- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 430
The Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal died in Vienna, Austria today.
Following the Soviet occupation of their half of Poland, his step-father and step-brother were shot by the NKVD in 1939. He and his wife were initialy detained in the Janwska concentration camp, they were then assigned to the forced labor camp serving the Ostbahn Works. In 1942 his mother was sent to the Belzec death camp. By September, most of his and his wife's relatives were dead. A total of 89 members of both families perished.
Because his wife's blonde hair gave her a chance to pass a "Aryan", he made a deal to furnish charts of railway junction points, for false papers for his wife, from the Polish underground. She ended up in the Rhineland as a forced labourer at wars end.
Wiesenthal escaped the Ostbahn camp, just before the Germans liquidated all the prisoners in Oct '43. In '44 he was recaptured and sent back to the Janwska camp, he would have likely been killed there had the eastern front not collapsed on the Germans. The camp guards knew that they would have been sent into combat if they could not justify their rear-ech assignment, so they kept their few remaining prisoner's alive. With 34 prisoners out of an original 149,000 the 200 guards joined the general retreat west. long the way they picked up the entire population of the village of Chelmiec, to justify the prisoner/guard ratio. Very few prisoners survived the trek west. Weighing less than 100lbs, Wiesenthal was liberated in Mauthausen camp in Upper Austria on 5.05.45.
As soon as his health was sufficiently restored, Wiesenthal began gathering and preparing evidence on Nazi atrocities for the War Crimes Section of the United States Army. Late in 1945, he and his wife, each of whom had believed the other to be dead, were reunited, and in 1946, their daughter Pauline was born.
Since then he is credited with helping bring more than 1,100 war criminals to justice, amongst them Adolf Eichmann.
When asked why he chose to track down Nazis who had escaped trial, Wiesenthal said: "When history looks back, I want people to know the Nazis weren't able to kill millions of people and get away with it."
May he rest in peace now that he is done here. And lets try and not forget what the reason for his life's work was, as history has a bad habit of repeating it's self.
Following the Soviet occupation of their half of Poland, his step-father and step-brother were shot by the NKVD in 1939. He and his wife were initialy detained in the Janwska concentration camp, they were then assigned to the forced labor camp serving the Ostbahn Works. In 1942 his mother was sent to the Belzec death camp. By September, most of his and his wife's relatives were dead. A total of 89 members of both families perished.
Because his wife's blonde hair gave her a chance to pass a "Aryan", he made a deal to furnish charts of railway junction points, for false papers for his wife, from the Polish underground. She ended up in the Rhineland as a forced labourer at wars end.
Wiesenthal escaped the Ostbahn camp, just before the Germans liquidated all the prisoners in Oct '43. In '44 he was recaptured and sent back to the Janwska camp, he would have likely been killed there had the eastern front not collapsed on the Germans. The camp guards knew that they would have been sent into combat if they could not justify their rear-ech assignment, so they kept their few remaining prisoner's alive. With 34 prisoners out of an original 149,000 the 200 guards joined the general retreat west. long the way they picked up the entire population of the village of Chelmiec, to justify the prisoner/guard ratio. Very few prisoners survived the trek west. Weighing less than 100lbs, Wiesenthal was liberated in Mauthausen camp in Upper Austria on 5.05.45.
As soon as his health was sufficiently restored, Wiesenthal began gathering and preparing evidence on Nazi atrocities for the War Crimes Section of the United States Army. Late in 1945, he and his wife, each of whom had believed the other to be dead, were reunited, and in 1946, their daughter Pauline was born.
Since then he is credited with helping bring more than 1,100 war criminals to justice, amongst them Adolf Eichmann.
When asked why he chose to track down Nazis who had escaped trial, Wiesenthal said: "When history looks back, I want people to know the Nazis weren't able to kill millions of people and get away with it."
May he rest in peace now that he is done here. And lets try and not forget what the reason for his life's work was, as history has a bad habit of repeating it's self.
