Simon Wiesenthal, Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter

VIENNA – Simon Wiesenthal, whose experiences in German concentration camps turned him into a lifelong hunter of Nazi war criminals, died at his home in Vienna yesterday, the US-based centre which bears his name said.

He was 96. Wiesenthal, who died after a long illness, was “the conscience of the Holocaust”, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, who founded the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.The veteran Jewish activist helped bring more than 1 100 Nazi criminals to justice, including Adolf Eichmann, an architect of Hitler’s “Final Solution” who was tracked down by Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960, to be tried and executed and executed in Israel the following year.”When the Holocaust ended in 1945 and the whole world went home to forget, he alone remained behind to remember,” Hier said in the statement, which was posted on the Center’s web site.”He did not forget.He became the permanent representative of the victims, determined to bring the perpetrators of history’s greatest crime to justice.”Born in 1908 in the town of Buchach, in the west of what is now Ukraine but was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Wiesenthal spent part of his childhood in Vienna, where his mother took the family after his father died in World War I.He trained as an architect in Prague, and then practised his trade in the Ukrainian city of Lvov – by then part of the Soviet Union – where he married in 1936.After escaping from the Soviet secret police after the Soviet Union signed its pact with Hitler’s Germany, he was arrested and interned when the Nazis took the place of the Soviets.Between 1941 and May 5 1945, when he was freed by US troops from the Mauthausen camp in Austria, he was held in five different concentration camps.On his release, he weighed less than 45 kilos (100 pounds) and was barely alive.Dozens of his family members, among them his mother, stepfather and stepbrother, were not so lucky, never returning from the genocide which killed some six million Jews in all.Immediately after the war, Wiesenthal helped the US occupation authorities compile evidence of Nazi war crimes, and in 1947 he founded a Jewish Documentation Center in Linz, near Vienna.His success in helping the Israelis catch Eichmann encouraged him to step up his work, and in 1977 he helped set up the centre that bears his name in Los Angeles.He and his wife Cyla lived in a modest house in Vienna.She died in November 2003.Reacting to Wiesenthal’s death the mayor of Vienna, Michael Haeupl, said he had worked tirelessly “to improve relations between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens”.- Nampa-AFPWiesenthal, who died after a long illness, was “the conscience of the Holocaust”, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, who founded the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.The veteran Jewish activist helped bring more than 1 100 Nazi criminals to justice, including Adolf Eichmann, an architect of Hitler’s “Final Solution” who was tracked down by Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960, to be tried and executed and executed in Israel the following year.”When the Holocaust ended in 1945 and the whole world went home to forget, he alone remained behind to remember,” Hier said in the statement, which was posted on the Center’s web site.”He did not forget.He became the permanent representative of the victims, determined to bring the perpetrators of history’s greatest crime to justice.”Born in 1908 in the town of Buchach, in the west of what is now Ukraine but was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Wiesenthal spent part of his childhood in Vienna, where his mother took the family after his father died in World War I.He trained as an architect in Prague, and then practised his trade in the Ukrainian city of Lvov – by then part of the Soviet Union – where he married in 1936.After escaping from the Soviet secret police after the Soviet Union signed its pact with Hitler’s Germany, he was arrested and interned when the Nazis took the place of the Soviets.Between 1941 and May 5 1945, when he was freed by US troops from the Mauthausen camp in Austria, he was held in five different concentration camps.On his release, he weighed less than 45 kilos (100 pounds) and was barely alive.Dozens of his family members, among them his mother, stepfather and stepbrother, were not so lucky, never returning from the genocide which killed some six million Jews in all.Immediately after the war, Wiesenthal helped the US occupation authorities compile evidence of Nazi war crimes, and in 1947 he founded a Jewish Documentation Center in Linz, near Vienna.His success in helping the Israelis catch Eichmann encouraged him to step up his work, and in 1977 he helped set up the centre that bears his name in Los Angeles.He and his wife Cyla lived in a modest house in Vienna.She died in November 2003.Reacting to Wiesenthal’s death the mayor of Vienna, Michael Haeupl, said he had worked tirelessly “to improve relations between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens”.- Nampa-AFP