Simon Wiesenthal (1908–2005) was an Austrian-Jewish Holocaust survivor and investigator of Nazi war crimes. After spending three years in concentration camps, he began a crusade to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, tracing some 1,000 criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, one of the principal organizers of the Holocaust.
Born in Buczacz, Galicia, Austria-Hungary, now Buchach in Ukraine, Wiesenthal studied architecture and lived in Lviv at the outbreak of World War II. He survived five Nazi concentration camps 1941–45. After the war, he dedicated his life to tracking and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial.
Wiesenthal was a prominent voice against neo-Nazism and racism and remembering the Jewish experience as a lesson for humanity. In 1947, Wiesenthal co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre in Linz, Austria. He and others gathered the information for future war crime trials and aided refugees searching for lost relatives.
Wiesenthal was a promoter of Holocaust memory and education. He authored several memoirs that are only loosely based on actual events, including The Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Memoirs (1967,) The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (1969,) Segel der Hoffnung (1972; Sails of Hope,) Every Day Remembrance Day: A Chronicle of Jewish Martyrdom (1986,) and Justice, Not Vengeance (1989.) He also wrote several novels, including Max und Helen (1981, Max and Helen.)
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a human rights organization located in Los Angeles, is named in his honor.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Simon Wiesenthal
Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them.
—Simon Wiesenthal
Topics: Weapon
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Wilhelm Reich Austrian Psychoanalyst
Hyman G. Rickover American Admiral
Arthur Rubinstein American Pianist
Louis L’Amour American Novelist
Michael DeBakey American Surgeon
Martin Buber Austrian Jewish Philosopher
Billy Wilder American Filmmaker
Bob Hope British-born American Comedian, Film Actor
Billy Graham American Baptist Religious Leader
George S. Patton American Military Leader