The Simon Wiesenthal Center

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center (often abbreviated SWC), with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time. The Center’s multifaceted mission generates changes through the Snider Social Action Institute and education by confronting antisemitism, hate and terrorism, promoting human rights and dignity, standing with Israel, defending the safety of Jews worldwide, and teaching the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations."^[1]

The Center is accredited as a non-governmental organization (NGO) at the United Nations, the UNESCO, and the Council of Europe.

The organization aims to foster tolerance and understanding through community involvement, educational outreach and social action. The Center closely interacts on an ongoing basis with a variety of public and private agencies, meeting with elected officials, the United States and foreign governments, diplomats and heads of state. Other issues that the Center deals with include: the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, fighting against ODESSA networks; Holocaust and tolerance education; Middle East Affairs; and extremist groups, neo-Nazism, and hate on the Internet.

Name and leadership[link]

Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles

The organization is named after Simon Wiesenthal, a former architectural engineer and an Austrian Jew who lost many family members in the Holocaust, and later pledged to hunt down Nazis and bring them to justice. He founded and headed the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna. Simon Wiesenthal had nothing to do with the operation or activities of the SWC other than giving it its name.

The SWC is headed by Rabbi Marvin Hier, its Dean and Founder. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the Associate Dean and Rabbi Meyer May is the Executive Director. The organization publishes a seasonal magazine, Response.

Museum of Tolerance[link]

The Center’s educational arm, Museum of Tolerance, was founded in 1993 and hosts 350,000 visitors annually. Some of the programs sponsored by the Museum include:

• Tools for Tolerance
• Teaching Steps to Tolerance
• Task Force Against Hate
• National Institute Against Hate Crimes
• Tools for Tolerance for Teens

New York Tolerance Center is a professional development multi-media training facility targeting educators, law enforcement officials, and state/local government practitioners.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance is one of many partner organizations of the Austrian Service Abroad (Auslandsdienst) and the corresponding Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service (Gedenkdienst).

Moriah Films[link]

Moriah Films, also known as the Jack and Pearl Resnick Film Division of the SWC, was created to produce theatrical documentaries to educate both national and international audiences, with a focus on contemporary human rights and ethical issues and Jewish experience. Two films produced by the division, Genocide (film) and The Long Way Home (1997 film) have received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.^[2]

Office locations[link]

The headquarters of the Simon Wiesenthal Center is in Los Angeles. However, there are also international offices located at the following cities: New York, Miami, Toronto, Jerusalem, Paris, and Buenos Aires.

Through its national and international offices the Center carries out its above mentioned mission of preserving the memory of the Holocaust.

Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual[link]

Simon Wiesenthal

Between 1984 and 1990 the Center published seven volumes of Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, focusing on the scholarly study of the Holocaust, broadly defined. This series is ISSN 0741-8450.

Library and archives[link]

The Library and Archives of the center in L.A. has grown to a collection of about 50,000 volumes and non-print materials. Moreover, the Archives incorporates photographs, diaries, letters, artifacts, artwork and rare books, which are available to researchers, students and the general public.

Located Ex-Nazis[link]

In November 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center gave the name of four suspected former Nazi criminals to German authorities. The names were the first results of Operation Last Chance, a drive launched that year by the center to track down former Nazis for World War II-era crimes before they die of old age.

References in pop culture[link]

The center is featured in the real life story-based Freedom Writers. An exterior view of the center is given, and there are scenes inside the museum, showing simulation entrances to gas chambers in death camps.

