Simon Wiesenthal (1908-2005)

Born in Buczacz Poland, Simon Wiesenthal was an Austrian-Jewish
architectural engineer and Holocaust survivor. Wiesenthal became famous
for his work as a Nazi hunter, and dedicated his life to bringing Nazi
war criminals to justice.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Wiesenthal was arrested
and sent to a concentration camp known as Janowska. In October 1943 he
escaped from Janowask only to be recaptured and returned to the camp in
June 1944. He later spent time in Plaszow, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, and
Mauthausen. The Mauthausen camp was where Wiesenthal was liberated on
May 5th 1945 by the U.S. Army.

In 1947 while working with the War Crimes section of the Army, Simon
Wiesenthal created the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz,
Austria and began his crusade to collect material to use in Nazi war
crime trials. The material collected by Wiesenthal and his colleagues
led to the capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960 by the Israeli authorities
as well as many other Nazi War Criminals.

Some of the other Nazi War Criminals whom Wiesenthal helped bring to
justice included Franz Murer and Karl Silberbauer. Wiesenthal continued
his work and by the end of his life he was credited with helping to
bring approximately 1,100 Nazi War Criminals to justice. In 1977 the
Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies opened in Los Angeles.
Wiesenthal died in his sleep at age 96 in Vienna on September 20, 2005,
and was buried in the city of Herzliya in Israel on 23 September.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wiesenthal, Simon. The Murderers among Us. New York, 1967
Pick, Hella. Simon Wiesenthal: A life in Search of Justice. London, 1996