Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal dies at 96

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 ended, working first with the Americans and later from a cramped Vienna apartment packed floor to ceiling with documents, Wiesenthal tirelessly pursued fugitive Nazi war criminals.

He was perhaps best known for his role in tracking down Adolf Eichmann, the one-time SS leader 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.

Ignored and insulted
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 finally 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.

'The world owes him'
Wiesenthal’s work also 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 had more distinguished foreign awards than any other living Austrian citizen. In 1995, the city of Vienna made him an honorary citizen. 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 Associated Press. “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 is tentatively planned to be held in Vienna’s central cemetery on Wednesday. Funeral services will be in Israel, said Avra Shapiro, the Wiesenthal Center’s public relations director.

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