Official statements[link]

This section may contain previously unpublished synthesis of published material that conveys ideas not attributable to the original sources. See the talk page for details. (July 2010)

France[link]

On March 8, 2007, the head of international relations for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Stanley Trevor Samuels, was convicted (and later acquitted in an appeal) of defamation by a Paris courthouse for accusing the French-based Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians (CBSP) of sending funds to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.^[3]

In its filing of the suit, the CBSP labelled the accusations "ridiculous", stating that its charitable work consisted of providing aid to some 3,000 Palestinian orphans. The court ruled that documents produced by the Wiesenthal Center established no "direct or indirect participation in financing terrorism" on the part of the CBSP, and that the allegations were "seriously defamatory".^[3]

The Wiesenthal Center appealed the court ruling, and the appeal was granted in July 2009.^[4]

Iran[link]

After a Canadian newspaper reported upon the 2006 Iranian sumptuary law controversy (based on a report written by Iranian exiles on Iranian religious minorities being forced to wear badges identifying them to Muslims), the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Marvin Hier, wrote to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urging the international community to pressure Iran to drop the measure. Iranian officials later denied the report.^[5]

After all, the report was not correct and it was denied by the representative of Jewish community in the Iranian parliament.

Ireland[link]

In January 2004, the Paris branch of the center asked the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, to suspend the 'Irish Museum of the Year Award' given to the Hunt Museum in Limerick, until the conclusion of a demanded inquiry into the provenance of a significant number of items in the collection. He argued that this was needed due to the close ties of the founders, John and Gertrude Hunt to the head of the Nazi Party (NSDP-AO) in Ireland, among others, and British suspicions during the war of espionage activity on the part of the couple. The center also claimed, 'The “Hunt Museum Essential Guide” describes only 150 of the over 2000 objects in the Museum’s collection and, notably, without providing information on their provenance - data that all museums are now required to provide in accordance with international procedure.'^[6]

This essentially accused the Hunt Museum in Limerick of keeping art and artifacts looted during the Second World War, which was described as "unprofessional in the extreme" by the expert Lynn Nicholas that cleared the museum of wrongdoing.^[7][8] The claim was taken so seriously that the examination was supervised by the prestigious Royal Irish Academy, whose 2006 report is available on line.^[9] McAleese, who had been written to by the center, then criticized a Dr. Samuels of the center for "a tissue of lies", adding that the center had diminished the name of Simon Wiesenthal.^[10] The center said that it had prepared its own 150-page report in May 2008 that would be published after vetting by its lawyers, but had not done so as of November 2008.^[11]

Israel[link]

A branch museum in Jerusalem-—expected to be completed in 2009-—sparked protests from the city's Muslim population. The museum is being built on what Rabbi Marvin Hier described as "derelict land": a thousand-year-old Muslim graveyard called the Mamilla Cemetery, much of which has already been paved over. The complaints were rejected by Israel's Supreme Court, leading to a demonstration by several hundred people in November 2008.^[12][13] On November 19, 2008 a group of US Jewish and Muslim leaders sent a letter to the Wiesenthal Center to halt the construction of the Museum of Tolerance on the site.

As of February 2010, the Museum of Tolerance's plan for construction has been fully approved by Israeli courts and is proceeding at the compound of Mamilla Cemetery. The courts ruled that the compound had been neglected as a spiritual site by the Muslim community, in effect not functioning as a cemetery for decades (while simultaneously used for other purposes), and was thus mundra, i.e. abandoned, under Muslim laws.^[14]

Canada[link]

The Centre faults the Government of Canada's efforts to investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals, and claims that approximately 2,000 Nazi war criminals obtained Canadian citizenship by providing false information.^[15]

United States[link]

The Simon Wiesenthal Center opposed the construction of Park51, a Muslim community center, two blocks from Ground Zero. The executive director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Manhattan, Rabbi Meyer May said it was "insensitive" to locate the centre there. The Jewish Week noted that the Center itself was once accused of intolerance when it built a museum in Jerusalem on land that was once a Muslim cemetery, after gaining approval from Israeli courts.^[16]

Vatican[link]

The Simon Wiesenthal Center welcomed the news that the Vatican has demanded that Bishop Richard Williamson recant his views denying the Holocaust before being re-admitted to the Roman Catholic Church. Williamson was one of the four priests from the Society of St. Pius X who were excommunicated 20 years ago for taking part in the consecration of Bishops contrary to Canon Law.^[17]

Venezuela[link]

The Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized Hugo Chávez for various statements, including his January 2006 statement that “[t]he world is for all of us, then, but it so happens that a minority, the descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ, the descendants of the same ones that kicked Bolívar out of here and also crucified him in their own way over there in Santa Marta, in Colombia. A minority has taken possession all of the wealth of the world...”^[18] The Simon Wiesenthal Center omitted the reference to Bolívar without ellipsis, stated that Chávez was referring to Jews, and denounced the remarks as antisemitic by way of his allusions to wealth. Meanwhile, according to Forward.com, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela defended Chávez, stating that he was speaking not of Jews, but of South America's white oligarchy. The Wiesenthal Center's representative in Latin America replied that Chávez's mention of Christ-killers was "ambiguous at best" and that the "decision to criticize Chávez had been taken after careful consideration".^[19]

See also[link]

Los Angeles portal

• List of Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center
• 2006 Iranian sumptuary law controversy

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Simon Wiesenthal Center
• Response Magazine Online Archive
  • Response - America Remembers: One Year Later, Remembering the Victims, Pondering the Lessons Also in the Issue: International Community & the Mideast; Tragedy of Palestinian Children; The Real Obstacles to Peace; Global Terror Update; Internet Used by Terrorists, Racists; Museum of Tolerance
• The Jewish Virtual Library entry for Simon Wiesenthal
• Haaretz 11/03/05
• Tour of the Wiesenthal Center Library & Archives for the C-SPAN School Bus, February 9, 1999

Coordinates: 34°03′14″N 118°24′07″W / 34.05389°N 118.40194°W / 34.05389; -118.40194

Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal in 1999
Born	(1908-12-31)December 31, 1908 Buczacz, Kingdom of Galicia, Austria-Hungary
Died	September 20, 2005(2005-09-20) (aged 96) Vienna, Austria
Cause of death	Natural causes
Resting place	Herzliya, Israel
Nationality	Austrian
Occupation	Nazi hunter
Employer	U.S. Army
Known for	Simon Wiesenthal Center Jewish Documentation Center
Religion	Judaism
Parents	Asher and Rosa Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal, KBE (December 31, 1908 – September 20, 2005) was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter.

After four and a half years in the German concentration camps such as Janowska, Plaszow, and Mauthausen during World War II, Wiesenthal dedicated most of his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazis so that they could be brought to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 1947, he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, in order to gather information for future war crime trials. Later he opened the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna. Wiesenthal wrote The Sunflower, which describes a life-changing event he experienced when he was in the camp.

Wiesenthal died in his sleep at age 96 in Vienna on September 20, 2005, and was buried in the city of Herzliya in Israel on September 23. He is survived by his daughter, Paulinka Kriesberg, and three grandchildren. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, located in Los Angeles, is named in his honor.

Recent biographers such as Tom Segev and Guy Walters have argued that Wiesenthal frequently lied about his own background and exploits.^[1][2][3]

Early life[link]

Wiesenthal was born at 11:30 pm on Thursday, December 31, 1908 in Buczacz, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (then part of Austria-Hungary, now Buchach, Ternopil Oblast in Ukraine). He enjoyed a relatively pleasant early childhood, during which his father, Asher Wiesenthal, a 1905 refugee from the pogroms of czarist Russia (1869–1917), became an established resident in Buczacz trading in sugar and other wholesale commodities.^{[citation needed]}

With the outbreak of the World War I in 1914, his father, a reservist in the Austro-Hungarian Army, was called to active duty and died in combat on the Eastern Front in 1917. With Russian control of Galicia during this period, Wiesenthal and his remaining family (mother and brother) fled, taking refuge in Vienna, Austria.

Wiesenthal and his brother went to school in Vienna until the Russian retreat from Galicia in 1917, when they moved back to Buczacz. At the Humanistic Gymnasium, where Simon went to school during those years, he met his future wife Cyla Müller, whom he would marry in 1936. In 1925, his mother remarried and moved with his brother to the Carpathian Mountains. Simon opted to continue his studies in Buczacz, but visited them often.

After graduating from high school in 1927, he was denied admission to the Polish Lviv Polytechnic because of quota restrictions on Jewish students.^[4] In 1929, he attended the Czech Technical University in Prague where he was highly regarded as a raconteur. Although Wiesenthal claimed he graduated in 1932 and most biographies repeat his claim, he did not complete his degree.^[3]

In 1934, he apprenticed to a building engineer in the Ukrainian SSR, spending a few weeks in Kharkiv and Kiev and a further two years in the Black Sea port of Odessa.

Returning to Galicia in late 1935, Wiesenthal claimed he was finally allowed to enter Lviv Polytechnic and tried to earn the advanced degree that would allow him to practice architecture in Poland. However, Lviv archives have no record of his having studied there. According to later biographies, following his marriage to Cyla in 1936, he opened his own architectural office in Lviv where he specialized in elegant villas, which wealthy Polish Jews were building, despite the threats of Nazism to the west. He maintained he finished his final job a week before the German invasion, which began on September 1, 1939. However, Polish records indicate he never registered or worked as a builder or architect and the résumé Wiesenthal himself wrote at the end of the war stated that he was working as a supervisor in a Lviv furniture factory from 1935 to December 1939.^[3]

World War II[link]

Wiesenthal was living in Lviv (then part of Poland, now the largest city in western Ukraine), when World War II began. As a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Lviv and the rest of western Ukraine were annexed by the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939. Wiesenthal's stepfather and stepbrother were killed by agents of the NKVD, the Soviet state security and secret police, as a part of the anti-Polish purge designed to eliminate all so-called Polish enemies of the people that followed the Soviet occupation of Lviv. He bribed a NKVD commissar to prevent the deportation of himself, his wife and his mother to a Gulag labor camp in Siberia. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Wiesenthal and his family were captured. He was sent to a ghetto along with his family

As recounted in Wiesenthal's memoir, The Murderers Among Us, written with Joseph Wechsberg, Wiesenthal survived an early wave of executions during the Holocaust, thanks to the intervention of a man named Bodnar, a Ukrainian auxiliary policeman who, on July 6, 1941, saved him from execution by the Nazis then occupying Lviv. This account is contradicted by documentation. In 1945, Wiesenthal testified to war-crimes investigators that he had been arrested on July 13, after the executions had ceased, and managed to escape "through a bribe" before the executions resumed.^[3]

From the ghetto, Wiesenthal’s mother was transported, along with other Jewish women, by freight train to the extermination camp of Bełżec where she perished in August 1942. Around the same time, Cyla Wiesenthal found out that her mother had been shot on her front porch in Buczacz by a Ukrainian policeman while being evicted from her home. Cyla and Simon Wiesenthal lost 89 relatives during the Holocaust.^{[citation needed]}

In late 1941, Wiesenthal and his wife were first imprisoned in the Janowska Street camp in the suburbs of Lviv, where they were forced to work at the Lviv Railroad Repair Yard where Simon painted Swastikas and Eagle Shields. The head SS soldier was Heinrich Gunthert, who asked Wiesenthal, on one occasion, where he was educated. Wiesenthal, remembering that an educated Jew was a dead Jew, lied and said he went to a trade school. Several men stated that he lied, and Gunthert confronted him. He asked Wiesenthal why he lied, and Wiesenthal confessed. Gunthert respected Wiesenthal for his education and gave him the job of architectural design and a comfortable office. The German senior inspector at the workshop, Adolf Kohlrautz, who was secretly anti-Nazi, gave him two pistols to hide in his office and kept them a secret.^{[citation needed]}

Members of the Home Army, the underground Polish army, helped Cyla Wiesenthal escape from the camp and provided her with false documents in exchange for diagrams of railroad junctions drawn by her husband.^{[citation needed]} Cyla Wiesenthal was able to hide her Jewish identity from the Nazis because of her blonde hair and survived the war as a forced-laborer in the Rhineland. Until the end of the war, Simon believed she had perished in the Warsaw Uprising. Following their surprising reunion, they soon had their first and only child, Paulinka, in 1946.

