Simon Wisenthal Nazism Is Responsible

Simon Wisenthal

Nazism is responsible for terrible crimes against humanity, but society has found ways of fighting it consequent to the Second World War through individuals who have got actively involved in tracking former Nazis. Simon Wiesenthal is in charge of the "Jewish Documentation Center" in Vienna and has used it with the purpose of punishing people accountable for crimes performed during the Holocaust. The fact that he was prisoner in a Nazi work camp contributes to his determination to impose justice on Nazism as a whole. His experiences as a prisoner shaped his personality and made it possible for him to understand matters from another perspective.

Wiesenthal was born on December 31, 1908 Buczacz, Ukraine, and managed to climb the ladder of society through studying. In spite of this, the fact that he was a Jew influenced others in discriminating him and in generally denying him a series of basic rights. His ethnicity is also the reason for which he subjected to suffering from the very beginning of the Second World War.

While the Soviets persecuted people in Lvov and actually took many of them to deportation camps in Siberia, the Nazis provoked even more harm to these individuals. Execution squads started pogroms meant to identify and murder Jewish people, but Wiesenthal managed to escape and get deported to Belzec. His luck ended there however as he was taken to the Janowska camp after a year. He escaped several times from the camp but was captured quickly after. Even with this, he managed to evade several murder squads and stayed alive throughout the Holocaust. The last two camps that he was sent to were Buchenwald, and, respectively, Mathausen. Wiesenthal would have experienced certain death at the end of the war if it weren't for American troops to save him and numerous other prisoners in the work camp.

Wiesenthal's 1998 book "The Sunflower" details his stay in camps and provides an overall story of the events that he experienced during the Holocaust. The Holocaust survivor recounts an important episode of his life through relating to the moment when he was asked for forgiveness by an SS member that was on his death-bed. The officer apparently wanted to repent for his sins and for the crimes that Nazis had performed against the Jewish people. In spite of the fact that he was provided with the opportunity to express his feelings regarding the situation, Wiesenthal chose to abstain from talking, as his feelings were most probably too strong to put across.

Immediately after the war, Wiesenthal got actively engaged in a campaign meant to track down and capture former Nazis. Consequent to working with the Americans for approximately two years, the Holocaust survivor opened the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre in Linz. The organization intended to come up with evidence that would be essential in prosecuting individuals who had performed war crimes. While he did not initially experience success in his enterprise, Wiesenthal was fueled by the fact that he managed to capture Eichmann, a Nazi recognized for having performed war crimes. He started to focus on the Jewish Documentation Centre, moved it to Vienna, and managed to capture numerous other Nazis who were found of having committed horrible crimes.