SEP 20, 2005: Famed holocaust survivor turned Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal dies in his sleep. At the outbreak of WWII, he was an architect in the Ukraine and in Jul 1941 after the German invasion of Russia, was rounded up for forced labor and moved into a ghetto. He was deported to 5 concentration camps (including Buchenwald) with Mauthausen in Austria being his last. After his liberation in May 1945, he began working with an American army unit gathering evidence against war criminals and when the investigations ended, he continued on with the work for the rest of his life -- obsessed with & dedicated to the pursuit of justice as an act of defiance to never forget. By tracking down and helping to prosecute several notorious high-profile one-time officers (or guards such as the sadistic Austrian Hermine Braunsteiner of the Majdanek and Ravensbrück camps who was found living as a housewife in Queens, New York in Jul 1964), those who had any involvement in the machinery of extermination became targets he doggedly went after in a determination to pull them out of hiding, face extradition & hold them accountable. In no time at all by the 1950's & 60's, Wiesenthal had set up valuable documentation centers and grew to be a figure of great controversy. He played a small role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann in May 1960 and in the 1970's, he was exposing politicians and seen as a hero in the eyes of many (not just survivors), while he was equally the recipient of many death threats. In the Dec 1970 life imprisonment of Franz Stangl, he had helped prepare the dossier that led to his charges & sentencing and in 1977, the Simon Wiesenthal Center was established in Los Angeles. In Jun 1982, a bomb planted by neo-Nazis exploded outside his house in Vienna (resulting in police guards stationed outside his home 24hrs a day) and in Mar 1986, he got tangled in the Kurt Waldheim affair over a Nazi past. What he articulated as inevitable reckoning & retribution against murderous fugitives, his critics condemned as revenge but whether truly vengeance or the vindication of memory, his humanitarian contribution can't be dismissed. His most serious charges came from 2 authors (Briton Guy Walters, and Israeli Tom Segev) who've claimed that Wiesenthal had frequently lied about his background and war-time exploits through an inconsistent narrative of false claims, bragging, contradictions, fabricated storytelling & self-showmanship. Defenders have countered the attacks & disputes by noting that even if duplicitous, his overall legacy can't be tarnished because his intentions for the proper recording of history and education on genocide & tolerance have been indispensable. The number of world awards & doctorates he has been honored with is a testament to freedom, stability & peace, just as much as it is to reconciliation. Wiesenthal retired in Oct 2001 and in Nov 2003, his wife Cyla of 67yrs died. The couple are survived by their daughter Pauline.
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