Outside the Beltway

Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal Dies at 96

James Joyner · Tuesday, September 20, 2005 · 2 comments

Simon Wiesenthal Dies, who dedicated the last six decades of his life hunting down alleged Nazi war criminals, died overnight. He was 96.

Holocaust Survivor Simon Wiesenthal Dies (AP)

Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who helped track down Nazi war criminals following World War II, then spent the later decades of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people, died Tuesday. He was 96.

Wiesenthal, who helped find one-time SS leader Adolf Eichmann and the policeman who arrested Anne Frank, died in his sleep at his home in Vienna, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. “I think he’ll be remembered as the conscience of the Holocaust. In a way he became the permanent representative of the victims of the Holocaust, determined to bring the perpetrators of the greatest crime to justice,” Hier told The Associated Press.

A survivor of five Nazi death camps, Wiesenthal changed his life’s mission after the war, dedicating himself to tracking down Nazi war criminals and to being a voice for the 6 million Jews who died during the onslaught. He himself lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust.

Wiesenthal spent more than 50 years hunting Nazi war criminals, speaking out against neo-Nazism and racism, and remembering the Jewish experience as a lesson for humanity. Through his work, he said, some 1,100 Nazi war criminals were brought to justice.
“When history looks back I want people to know the Nazis weren’t able to kill millions of people and get away with it,” he once said.

Wiesenthal’s death may literally mark the end of an era. World War II ended in 1945; there can’t be too many Nazis running around.