Sept. 20



AUSTRIA:

Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal Is Dead at 96


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.

Calls of condolences poured into Wiesenthal's office in Vienna, where one
of his longtime assistants, Trudi Mergili, struggled to deal with her
grief.

''It was expected,'' she said. ''But it is still so hard.''

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Wiesenthal ''brought justice to those
who had escaped justice.''

''He acted on behalf of 6 million people who could no longer defend
themselves,'' ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Tuesday. ''The state of
Israel, the Jewish people and all those who oppose racism recognized Simon
Wiesenthal's unique contribution to making our planet a better place.''

Austria's parliament speaker said ''an important voice for remembrance and
humanity has been silenced.''

Wiesenthal was first sent to a concentration camp in 1941, outside Lviv,
Ukraine. In October 1943, he escaped from the Ostbahn camp just before the
Germans began killing all the inmates. He was recaptured in June 1944 and
sent back to Janwska, but escaped death as his SS guards retreated with
their prisoners from the Soviet Red Army.

Wiesenthal's quest began after the Americans liberated the Mauthausen
death camp in Austria where Wiesenthal was a prisoner in May 1945. It was
his fifth death camp among the dozen Nazi camps in which he was
imprisoned, and he weighed just 99 pounds when he was freed. He said he
quickly realized ''there is no freedom without justice,'' and decided to
dedicate ''a few years'' to that mission.

''It became decades,'' he added.

Even after turning 90, Wiesenthal continued to remind and to warn. While
appalled at atrocities committed by Serbs against ethnic Albanians in
Kosovo in the 1990s, he said no one should confuse the tragedy there with
the Holocaust.

''We are living in a time of the trivialization of the word 'Holocaust,'''
he told AP in 1999. ''What happened to the Jews cannot be compared with
all the other crimes. Every Jew had a death sentence without a date.''

Wiesenthal's life spanned a violent century.

He was born on Dec. 31, 1908, to Jewish merchants at Buczacs, a small town
near the present-day Ukrainian city of Lviv in what was then the
Austro-Hungarian empire. He studied in Prague and Warsaw and in 1932
received a degree in civil engineering.

He apprenticed as a building engineer in Russia before returning to Lviv
to open an architectural office. Then the Russians and the Germans
occupied Lviv and the terror began.

After the war, working first with the Americans and later from a cramped
Vienna apartment packed with documents, Wiesenthal tirelessly pursued
fugitive war criminals.

He was perhaps best known for his role in tracking down Eichmann, who
organized the extermination of the Jews. Eichmann was found in Argentina,
abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, tried and hanged for crimes committed
against the Jews.

Wiesenthal often was accused of exaggerating his role in Eichmann's
capture. He did not claim sole responsibility, but said he knew by 1954
where Eichmann was.

Eichmann's capture ''was a teamwork of many who did not know each other,''
Wiesenthal told the AP in 1972. ''I do not know if and to what extent
reports I sent to Israel were used.''

Among others Wiesenthal tracked down was Austrian policeman Karl
Silberbauer, who he believed arrested the Dutch teenager Anne Frank and
sent her to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she died.

Wiesenthal decided to pursue Silberbauer in 1958 after a youth told him he
did not believe in Frank's existence and murder, but would if Wiesenthal
could find the man who arrested her. His five-year search resulted in
Silberbauer's 1963 capture.

Wiesenthal did not bring to justice one prime target -- Dr. Josef Mengele,
the infamous ''Angel of Death'' of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Mengele died in South America after eluding capture for decades.

Wiesenthal's long quest for justice also stirred controversy.

In Austria, which took decades to acknowledge its own role in Nazi crimes,
Wiesenthal was ignored and often insulted before being honored for his
work when he was in his 80s.

In 1975, then-Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, himself a Jew, suggested
Wiesenthal was part of a ''certain mafia'' seeking to besmirch Austria.
Kreisky even claimed Wiesenthal collaborated with Nazis to survive.

Ironically, it was the furor over Kurt Waldheim, who became president in
1986 despite lying about his past as an officer in Hitler's army, that
gave Wiesenthal stature in Austria.

Wiesenthal's failure to condemn Waldheim as a war criminal drew
international ire and conflict with American Jewish groups. But it made
Austrians realize that the Nazi hunter did not condemn everybody who took
part in the Nazi war effort.

Wiesenthal did repeatedly demand Waldheim's resignation, seeing him as a
symbol of those who suppressed Austria's role as part of Hitler's German
war and death machine. But he turned up no proof of widespread allegations
that Waldheim was an accessory to war crimes.

Wiesenthal's work exposed him to danger.

His house and office have been guarded by an armed police officer since
June 1982, when a bomb exploded at his front door, causing severe damage
but resulting in no injuries, according to the Wiesenthal Center Web site.
One German and several Austrian neo-Nazis were arrested.

He pursued his crusade of remembrance into old age with the vigor of
youth, with patience and determination. But as he entered his 90s, he
worried that his mission would die with him.

''I think in a way the world owes him and his memory a tremendous amount
of gratitude,'' Hier said.

Wiesenthal earned many awards, including Austria's Golden Decoration of
Merit, which was presented by President Heinz Fischer at Wiesenthal's home
in June. He also wrote several books, including his memoirs, ''The
Murderers Among Us,'' in 1967, and worked regularly at the small downtown
office of his Jewish Documentation Center even after turning 90.

''The most important thing I have done is to fight against forgetting and
to keep remembrance alive,'' he said in the 1999 interview with the AP.
''It is very important to let people know that our enemies are not
forgotten.''

Wiesenthal's wife, Cyla, whom he married in 1936, died in November 2003.

A memorial service was to be held in Vienna's central cemetery on
Wednesday. Funeral services will be in Israel, Mergili said.

(source: Associated Press)





USA//MASSACHUSETTS:

6 million mourned: Holocaust memorial marks Nazi horror


It's been a lifetime since Joyce Levin's father was shot by Nazis as their
family fled a forest hideout more than 60 years ago, but yesterday the
memories rose to the surface.

``It brings everything back,'' Levin, 70, of Boston said yesterday
while sitting in the front-row seats reserved for Holocaust survivors at
the 10th anniversary ceremony of the New England Holocaust Memorial.

``It brought back our memories . . . of our fallen brothers and sisters.''

At least 600 people crowded into the narrow, concrete island on
Congress Street where the six 54-feet-tall glass towers have stood for 10
years.

Six million numbers are etched into the glass to represent the 6
million people who were killed.

Survivors, those whose family members perished in the Holocaust and
organizers reflected on the deaths, and some drew parallels between the
1994 genocide in Rwanda and mounting deaths in Darfur, Sudan, where
government-sponsored militias have killed thousands.

``Humanity still has not learned the lesson of the Holocaust,'' said
Rick Mann, president of Friends of the New England Holocaust Memorial.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and author Elie Weisel, organizers and local
politicians spoke.

Stephan Ross, a Holocaust survivor and the father of City Councilor
Michael Ross, said his escape from the Nazis was a ``flight from hell.''

The commemoration yesterday was held 10 years after the memorial was
dedicated and 60 years after the Allied powers defeated the Germans in
World War II.

He said the event was ``a reminder of the 60 years of freedom in our
hearts and 10 years of hope.''

Edith Siegel Wolfson, a social worker from Natick who sat in the
crowd, said she worries about the pace at which aging Holocaust survivors
are dying off.

``There'll be no survivors left in 10 years,'' she said. ``We have a
responsibility to the future to remember this history.''

Memorial supporters said they raised $1 million to bring the
endowment to $2 million and guarantee the memorial can operate in
perpetuity.

(source: Boston Herald)