Simon Wiesenthal
Mechanic, Organization founder
1908 – 2005
Who was Simon Wiesenthal?
Simon Wiesenthal, KBE was an Austrian Jewish Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter.
He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. After being forced to work as a slave labourer in Nazi concentration camps such as Janowska, Plaszow, and Mauthausen during the war, Wiesenthal dedicated most of his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial. In 1947 he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, where he and others gathered information for future war crime trials and aided refugees in their search for lost relatives. He opened the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna in 1961 and continued to try to locate missing Nazi war criminals. He played a small role in locating Adolf Eichmann, who was captured in Buenos Aires in 1960, and worked closely with the Austrian justice ministry to prepare a dossier on Franz Stangl, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Wiesenthal was involved in two high-profile events involving Austrian politicians. Shortly after Bruno Kreisky was inaugurated as Austrian chancellor in April 1970, Wiesenthal pointed out to the press that four of his new cabinet appointees had been members of the Nazi Party. Kreisky, angry, called Wiesenthal a "Jewish Nazi" and likened his organisation to the Mafia. He later accused him of collaborating with the Nazis. Wiesenthal successfully sued for libel; the suit was settled in 1989. In 1986, Wiesenthal was involved in the case of Kurt Waldheim, whose Nazi past was revealed in the lead-up to the 1986 Austrian presidential elections. Wiesenthal, embarrassed that he had previously cleared Waldheim of any wrongdoing, suffered much negative publicity as a result of this event.
Famous Quotes:
- ''Anne Frank became a symbol of the million murdered children, and I tell it to the father of Anne Frank, the diary of his daughter had a bigger impact than the Nuremberg trial.''
We need you!
Help us build the largest biographies collection on the web!
- Born
- Dec 31, 1908
Buchach - Also known as
- Szymon Wiesenthal
- Simon. Wiesenthal
- Parents
- Siblings
- Spouses
- Cyla Müller
(1936/09 - 2003/11/10)
- Cyla Müller
- Children
- Religion
- Judaism
- Ethnicity
- Jewish people
- Poles
- Nationality
- Austria
- Profession
- Education
- Czech Technical University in Prague
- Employment
- United States Army
- Lived in
- Vienna
- Died
- Sep 20, 2005
Vienna
Submitted
on July 23, 2013
Citation
Use the citation below to add to a bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Simon Wiesenthal." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/simon_wiesenthal>.
Discuss this Simon Wiesenthal biography with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In