:: Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Hunter and hunted
Everyone has heard of the Holocaust created by Hitler during World War II. Most have probably heard the name Simon Wiesenthal in passing, but might not know who he was or what he did.
Wiesenthal, of Jewish descent was born on the last day of 1908 in Buczacz, Austria-Hungary. Now, it's part of the Ukraine. He was living in Lwów in an area of Poland occupied by the Soviet Union at the outbreak of Hitler's war and when the German invasion took the city in 1941, he and his wife were interred in a camp in Janwska and were used as labour on the local railroad. The Polish Resistance helped his wife escape, in return for diagrams of the railways drawn by Wiesenthal himself and she lived out the war in a forced labour camp in the Rhineland, her jewishness masked by her blonde hair.
In 1943 Weisenthal escaped the camp at Janwska, but was recaptured and sent on a death march through the camps in Poland and Germany, ending up at Mauthausen in Austria. He had been detained in 12 concentration camps in total by the time he was liberated on May 5th, 1945. Simon and his wife, Cyla, lost 89 members of their families during those years.
In the following years, he went on a journey of justice, hunting the Nazi war criminals and bringing as many of them as he could to justice. This included Karl Silberbauer, the Gestapo officer who arrested Anne Frank and caused he to be consigned to the concentration camp that would take her life, and Franz Stangl, the commandant of the death camps Treblinka and Sobibor. At the same time as he was hunting Nazis, he was working to aid and assist those affected by World War II.
In 1977, the Simon Weisenthal Centre opened, a holocaust memorial agency named in his honour.
Cyla Weisenthal died of natural causes in 2003 aged 95 and today September 20th (21st), in his sleep, her husband followed her.
He was 96.
On the television tonight, the news reported that he said he had done what he did, not out of revenge, but for justice. If nothing else, this man made sure that no Nazi war criminal would ever sleep soundly in his bed again.
Onya, Simon Weisenthal. 
Wiesenthal, of Jewish descent was born on the last day of 1908 in Buczacz, Austria-Hungary. Now, it's part of the Ukraine. He was living in Lwów in an area of Poland occupied by the Soviet Union at the outbreak of Hitler's war and when the German invasion took the city in 1941, he and his wife were interred in a camp in Janwska and were used as labour on the local railroad. The Polish Resistance helped his wife escape, in return for diagrams of the railways drawn by Wiesenthal himself and she lived out the war in a forced labour camp in the Rhineland, her jewishness masked by her blonde hair.
In 1943 Weisenthal escaped the camp at Janwska, but was recaptured and sent on a death march through the camps in Poland and Germany, ending up at Mauthausen in Austria. He had been detained in 12 concentration camps in total by the time he was liberated on May 5th, 1945. Simon and his wife, Cyla, lost 89 members of their families during those years.
In the following years, he went on a journey of justice, hunting the Nazi war criminals and bringing as many of them as he could to justice. This included Karl Silberbauer, the Gestapo officer who arrested Anne Frank and caused he to be consigned to the concentration camp that would take her life, and Franz Stangl, the commandant of the death camps Treblinka and Sobibor. At the same time as he was hunting Nazis, he was working to aid and assist those affected by World War II.
In 1977, the Simon Weisenthal Centre opened, a holocaust memorial agency named in his honour.
Cyla Weisenthal died of natural causes in 2003 aged 95 and today September 20th (21st), in his sleep, her husband followed her.
He was 96.
On the television tonight, the news reported that he said he had done what he did, not out of revenge, but for justice. If nothing else, this man made sure that no Nazi war criminal would ever sleep soundly in his bed again.
Onya, Simon Weisenthal.
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2002 - 2005
