personalities" "
Simon Wiesenthal, known as the “Nazi hunter”, died at the age of 96 in Vienna on 20 September. Among the first to commemorate him was the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn: “in the complex work of researching the horrors of the extermination of the Jewish people said the cardinal – Wiesenthal always strove to find the truth. This is one of the great merits of the director of the Jewish Documentation Centre, a centre for which he did not always win support”. The archbishop of Vienna emphasized that Wiesenthal, by his work, made “a fundamental contribution to the interpretation of the darkest pages in the history of the twentieth century”. Evangelical bishop Herwig Sturm added that Wiesenthal’s work “should be considered not as a kind of vendetta, but in a perspective of justice and the rule of law”. The chief rabbi Chaim Eisenberg and the chairman of the Jewish Cultural Community Ariel Mizacant also underline Wiensenthal’s dedication to justice. “Wiesenthal’s merit commented Eisenberg was also that of having drawn a distinction among the various collaborators of the Nazi regime in his hunt for the greatest Nazi criminals. His death represents a grave loss not only for the Jewish community, but also for many Austrians”. “We have lost a special man and a great European”, declared the EU High Representative for foreign policy and security, Javier Solana, who recalled “the courage and determination” with which Wiesenthal conducted his mission: “at the same time victim and witness of the Holocaust, he sought justice and not revenge”. The general secretary of the Council of Europe, Terry Davis, declared: “He was a soldier of justice, peace and liberty”. Wiesenthal was born at Buczacz, what is now Lvov Oblast (Ukraine) on 31 December 1908. He graduated in architecture. He survived twelve different concentration camps in which he had been interned with the rest of his Jewish family. Ever since 1945 he dedicated all his powers to identifying, tracking down and bringing to justice the former Nazi thugs who had at first escaped arrest. In all he permitted the opening of 1,100 penal proceedings. Wiesenthal lived in Vienna, where he directed for decades one of the centres of the Jewish international organization for human rights (www.wiesenthal.com) named after him (Simon Wiesenthal Center, with its headquarters in Los Angeles, USA) and founded in 1977.
