By Boris Groendahl2 hours, 8 minutes ago
Simon Wiesenthal, who waged an untiring campaign to track down Nazi war criminals and keep alive the memory of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, died on Tuesday aged 96.
Wiesenthal, a Jew and former concentration camp inmate, was best known for helping with the discovery in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, the man Adolf Hitler entrusted with carrying out the Nazi genocide program against the Jews.
The man who helped trace some 1,100 Nazis from his small, file-crammed Vienna office, died early on Tuesday in his apartment, the Jewish Community of Vienna said. Guests from many countries are expected to attend a memorial on Wednesday.
Wiesenthal will be buried in Israel.
"Simon Wiesenthal acted to bring justice to those who had escaped justice," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. "In doing so, he was the voice of 6 million."
Altogether the Nazis are estimated to have murdered at least 11 million civilians, including 6 million Jews, during World War Two. The Israeli institute named after Wiesenthal is trying to track down some 1,200 Nazis it suspects to be still alive and at large in 16 countries including Austria, Spain and Croatia.
"Wiesenthal's personal mission has ended, and there are others who are carrying on with the work," said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, on radio.
Wiesenthal, born in 1908 in what is now Ukraine, traveled the world into his old age, lecturing on the Holocaust, and until last year came into his office, the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, collecting data on former Nazis.
He maintained that his motivation was not anger but justice. "I am someone who seeks justice, not revenge," Wiesenthal said. "My work is a warning to the murderers of tomorrow, that they will never rest."
Apart from Eichmann, he helped find the SS officer who in Amsterdam arrested Anne Frank, the teenage author of the Anne Frank Diaries, and the head of the Treblinka extermination camp. His quest for Nazi doctor Josef Mengele ended when Mengele was found dead in Brazil in 1985.
DETAINED IN 12 CAMPS
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050920/ts_nm/wiesenthal_dc_6&printer=1;_ylt=ArLks25zkxSxEP7QUmLGGeVg.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE
Simon Wiesenthal, who waged an untiring campaign to track down Nazi war criminals and keep alive the memory of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, died on Tuesday aged 96.
Wiesenthal, a Jew and former concentration camp inmate, was best known for helping with the discovery in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, the man Adolf Hitler entrusted with carrying out the Nazi genocide program against the Jews.
The man who helped trace some 1,100 Nazis from his small, file-crammed Vienna office, died early on Tuesday in his apartment, the Jewish Community of Vienna said. Guests from many countries are expected to attend a memorial on Wednesday.
Wiesenthal will be buried in Israel.
"Simon Wiesenthal acted to bring justice to those who had escaped justice," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. "In doing so, he was the voice of 6 million."
Altogether the Nazis are estimated to have murdered at least 11 million civilians, including 6 million Jews, during World War Two. The Israeli institute named after Wiesenthal is trying to track down some 1,200 Nazis it suspects to be still alive and at large in 16 countries including Austria, Spain and Croatia.
"Wiesenthal's personal mission has ended, and there are others who are carrying on with the work," said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, on radio.
Wiesenthal, born in 1908 in what is now Ukraine, traveled the world into his old age, lecturing on the Holocaust, and until last year came into his office, the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, collecting data on former Nazis.
He maintained that his motivation was not anger but justice. "I am someone who seeks justice, not revenge," Wiesenthal said. "My work is a warning to the murderers of tomorrow, that they will never rest."
Apart from Eichmann, he helped find the SS officer who in Amsterdam arrested Anne Frank, the teenage author of the Anne Frank Diaries, and the head of the Treblinka extermination camp. His quest for Nazi doctor Josef Mengele ended when Mengele was found dead in Brazil in 1985.
DETAINED IN 12 CAMPS
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050920/ts_nm/wiesenthal_dc_6&printer=1;_ylt=ArLks25zkxSxEP7QUmLGGeVg.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE
