne Frank, died in his sleep at his home in Vienna, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

"I think he'll be remembered as the conscience of the Holocaust. In a way he became the permanent representative of the victims of the Holocaust, determined to bring the perpetrators of the greatest crime to justice," Hier told The Associated Press.

A survivor of five Nazi death camps, Wiesenthal changed his life's mission after the war, dedicating himself to tracking down Nazi war criminals and to being a voice for the 6 million Jews who died during the onslaught. He himself lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust.

Wiesenthal spent more than 50 years hunting Nazi war criminals, speaking out against neo-Nazism and racism, and remembering the Jewish experience as a lesson for humanity. Through his work, he said, some 1,100 Nazi war criminals were brought to justice.

"When history looks back I want people to know the Nazis weren't able to kill millions of people and get away with it," he once said.

Calls of condolences poured into Wiesenthal's office in Vienna, where one of his longtime assistants, Trudi Mergili, struggled to deal with her grief.

"It was expected," she said. "But it is still so hard."

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Wiesenthal "brought justice to those who had escaped justice."

"He acted on behalf of 6 million people who could no longer defend themselves," ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Tuesday. "The state of Israel, the Jewish people and all those who oppose racism recognized Simon Wiesenthal's unique contribution to making our planet a better place."

Austria's parliament speaker said "an important voice for remembrance and humanity has been silenced."

Wiesenthal was first sent to a concentration camp in 1941, outside Lviv, Ukraine. In October 1943, he escaped from the Ostbahn camp just before the Germans began killing all the inmates. He was recaptured in June 1944 and sent back to Janwska, but escaped death as his SS guards retreated with their prisoners from the Soviet Red Army.

Wiesenthal's quest began after the Americans liberated the Mauthausen death camp in Austria where Wiesenthal was a prisoner in May 1945. It was his fifth death camp among the dozen Nazi camps in which he was imprisoned, and he weighed just 99 pounds when he was freed. He said he quickly realized "there is no freedom without justice," and decided to dedicate "a few years" to that mission.

"It became decades," he added.

Even after turning 90, Wiesenthal continued to remind and to warn. While appalled at atrocities committed by Serbs against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the 1990s, he said no one should confuse the tragedy there with the Holocaust.

"We are living in a time of the trivialization of the word 'Holocaust,"' he told AP in 1999. "What happened to the Jews cannot be compared with all the other crimes. Every Jew had a death sentence without a date."

Wiesenthal's life spanned a violent century.

He was born on Dec. 31, 1908, to Jewish merchants at Buczacs, a small town near the present-day Ukrainian city of Lviv in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire. He studied in Prague and Warsaw and in 1932 received a degree in civil engineering.

He apprenticed as a building engineer in Russia before returning to Lviv to open an architectural office. Then the Russians and the Germans occupied Lviv and the terror began.

After the war, working first with the Americans and later from a cramped Vienna apartment packed with documents, Wiesenthal tirelessly pursued fugitive war criminals.

He was perhaps best known for his role in tracking down Eichmann, who organized the extermination of the Jews. Eichmann was found in Argentina, abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, tried and hanged for crimes committed against the Jews.

Wiesenthal often was accused of exaggerating his role in Eichmann's capture. He did not claim sole responsibility, but said he knew by 1954 where Eichmann was.

Eichmann's capture "was a teamwork of many who did not know each other," Wiesenthal told the AP in 1972. "I do not know if and to what extent reports I sent to Israel were used."

Among others Wiesenthal tracked down was Austrian policeman Karl Silberbauer, who he believed arrested the Dutch teenager Anne Frank and sent her to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she died.

Wiesenthal decided to pursue Silberbauer in 1958 after a youth told him he did not believe in Frank's existence and murder, but would if Wiesenthal could find the man who arrested her. His five-year search resulted in Silberbauer's 1963 capture.

Wiesenthal did not bring to justice one prime target - Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death" of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Mengele died in South America after eluding capture for decades.

Wiesenthal's long quest for justice also stirred controversy.

In Austria, which took decades to acknowledge its own role in Nazi crimes, Wiesenthal was ignored and often insulted before being honored for his work when he was in his 80s.

In 1975, then-Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, himself a Jew, suggested Wiesenthal was part of a "certain mafia" seeking to besmirch Austria. Kreisky even claimed Wiesenthal collaborated with Nazis to survive.

Ironically, it was the furor over Kurt Waldheim, who became president in 1986 despite lying about his past as an officer in Hitler's army, that gave Wiesenthal stature in Austria.

Wiesenthal's failure to condemn Waldheim as a war criminal drew international ire and conflict with American Jewish groups. But it made Austrians realize that the Nazi hunter did not condemn everybody who took part in the Nazi war effort.

