Simon Wiesenthal

A Holocaust survivor's surprising and thought-provoking study of forgiveness, justice, compassion, and human responsibility, featuring contributions from the Dalai Lama, Harry Wu, Cynthia Ozick, Primo Levi, and more. You are a prisoner in a concentration camp. A dying Nazi soldier asks for your forgiveness. What would you do? While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken one day from his work detail to the bedside of a dying member of the SS. Haunted by the crimes in which he had participated, the soldier wanted to confess to--and obtain absolution from--a Jew. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing. But even years after the way had ended, he wondered: Had he done the right thing? What would you have done in his place? In this important book, fifty-three distinguished men and women respond to Wiesenthal's questions. They are theologians, political leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, and victims of attempted genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China and Tibet. Their responses, as varied as their experiences of the world, remind us that Wiesenthal's questions are not limited to events of the past.

A fully documented profile of the "Nazi hunter" famous for his unrelenting pursuit of Nazi criminals draws on extensive international records to discuss such topics as his role in capturing Adolf Eichmann, rivalry with Elie Wiesel, and infamy later in life.

Examines the life and accomplishments of Holocaust survivor, Simon Wiesenthal, whose passion for justice has brought many Nazis to account for their horrific deeds.

Wiesenthal, holocaust surviver vowed to revenge the Nazi atrocities. This is the full story of his remarkable fight for justice.

With 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations Now in paperback, the first fully documented biography of the legendary Polish-born Nazi hunter—a revelatory account of a man whose life, though part invention, was wholly dedicated to ensuring both that the Nazis be held responsible for their crimes and that their destruction of European Jewry never be forgotten. Within days of being liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal had assembled a list of nearly 150 Nazi war criminals, the first of dozens of such lists he would compile over a lifetime as a Nazi hunter. A hero in the eyes of many, Wiesenthal was also attacked for his unrelenting pursuit of justice for crimes committed in a past that many preferred to forget. With access to Wiesenthal’s private papers and to American, East German, and Israeli government archives, Tom Segev sheds new light on Wiesenthal’s most closely guarded secrets: his true role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann, his connection to Isreal’s Mossad, his controversial investigative techniques, his unlikely friendships with Kurt Waldheim and Albert Speer, his rivalry with Elie Wiesel—making clear that the truth of Wiesenthal’s existence was far more complex and compelling than the legends (often of his own making) that surrounded him.

Dedicated to the memory of the 'conscience of the Holocaust', Simon Wiesenthal - to whom it offers a number of personal tributes - this book brings together essays by a wide variety of authors on antisemitism and related forms of intolerance, racism, and xenophobia. Starting from the idea that antisemitism constitutes a paradigm case of collective and individual hatred, the book examines some of the reasons why it has prospered over the ages and persists in our time, even after well-nigh universal condemnation of the Holocaust. Some authors see it as a virus, always ready to develop and spread wherever Jewish difference is resented. Others emphasize that the antisemitic myths are not grounded in reality but depend rather on a fabrication, an imagined being to whom every kind of vice and perversion can be attributed. Jews, Gypsies, Kurds, Armenians, Tutsis - they can all be made to fit the bill. Simon Wiesenthal believed not in vengeance but in justice for the victims and played a pre-eminent and, at times, lonely role in tracking down individual criminals and bringing them to trial. But he knew that was not enough. The contributors to this memorial volume, representing a range of cultural, religious, and disciplinary perspectives, share that view. They know that so long as the Jewish stereotype is vested with legitimacy, the fight against antisemitism can never be won. Nor can it be defeated so long as it is fuelled by crisis in the Middle East, which has allowed some people to give expression to their antisemitism while denying it, by treating the State of Israel not as a state with its own particular problems and shortcomings, but as a kind of reified Jew. These are some of the issues addressed by the authors and essays presented, along with others, such as antisemitism as a determinant of Jewish identity and the possibility of forgiveness for the perpetrators of genocide. The book thus seeks to understand and learn from this particular paradigm of hatred and to suggest ways of countering it, in the name of the core values of a common humanity. Winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Awards in the catagory of Anthology.

Already acclaimed in England as "first-rate" (The Sunday Times); “a model of meticulous, courageous and path-breaking scholarship"(Literary Review); and "absorbing and thoroughly gripping… deserves a lasting place among histories of the war.” (The Sunday Telegraph), Hunting Evil is the first complete and definitive account of how the Nazis escaped and were pursued and captured -- or managed to live long lives as fugitives. At the end of the Second World War, an estimated 30,000 Nazi war criminals fled from justice, including some of the highest ranking members of the Nazi Party. Many of them have names that resonate deeply in twentieth-century history -- Eichmann, Mengele, Martin Bormann, and Klaus Barbie -- not just for the monstrosity of their crimes, but also because of the shadowy nature of their post-war existence, holed up in the depths of Latin America, always one step ahead of their pursuers. Aided and abetted by prominent people throughout Europe, they hid in foreboding castles high in the Austrian alps, and were taken in by shady Argentine secret agents. The attempts to bring them to justice are no less dramatic, featuring vengeful Holocaust survivors, inept politicians, and daring plots to kidnap or assassinate the fugitives. In this exhaustively researched and compellingly written work of World War II history and investigative reporting, journalist and novelist Guy Walters gives a comprehensive account of one of the most shocking and important aspects of the war: how the most notorious Nazi war criminals escaped justice, how they were pursued, captured or able to remain free until their natural deaths and how the Nazis were assisted while they were on the run by "helpers" ranging from a Vatican bishop to a British camel doctor, and even members of Western intelligence services. Based on all new interviews with Nazi hunters and former Nazis and intelligence agents, travels along the actual escape routes, and archival research in Germany, Britain, the United States, Austria, and Italy, Hunting Evil authoritatively debunks much of what has previously been understood about Nazis and Nazi hunters in the post war era, including myths about the alleged “Spider” and “Odessa” escape networks and the surprising truth about the world's most legendary Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. From its haunting chronicle of the monstrous mass murders the Nazis perpetrated and the murky details of their postwar existence to the challenges of hunting them down, Hunting Evil is a monumental work of nonfiction written with the pacing and intrigue of a thriller.