Simon Wiesenthal

Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter (1908–2005)

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Lived 1908–2005, aged 97

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Wikipedia
58 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1908–2005
Aged 97
Known for
Genocide
1982

Summary

Updated 2026-08-11

He survived five Nazi camps and a death march, then spent sixty years hunting the men who ran them. Simon Wiesenthal turned documentation into weapon, chasing fugitive war criminals across continents so they could stand trial.

Biography

About

Born in Austria in 1908, Wiesenthal studied architecture and was living in Lwów when war broke out. Between late 1941 and May 1945 he passed through Janowska, Kraków-Płaszów, Gross-Rosen, a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and finally Mauthausen. After liberation he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre in Linz in 1947, gathering evidence for trials and helping refugees trace lost relatives, then opened the Documentation Centre of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime in Vienna in 1961. He may have played a small role in locating Adolf Eichmann, captured in B…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Simon Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal

said2005

Survivors should be like seismographs... They should sense danger before others do, identify its outlines and reveal them.

— New York Times Obituary, 9/20/2005

Simon Wiesenthal

saidundated

You're a religious man. You believe in God and life after death. I also believe.

Simon Wiesenthal

saidundated

Hatred can be nurtured anywhere, idealism can be perverted into sadism anywhere. If hatred and sadism combine with modern technology the inferno could erupt anew anywhere.

— Justice Not Vengeance, Museum of Tolerance website

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

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