Home > Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity > Wiesenthal, Simon

[DECEMBER 31, 1908–]

Polish humanitarian

Born in 1908, in Buczacz, Galicia (in the Polish Ukraine), Simon Wiesenthal was raised in a typical shtetl (small Jewish town) environment. The family moved to Lvov, Vienna, and finally back to Buczacz. Wiesenthal continued his education in Prague, where he was trained as an architect. Leaving school in 1932, Wiesenthal returned to Lvov, where he married Cyla Muller in 1936 and, due to anti-Semitism, only received the formal degree of architectural engineer in 1939. In the wake of the nonaggression pact between the Nazis and the communists in 1939, the Russians took over Lvov, and Wiesenthal was no longer allowed to practice his profession.

On June 28, 1941, the Nazis occupied Lvov, and Wiesenthal and his family were swept up in the Nazi occupation. Wiesenthal went through a series of concentration camps, including Gross-Rosen, Janowska, Buchenwald, and finally Mauthausen, in Austria, from which the U.S. Army liberated him on May 5, 1945. Shortly thereafter he was reunited with his wife, who was the only other member of their extended families to survive, and in 1946 their only child, a daughter, was born.

Humanitarian

Wiesenthal began his postwar career by aiding the U.S. war crimes investigators in the immediate aftermath of liberation. In May 1945 he submitted his first extensive list of Nazis perpetrators to the U.S. authorities, and joined their team as an investigator and translator. The onset of the cold war between the Western countries and the Soviet Union caused the United States and the other Western Allies to turn away from the pursuit and judgment of Nazis, by either ignoring them or using them as either scientific or intelligence assets. (This was true of the Soviet Union and other Communist bloc countries as well.) By 1947 the U.S. Army had begun to abandon the effort, but using files that had been collected by the army, Wiesenthal opened the first Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz. He maintained this center until 1954, when he closed it down due to the lack of interest and support, sending his files to Yad Vashem, Israel's center for Holocaust study and commemoration. For the next few years Wiesenthal worked as a journalist and with refugee agencies.

The trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel in 1961 brought both Wiesenthal and the pursuit of Nazis back into the limelight. While many people have claimed full credit for the capture, Wiesenthal's contribution of persistent tracking and important information greatly helped the Israeli operation. The question of credit for the capture has remained one of the major controversies associated with Wiesenthal throughout his career, with Mossad chief Isser Harel claiming sole responsibility and denying Wiesenthal any credit for the capture. Despite Harel's position, historians believe that Wiesenthal did contribute to the effort of tracking and capturing Eichmann, particularly by keeping the effort going until the Israelis became involved.

As a result of this renewed interest, Wiesenthal decided to move to Vienna and to reopen his Documentation Center there. Continuing to work independently, he became famous as the world's leading Nazi-hunter. Over the next decades he investigated and helped bring to justice over one thousand Nazi war criminals. Some of the more prominent cases included Franz Stangl, the commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka, Franz Murer, commandant of the Vilna ghetto, Karl Silberbauer, the policeman who arrested Anne Frank, Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan, the former Majdanek guard who was located in the Unites States, thus publicizing the presence of Nazi war criminals in the United States and Eduard Roschmann, second in command of the Riga ghetto.

From the early stages of his postwar career, Wiesenthal spoke up for other groups, not only Jews. In the 1950s he began to speak about the fate of the Roma and Sinti under the Nazis, and has continued to draw attention to their persecution in Europe. He also spoke out on behalf of other threatened groups such as the Cambodians under Pol Pot and the Kurds. He championed the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, and helped draw the world's attention to the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved Jews during the Holocaust and vanished after being arrested by the Soviets in 1945.

Prolific Author

Wiesenthal has been a prolific author over the years. Among his most significant works are The Murderers Among Us (1967), which interweaves chapters describing Wiesenthal's life and beliefs with those describing his pursuit of specific Nazis; The Sunflower (1970, 1998), which is a symposium on forgiveness with responses from major thinkers; Every Day Remembrance Day (1987), a calendar of anti-Semitism throughout Jewish history; and a last volume of memoirs, Justice Not Vengeance (1989). His other books include Sails of Hope, which deals with the theory of Christopher Columbus' supposed Jewish ancestry, as well as other works related to the Holocaust. In 1989 The Murders Among Us was made into a major television film starring Ben Kingsley. Johanna Heer and Werner Schmiedel's acclaimed documentary about Wiesenthal, The Art of Remembrance, appeared in 1997. Wiesenthal has been the subject of many books, particularly the biography by Hella Pick, Simon Wiesenthal: A Life in Search of Justice (1996) and Alan Levy's The Wiesenthal File (1993).