According to Wiesenthal, on April 20, 1943, the Janowska guards decided to shoot 54 Jews in celebration of Hitler's 54th birthday.^{[citation needed]} Two SS guards picked Wiesenthal and two other inmates and took them to the execution site. Wiesenthal remembers looking at Gunthert and Gunthert's shrugging his shoulders at him, and the three men were lined up with other prisoners who were then stripped and led through the Hose, a 6-to-7-ft.-wide passage leading to an area of sandpits where numerous bodies lay. The prisoners were lined up with their hands behind their necks. Five SS men and the SS commander came walking out with submachine guns. Wiesenthal heard shots and counted five while one prisoner fell. Wiesenthal stopped counting, and men kept falling. They were the only three men left when the loudspeaker rang out, "Wiesenthal is needed at the front." At the front of the camp stood Kohlrautz who had convinced the camp commander it was essential to keep Wiesenthal alive to paint posters with the message "Wir lieben unseren Führer!" ("We love our Leader!"). He was saved, again.^{[citation needed]} On October 2, 1943, according to Wiesenthal, Kohlrautz warned him that the camp and its prisoners were shortly to be liquidated. Kohlrautz gave him and a friend passes to visit a stationery shop in town, accompanied by a Ukrainian guard. They managed to escape out the back while the Ukrainian waited at the front.^{[citation needed]}

There is no corroboration for the above account. In Wiesenthal’s testimony to the War crime investigators in May 1945, he does not mention these incidents or Kohlrautz’s part in them, and neither were the events included in an affidavit he made in August 1954, recounting his wartime experiences. He did, however, mention senior inspector Kohlrautz in both, stating that he was killed in the battle for Berlin in April 1945. Wiesenthal later told his biographers that Kohlrautz had been killed on the Russian front in 1944.^[3]

After his escape in 1943 he joined the Polish underground where his experience in engineering^{[citation needed]} and architecture^{[citation needed]} would help the Polish Partisans with bunkers and lines of fortification against German forces.^{[citation needed]}

Wiesenthal was recaptured in June of the following year (1944) by Gestapo officers and interned in Gross-Rosen, a camp near Wrocław. According to Wiesenthal, he was working in the quarry when a startled guard dropped a rock on his foot and he was hospitalized. After he had his big toe amputated and his foot became gangrenous, 6,000 prisoners from the camp were evacuated to Chemnitz. Using a broom handle for a walking stick, he was one of 4,800 who survived the 170-mile (270 km) march. From Chemnitz the prisoners were marched to Mauthausen concentration camp, arriving on February 15, 1945. Wiesenthal had collapsed in the snow, and, when lorries arrived to collect those who had died on the march, he was picked up and taken to the crematorium. When it was noticed that he was still alive, he was transferred to the "death block" for the mortally ill. In 1961, Wiesenthal was interviewed about his war years for the Yad VaShem archives. He claimed that the gangrene from his foot had spread up to his knee and he lay in a bed, unable to get up for the three months until the end of the war, surviving on 200 calories a day.^{[citation needed]} When Mauthausen was liberated on May 5, 1945, he walked out to greet the Americans.^{[3][citation needed]}

Nazi-hunter[link]

At the time of his liberation, Wiesenthal stood at 1.80 m (5 ft, 11 in) and weighed less than 45 kg (99 lb.). As soon as his health improved, Wiesenthal claimed he began working for the U.S. Army, gathering documentation for the Nazi war crimes trials. Wiesenthal’s own résumé does not mention this work for the Americans, but lists his occupation at the time as the vice-chairman of the Jewish Central Committee for the U.S. zone, based in Linz, Austria. Its task was to draw up lists of survivors that other survivors could consult in their hunt for relatives.

