COMMENTARY: In honor of Simon Wiesenthal at 90

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ On the last day of 1998, Simon Wiesenthal, the world-famous Nazi hunter, celebrated his 90th birthday with his wife, Cyla, in their modest home in Vienna, Austria. For nearly 55 of those years Wiesenthal has […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ On the last day of 1998, Simon Wiesenthal, the world-famous Nazi hunter, celebrated his 90th birthday with his wife, Cyla, in their modest home in Vienna, Austria.


For nearly 55 of those years Wiesenthal has vigorously hunted down the Nazi”murderers among us”as he calls them in behalf of his”clients”_ the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust.

He does not pursue with a gun. Instead, Wiesenthal seeks records, dossiers,and other files that will lead him to Nazi criminals. Wiesenthal performs this difficult and painful work not for personal revenge; his goal is to bring the Nazi murderers before the bar of justice at a public trial in Germany, France, Israel, and other countries. The meting out of a just punishment and the education such proceedings provide for the post-war generation is his life’s work.

But it was not always so.

Born in Galicia in Eastern Europe, Wiesenthal received an architect’s degree from the University of Prague, and on the eve of World War II he was practicing his profession in the city of Lvov, now a part of Ukraine. Married in 1934, Wiesenthal looked forward to building houses, but the German invasion of Eastern Europe forever shattered his plans.

Between 1939 and 1945, Wiesenthal was moved to a dozen concentration camps and separated from his wife. Miraculously, they were re-united after the war, but quickly discovered that 89 members of their families were murdered during the Holocaust.

Among them was Wiesenthal’s mother. He says:”Since my liberation, there is not one day that I have forgotten that I am a survivor.” An especially traumatic day came in 1957 when his 11-year-old daughter,Pauline, the Wiesenthals’ only child, came home from school crying. She was upset that she had no immediate relatives: no grandparents, uncles, aunts, or cousins. Wiesenthal mournfully asked a journalist years later:”How do you explain that fact to an 11-year-old?” Today Pauline, the mother of three, lives in Israel. The Wiesenthals at least have the joy of being grandparents.

Nine years ago I met Wiesenthal in his Vienna”Documentation Center”which is only a few rooms filled with maps and documents. The Nazi hunter, a large stooped man with bulging eyes, reminded me of a plainclothes detective. He was like a human computer and during my visit he recited names of Nazis still at large, precise dates, exact figures, and other vital data. I often wonder whether his training as an architect enables him to patiently design intricate legal cases against Nazis.

Wiesenthal cited the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel, the arrest of Anne Frank’s captor, and the extradition of Franz Stargl in Brazil in 1967 as prime examples of educating today’s young people about the Holocaust’s mass murders. From the very beginning of his work in 1945, Wiesenthal has always spoken of the 11 million civilian victims of Nazism, 5 million of whom were not Jewish.

For Wiesenthal the”tragedy of the Nazi death camps was that the world forgot us. … The terrible silence of the world enveloped us.”That is why he demands public trials and education. Without them”the schools would fail through their silence, the church through its forgiveness and the home through the denials or the silence”of parents and grandparents.


In 1939, 150,000 Jews lived in Lvov, but only 500 survived.”Survivor”has a special meaning for Wiesenthal:”I’ve met American Jews who say, `I’m not a survivor, but I’ll support you.’ I answer: You are a survivor. Hitler’s program was to kill all the Jews. If he had won the war, it would have been the same in America as in Europe. Even Jews born after war are survivors.” Wiesenthal has been awarded 17 honorary doctorates and 25 medals of commendation from many nations, including Germany, for his work.”If in the next world I saw again those who were murdered, I could face them and feel I didn’t survive in vain.”Even at age 90, he says,”I will continue my work to the day I die.” No one disputes Simon Wiesenthal on that.

DEA END RUDIN

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