Wiesenthal did repeatedly demand Waldheim's resignation, seeing him as a symbol of those who suppressed Austria's role as part of Hitler's German war and death machine. But he turned up no proof of widespread allegations that Waldheim was an accessory to war crimes.

Wiesenthal's work exposed him to danger.

His house and office have been guarded by an armed police officer since June 1982, when a bomb exploded at his front door, causing severe damage but resulting in no injuries, according to the Wiesenthal Center Web site. One German and several Austrian neo-Nazis were arrested.

He pursued his crusade of remembrance into old age with the vigor of youth, with patience and determination. But as he entered his 90s, he worried that his mission would die with him.

"I think in a way the world owes him and his memory a tremendous amount of gratitude," Hier said.

Wiesenthal earned many awards, including Austria's Golden Decoration of Merit, which was presented by President Heinz Fischer at Wiesenthal's home in June. He also wrote several books, including his memoirs, "The Murderers Among Us," in 1967, and worked regularly at the small downtown office of his Jewish Documentation Center even after turning 90.

"The most important thing I have done is to fight against forgetting and to keep remembrance alive," he said in the 1999 interview with the AP. "It is very important to let people know that our enemies are not forgotten."

Wiesenthal's wife, Cyla, whom he married in 1936, died in November 2003.

A memorial service was to be held in Vienna's central cemetery on Wednesday. Funeral services will be in Israel, Mergili said.

http://www.wral.com/news/4995081/detail.html

[alicia-w]

Very sad. He lived a full life and will be remembered for a very long time. I was able to meet him several years ago. He made some very important contributions to this world.

[mf_dolphin]

RIP!

[bvigal]

[img]http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/{DFD2AAC1-2ADE-428A-9263-35234229D8D8}/SW--%20headshot%201.jpg[/img]
The world has lost a great and courageous man!
My condolences to his family, friends, and coworkers.
My thanks to him for his legacy of bringing criminals to justice, and making them accountable for their atrocities, and for avenging my 2 great aunts, Rochelle and Sophie!

[bvigal]

... the world continues to try and forget the holocaust:

September 12, 2005

LEADING JEWISH HUMAN RIGHTS NGO SAYS SENIOR MUSLIM AFFAIRS ADVISOR SHOULD "BE RELIEVED OF HIS DUTIES OR RESIGN"

The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned in the strongest terms statements made by British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s top advisor on Muslim Affairs for calling on the British government to cancel the country’s official Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, making instead a "Genocide Memorial Day."

"Rather than learning from the lessons of the past, which serves as an antidote to hate, Sir Iqbal Sacranie and his associates want to make the Holocaust an irrelevant footnote rather than a central historic example of man’s inhumanity to man," said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Founder and Dean and Associate Dean of the Wiesenthal Center, respectively. "The people of the United Kingdom were correct in setting aside a day for Holocaust remembrance as a way of inspiring future generations."

"Canceling Holocaust Memorial Day would be like asking the people of the United Kingdom to cancel VE-Day, and through it belittling the memory of the hundreds of thousands of British soldiers and civilians who gave their lives in defense of freedom," Hier and Cooper continued.

"Denying uncomfortable historic truths never foster unity but only spawns divisiveness and cynicism," said the rabbis. "As for the assertion that Holocaust Memorial Day excludes Muslims, History teaches us that among the Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust were of the Muslim faith. Many were recognized by the State of Israel for their courageous deeds. And as well, there were Muslim volunteers who fought for Hitler’s Army," they continued.

"Those who made these insulting and insidious statements should be relieved of their duties or resign. Their disgraceful and shameful belittling of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust ultimately does not serve their community, does not serve their country and does not serve history," Rabbi Hier and Rabbi Cooper concluded.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe.

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036, or visit http://www.wiesenthal.com.

[alicia-w]

Amazing. There are people in my office who truly believe the Holocaust never happened.

My mom was a survivor, so it just makes me want to hit something when they say that.

[Skywatch_NC]

I met a WWII veteran once while eating out. He and his unit were of one of many who liberated concentration camps.

RIP Mr. Wiesenthal and thank you sir for what you did in bringing Nazis to justice for their war crimes!

Eric

[kevin]

Amazing. There are people in my office who truly believe the Holocaust never happened.

My mom was a survivor, so it just makes me want to hit something when they say that.

In time people will forget about it, they will look at our historical records and do what we do to the ancient records and say its either propoganda or exageration. Very sad to see the process already beginning.

There's part of me that wishes it wasn't real, that way I could have more faith in individuals and people as a group. Truth is evil is in the world, and it only takes the good to be apathetic for these things to happen. Which is why we must always be vigilent.

Rest in peace Mr. Wiesenthal.