Controversy

Wiesenthal's career has been marked by some significant controversies. From 1970 to 1990 there was an ongoing bitter feud with Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky. The feud was connected to Austrian politics, Israel, and Jewish identity. Kreisky, who was an assimilated Jew, accused Wiesenthal of surviving the war by collaborating with the Nazis. After a series of lawsuits, Wiesenthal finally won a judgment of slander against Kreisky, who died shortly after. This controversy was later dwarfed by the Waldheim affair. In 1986 the World Jewish Congress (WJC) launched a public relations campaign aimed at convincing Austrians (and the world) that former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim was a Nazi war-criminal and unfit to be elected as president of Austria. Wiesenthal reacted cautiously and, while agreeing that Waldheim had lied and covered up his wartime activities, refused to label him a war criminal without specific proof that would hold up in a court of law. The WJC reacted angrily, and viciously attacked Wiesenthal, who refused to back down. Ultimately Waldheim was elected, Wiesenthal called for his resignation, the United States placed Waldheim on its "watch list" (preventing him from entering the country), and the bitter feelings between Wiesenthal and the WJC lingered.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center

In 1977 the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles was founded by Rabbi Marvin Hier to continue Wiesenthal's work. The Center has offices in New York, Miami, Toronto, Jerusalem, Paris, and Buenos Aires. The innovative Museum of Tolerance was opened in Los Angeles in 1993, the New York Tolerance Center in 2004, and the Center for Human Dignity is planned by the Wiesenthal Center for Jerusalem. The Center's agenda mirrors that of Wiesenthal, being involved in campaigns against Nazi war criminals, current anti-Semitic and other extremist activities, particularly on the Internet, and human rights issues in general. Its film division has produced a number of documentaries, including two Academy Award–winning films, (Genocide in 1981 and The Long Way Home in 1997), and its publications include Genocide: Critical Issues of the Holocaust (1983), The Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual (1984–1990), and Dismantling the Big Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. While the Center bears Wiesenthal's name and has acted in association with Wiesenthal, both Wiesenthal and the Center maintain the right to act independently of each other.

Wiesenthal's Legacy

Over the course of his long career Wiesenthal has received many honors, including the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal (1980) and Presidential Medal of Freedom (2000), French Legion of Honor (1986), Great Medal of Merit (Germany, 1985), Erasmus Prize (Amsterdam, 1992), and he was named an honorary citizen of Vienna in 1995. In 2004 Wiesenthal was awarded an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth of England.

Wiesenthal's accomplishments go beyond the honors he has accumulated. They include being the inspiration of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which in 2004 had close to a half-million members worldwide, and is one of the leading Jewish human rights organizations in the world. For the first two decades after the Holocaust, his was essentially the only voice that kept the memory of that period alive for the public, particularly in Europe, and especially in the countries where National Socialism and the Holocaust originated. For the survivors and for many Jews who were born after the war he became the symbol of a new Jewish resolve to no longer be passive, thus overcoming the guilt associated with the claim that Jews were led "like sheep to the slaughter." His resolve to avoid revenge and to focus on bringing the Nazis to justice served as an affirmation of the legal process and earned him international respect. Wiesenthal's persistent efforts, against determined opposition, eventually helped lead to the creation of Nazi hunting units in various countries including the United States, and also helped to normalize the concept of governmental action against war criminals. War crimes tribunals, such as those dealing with the genocides of Bosnia and Rwanda, might not have occurred had Wiesenthal not kept the pursuit of Nazi war criminals on the world's agenda for so long. By fighting to keep the memories of the victims alive and to bring justice to their killers, however delayed, he managed to help change the world's reactions to genocide and war crimes.

SEE ALSO Holocaust; Prosecution; Psychology of Victims

Mark Weitzman