Nazi Hunters
Early Years
Born on December 31, 1908, in Ukranian Galicia, to a Jewish merchant family, Simon Wiesenthal and his brother enjoyed a very pleasant childhood. The father, Asher Wiesenthal, a refuge from the Russian pogroms, died in combat during the First World War. With Russia's ensuing control of Galicia, the family fled ina href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna"Vienna. The boys attended school there until 1917 when Russia retreated from Galicia and they returned to their homeland. They suffered as Jews under the aegis of various "liberating" rulers. In 1936, Simon Wiesenthal married fellow student, Cyla Muller.
The Holocaust
Simon Wisenthal had been working as an architect when Nazi Germanyinvaded the SovietUnionin June of 1941. He and his family were captured and sent to the Janowska Street Concentration Camp. By the time the camp was liberated by American forces on May 5, 1945, Simon Wiesenthal had been imprisoned in twelve different concentration camps, including five death camps from where he had narrowly escaped execution several times. His family lost a total of 89 relatives during the Holocaust. Simon Wiesenthal's wife survived the war even though Simon believed she had perished in the Warsaw Uprising. In 1946, the couple reunited and had their only child, a daughter named Paulina.
Nazi Hunter
After the war, Simon Wiesenthal began working for the US Army, gathering information for the Nazi war crimes trials. It is still a moot point as to whether he played a role in the capture and conviction of Adolph Eichmannn, but there is no question that Simon Wiesenthal was a pioneer in seeking the prosecutions of war criminals at time when the political climate accommodated them. After Eichmann's execution in Israel in 1962, Simon Wiesenthal reopened the Jewish Organization Center, which he and 30 other volunteers had founded in 1947. It had petered out because of lack of interest in war crimes, but now it focused on other prominent cases with renewed vigor. Among Simon Wiesenthal's most high-profile successes was the capture of, Karl Silberbauer, the Gestapo officer who arrested the family of Anne Frank.
=b= Retirement and Death
Simon Wiesenthal spent his last years in Vienna. His wife died at the age of 95 and he died at the age of 96 on September 20, 2005.
His legacy teaches the far-reaching power of the human spirit and Simon Wiesenthal is a man whom history will always remember and respect.