He was also president of the Paris-based International Concentration Camp Organisation and was involved with the Berihah, who smuggled Jews out of Europe to Palestine. In February 1947, he and 30 other volunteers founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz to gather information for future trials. However, as the U.S. and the Soviet Union lost interest in further war crimes trials, the group drifted apart after compiling 3,289 reports. Wiesenthal continued to gather information in his spare time while working full time to help those affected by World War II.^[3]

During this time, Wiesenthal claimed to be instrumental in the capture and conviction of the transport manager of the Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires. Wiesenthal was known to be helping in the manhunt for the former Nazi official, but the extent of his involvement with Eichmann's capture remains disputed. He was invited by Yad Vashem to talk about his part in tracking Eichmann down, but he failed to mention that his whole correspondence had gone through the Israeli embassy and that Israeli intelligence had been involved. Wiesenthal’s claims angered Isser Harel, then-head of the Mossad, who published his own memoirs in 1971 in which he made no mention of Wiesenthal. Harel's account has been disputed at book length, but Wiesenthal's contributions to Eichmann’s capture have never been confirmed.^[5] Nonetheless, Wiesenthal's work with Eichmann's wife and children might have proved essential in maintaining the hunt for Eichmann.^[6]

Important to this and other accusations is that Wiesenthal's ecumenical but determined attitude toward tracking human-rights abuses, represented by his comments "justice, not vengeance" and "I am not a hater," have put him at odds with a wide variety of institutions and people over the years. One such person is Elie Wiesel who took issue with Wiesenthal's efforts to recognize the non-Jewish victims of the Nazi regime.^[7]

After Eichmann's 1962 execution in Israel, Wiesenthal reopened the Jewish Documentation Center, which began to focus on other cases. The Center was funded in part by the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency, who also paid Wiesenthal a monthly stipend of $300 for about 10 years according to Tom Segev.^[8][9]

Among his most high-profile successes was the capture of Karl Silberbauer, the SD officer responsible for the arrest of Anne Frank. Silberbauer's confession helped discredit claims that The Diary of Anne Frank was a forgery. During this period, Wiesenthal also located nine of the 16 Nazis later put on trial in West Germany for the murder of the Jewish population of Lviv and also the capture of Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor death camps, and Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan, a former Aufseherin (literally, "female overseer") living in the Queens borough of New York City who had ordered and participated in the torture and murder of thousands of women and children at Majdanek. Braunsteiner's capture led to the establishment of the U.S. Office of Special Investigations to investigate Nazi activity within the U.S.

Austrian politics and later life[link]

In the 1970s, Wiesenthal became involved in Austrian politics when he pointed out that several ministers in Bruno Kreisky's newly formed Socialist government had been Nazis when Austria was part of the Third Reich. Kreisky, himself Jewish, responded by attacking Wiesenthal as a Nestbeschmutzer (someone who dirties his own nest). In Austria, which took decades to acknowledge its role in Nazi crimes, Wiesenthal tended to be ignored and often insulted. In 1975, after Wiesenthal had released a report on FPÖ party chairman Friedrich Peter's Nazi past, Chancellor Bruno Kreisky suggested Wiesenthal was part of a "certain mafia" seeking to besmirch Austria and even claimed Wiesenthal had collaborated with Nazis and the Gestapo to survive. Wiesenthal labeled the claim ridiculous, sued Kreisky for libel and won.^[10]

Over the years, Wiesenthal received many death threats. In 1982, a bomb placed by German and Austrian neo-Nazis exploded outside his house in Vienna, Austria.

During the Waldheim affair, Wiesenthal defended the Austrian president, something for which he was severely criticized.

Even after turning 90, Wiesenthal spent time at his small office in the Jewish Documentation Center in central Vienna. In April 2003, he announced his retirement, claiming that he had found the mass murderers he had been looking for and said: "I have survived them all. If there were any left, they'd be too old and weak to stand trial today. My work is done." And he added that the last major Austrian war criminal still alive is Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's right-hand man, who was last seen by reliable witnesses in 1992. However, prior to his retirement, Wiesenthal was also believed to be working on the case of Aribert Heim, one of the most notorious and wanted Nazi concentration-camp doctors.

