This is a moving documentary about Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Before the war he was an architect, with good graphic design skills and a sense of humor. When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, they would not let him work in his chosen profession, live where wanted or practice his religion. During the war he survived several concentration camps with brutal working conditions on projects designed to break people. Near death, he was liberated at Mauthausen by the US Army in 1945. He helped Allied forces gather and organize detailed documentation and witnesses to bring Nazis to justice in the Nuremburg war crime trials.
He is most famous for helping capture Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. I’ve often wondered what Eichmann was thinking. Was his job just a career move with some collateral damage? Did he think that if he moved far enough away that his crimes would go away? Did he think destroying the lives of others was without consequence? Did he think those who barely survived would not come looking for him? It took twenty years, but he was brought to trial in Israel.
Another case was camp guard Hermine Braunsteiner, who moved to suburban America and tried hide what she had done. She thought it was over and she was safe. Wiesenthal was patient and someone talked, as they always do. Now it was her turn for that knock on the door, that tap on the shoulder. When cornered by New York Times reporter Joe Lilyveld she astoundingly played the victim, saying “This is never going to end.” A woman who had been wrong about everything was for once right about that. She did not feel it necessary to apologize. The court showed more mercy than she ever gave. She was deported and sent to a West German jail.
Mrs. Wiesenthal said being married to her husband was like being married to millions of dead people who fought to be remembered. The bad guys tried to drive him from his home, his office, from public life. He would not be intimidated. He just dug in and kept going. He said “A soldier stays on the battlefield.” Expected to die in middle age by the Nazis, he was driven to remind the world of what had happened and died in his nineties.
Today the defense of human rights and prosecution of genocide owes a great deal to Simon Wiesenthal.
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
