|
|death_place = Vienna, Austria |death_cause = Natural causes |resting_place = Herzliya, Israel |resting_place_coordinates = |residence = |nationality = Austrian |other_names = |known_for = |education = | alma_mater = |employer = |occupation = Nazi hunter, writer |religion = Judaism |spouse = Cyla Müller |children = Paulinka Kreisberg |parents = Asher and Rosa Wiesenthal |website = }} Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 190820 September 2005) was an Austrian writer and Nazi hunter. He was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter. He studied architecture and was living in Lviv (Lwów) at the outbreak of World War II. After being forced to work as a slave labourer in Nazi concentration camps such as Janowska, Plaszow, and Mauthausen during the war, Wiesenthal dedicated most of his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial. In 1947 he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, where he and others gathered information for future war crime trials and aided refugees in their search for lost relatives. He opened the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna in 1961 and continued to try to locate missing Nazi war criminals. He played a small role in locating Adolf Eichmann, who was captured in Buenos Aires in 1960, and worked closely with the Austrian justice ministry to prepare a dossier on Franz Stangl, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971. In the 1970s and 1980s, Wiesenthal was involved in two high-profile events involving Austrian politicians. Shortly after Bruno Kreisky was inaugurated as Austrian chancellor in April 1970, Wiesenthal pointed out to the press that four of his new cabinet appointees had been members of the Nazi Party. Kreisky, angry, called Wiesenthal a "Jewish fascist", likened his organisation to the Mafia, and accused him of collaborating with the Nazis. Wiesenthal successfully sued for libel; the suit was settled in 1989. In 1986, Wiesenthal was involved in the case of Kurt Waldheim, whose Nazi past was revealed in the lead-up to the 1986 Austrian presidential elections. Wiesenthal, embarrassed that he had previously cleared Waldheim of any wrongdoing, suffered much negative publicity as a result of this event. With a reputation as a storyteller, Wiesenthal was the author of several memoirs containing tales that are only loosely based on actual events. In particular, he exaggerated his role in the capture of Eichmann in 1960. Wiesenthal died in his sleep at age 96 in Vienna on 20 September 2005 and was buried in the city of Herzliya in Israel. He was survived by his daughter, Paulinka Kreisberg, and three grandchildren. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, located in Los Angeles, is named in his honor. ==Early life== Wiesenthal was born at 11:30 pm on 31 December 1908, in Buchach, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (then part of Austria-Hungary, now Ternopil Oblast, in Ukraine). His father, Asher Wiesenthal, was a wholesaler who had emigrated from the Russian Empire in 1905 to escape the frequent pogroms, violent campaigns against Jews. A reservist in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Asher was called to active duty in 1914 at the start of World War I. He died in combat on the Eastern Front in 1915. The remainder of the family—Simon, his younger brother Hillel, and his mother Rosa—fled to Vienna as the Russian army took control of Galicia. The two boys attended a German-language Jewish school. The family returned to Buczacz in 1917 after the Russians retreated. The area changed hands several more times before the war ended in November 1918. Wiesenthal and his brother attended high school at the Humanistic Gymnasium in Buchach, where classes were taught in Polish. There Simon met his future wife, Cyla Müller, whom he would marry in 1936. Hillel fell and broke his back in 1923 and died the following year. Rosa remarried in 1926 and moved to Dolyna with her new husband, Isack Halperin, who owned a tile factory there. Wiesenthal remained in Buczacz, living with the Müller family, until he graduated from high school—on his second attempt—in 1928. With an interest in art and drawing, Wiesenthal chose to study architecture. His first choice was to attend the Lwów Polytechnic (Polish: Politechnika Lwowska), but he was turned away because the school's Jewish quota had already been filled. He instead enrolled at the Czech Technical University in Prague, where he studied from 1928 until 1932. He was apprenticed as a building engineer through 1934 and 1935, spending most of that period in Odessa. He married Cyla in 1936 when he returned to Galicia. Sources give differing reports of what happened next. Wiesenthal's autobiographies contradict each other on many points; he also over-dramatised and mythologised events. One version has Wiesenthal opening an architectural office and finally being admitted to the Lwów Polytechnic for an advanced degree. He designed a tuberculosis sanitorium, along with some residential buildings during the course of his studies and was active in a student Zionist organisation. He wrote for the ''Omnibus'', a satirical student newspaper, and graduated in 1939. Author Guy Walters states that Wiesenthal's earliest autobiography does not mention studies at Lwów. Walters quotes a ''curriculum vitae'' Wiesenthal prepared after World War II as stating he worked as a supervisor at a factory until 1939 and then worked as a mechanic in a different factory until the Nazis invaded in 1941. Wiesenthal's 1961 book ''Ich Jagte Eichmann'' ("I Hunted Eichmann") states that he worked in Odessa as an engineer from 1940 to 1941. Walters says that there is no record of Wiesenthal attending the university at Lwów, and that he does not appear in the ''Katalog Architektów i Budowniczych'' (Catalogue of Architects and Builders) for the appropriate period. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Simon Wiesenthal」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|