Wiesenthal spent his last years in Vienna, where his wife, Cyla, died of natural causes on November 10, 2003, at age 95. Wiesenthal died 2 years later on September 20, 2005, at the age of 96. They are survived by their daughter, Paulinka Kriesberg, and three grandchildren. Wiesenthal was buried in Herzliya, Israel.

In a statement on Wiesenthal's death, Council of Europe chairman Terry Davis said, "Without Simon Wiesenthal's relentless effort to find Nazi criminals and bring them to justice, and to fight[ing] anti-Semitism and prejudice, Europe would never have succeeded in healing its wounds and reconciling itself.... He was a soldier of justice, which is indispensable to our freedom, stability and peace."

In October 2006, the Vienna city council overwhelmingly approved renaming a street the Simon-Wiesenthal-Gasse, formerly Ichmanngasse. The previous name honored Franz Ichmann, a songwriter in the early 20th century and card-carrying member of the Nazi party.^[11]

In 2010, Wiesenthal was honoured by a commemorative stamp, a joint issue by the postal administrations of Austria and Israel; first day of issue was June 14, 2010.^[12]

In February 2012, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apologized for the posthumous baptism of Wiesenthal's parents.^[13][14][15]

Criticism[link]

British author Guy Walters has characterized Wiesenthal as "a liar" and wrote that Wiesenthal would "concoct outrageous stories about his war years and make false claims about his academic career. There are so many inconsistencies between his three main memoirs and between those memoirs and contemporaneous documents that it is impossible to establish a reliable narrative from them. Wiesenthal’s scant regard for the truth makes it possible to doubt everything he ever wrote or said."

Walters went on to say, "His figure is a complex and important one. If there was a motive for his duplicity, it may well have been rooted in good intentions." and "It is partly thanks to Wiesenthal that the Holocaust has been remembered and properly recorded and this is perhaps his greatest legacy."^[3]

Daniel Finkelstein has described Walters' research as "impeccable" and reported that the Wiener Library supports his re-evaluation of Wiesenthal. The Library's director Ben Barkow stated that "accepting that Wiesenthal was a showman and a braggart and, yes, even a liar, can live alongside acknowledging the contribution he made".^[16]

Although Wiesenthal later claimed to have been in 13 concentration camps, including five death camps, he had in fact been in no more than six camps.^[17]

Merits[link]

Wiesenthal was awarded 18 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, of which there are seven faculties of law.

60px Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold; Germany

Federal Cross of Merit; Germany

60px Decoration of Honour for Science and the Arts; Austria

Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, February 19, 2004 In recognition of a "lifetime of service to humanity" and for his work at the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Presidential Medal of Freedom; United States of America

60px Congressional Gold Medal on March 17, 1980; United States of America

Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur; France, 1986

Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau; Netherlands

Order of Merit of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

60px Luxembourg Freedom Medal

60px Decorations from French resistance groups

60px Decorations from Austrian resistance groups

Knight's Cross of the Polonia Restituta; Poland

60px Israel Liberata Gold Medal

Grand Federal Service Cross, 1985

Jerusalem Medal in 1985

National Hero Award, New York, United States, 1991

Medal of UNESCO and the City of Paris; 1992

Erasmus Prize; 1992

Honorary Doctorate from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków; 1994[18]

Human Rights Prize of the Karl-Franzens-Universität, Graz; 1994

Honorary Award of the Austrian Book Trade for tolerance in thought and action in 1995

Freeman of the City of Vienna; 1995

Honorary doctorate from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel

World Tolerance Award; 2000

Medal of Honor of the International Association of Prosecutors (IAP) in Vienna; 2002

Great Golden Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria; 2005

Postage stamp issued in his honour by Austria and Israel Post in 2010 World Stamp News

Dramatic portrayals[link]

