[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...