• Ben Kingsley portrayed Wiesenthal in the Home Box Office film "Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story".
• In Ira Levin's novel The Boys from Brazil, the character of Yakov Liebermann (called Ezra Liebermann and played by Laurence Olivier in the film) is modeled on Wiesenthal. In fact during production of the film, Wiesenthal met Olivier to offer advice on playing a Nazi-hunter.^[19]
• Wiesenthal was portrayed by the Israeli actor Shmuel Rodensky in the film adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's The Odessa File, providing information to a German journalist attempting to track down a Nazi war criminal.
• In 1990, Martin Landau played Wiesenthal in the TV movie "Max and Helen".
• Wiesenthal was portrayed by Tom Dugan in a one-man, critically acclaimed play written and starring Dugan "Nazi Hunter – Simon Wiesenthal". The performance factually recounts Wiesenthal's life from surviving the Holocaust to pursuing Nazis and bringing them to justice. ^[20]

Documentary[link]

"The Art of Remembrance: Simon Wiesenthal", [2] by filmmakers Hannah Heer & Werner Schmiedel, premiered in the USA in 1995 at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City, featuring exclusive interviews with Simon Wiesenthal, Col. Richard Seibel, and Stanley Robbin, and music composed by John Zorn.

A feature-length documentary of Simon Wiesenthal's life, called "I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal", was released in early 2007. It was produced by Moriah Films, the Academy Award-winning media subdivision of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The film is narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman.

As an author[link]

• Writing under the pen name Mischka Kukin, Wiesenthal published Humor Behind the Iron Curtain in 1962. This is the earliest known compendium of jokes from the Soviet Bloc countries published in the west.

• "Latvian War Criminals in USA." Jewish Currents 20, no. 7 (July/August 1966): 4–8. Also in 20, no. 10 (November 1966): 24.
• The Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Memoirs (1967)
• "There Are Still Murderers among Us." National Jewish Monthly 82, no. 2 (October 1967): 8–9.
• "Nazi Criminals in Arab States." Israel Horizons 15, no.7 (September 1967): 10–12.
• Anti-Jewish Agitation in Poland: A Documentary Report. Bonn: R. Vogel, (1969)
• "Justice: Why I Hunt Nazis." Jewish Observer and Middle East Review 21, no. 12 (March 24, 1972): 16.
• Sails of Hope: The Secret Mission of Christopher Columbus (1973)
• "Mauthausen: Steps beyond the Grave." In Hunter and Hunted: Human History of the Holocaust. comp. Gerd Korman, 286–295. New York: Viking Press, (1973)
• The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (1976)
• Max and Helen: A Remarkable True Love Story. New York: Morrow (1982)
• Every Day Remembrance Day: A Chronicle of Jewish Martyrdom. New York: Henry Holt (1987)
• Justice Not Vengeance. New York: Grove-Weidenfeld (1989)

See also[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Simon Wiesenthal

• Efraim Zuroff
• Serge and Beate Klarsfeld
• Tuviah Friedman Officer by IMG – Nürnberg
• Yaron Svoray

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Simon Wiesenthal Center Website
• A biography at the Wiesenthal Center
• The Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal – slideshow by Der Spiegel
• Simon Wiesenthal, Who Helped Hunt Nazis After War, Dies at 96; Tirelessly Pursued Nazi Fugitives
• Simon Wiesenthal at the Internet Movie Database
• Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story at the Internet Movie Database
• The Art of Remembrance: Simon Wiesenthal; documentary by Hannah Heer & Werner Schmiedel
• BBC News on Wiesenthals Death September 20, 2005
• Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service
• Simon Wiesenthal Center announcement of death
• Simon Wiesenthal 1908–2005
• Audio of Simon Wiesenthal and from his commemoration

Abraham Cooper, ca. 1827.

Carte de visite of Abraham Cooper, 1860s.

Abraham Cooper (1787–1868), English animal and battle painter, the son of a tobacconist, was born in London.

At the age of thirteen he became an employee at Astley's Amphitheatre, and was afterwards groomed in the service of Sir Henry Meux. When he was twenty-two, wishing to possess a portrait of a favorite horse under his care, he bought a manual of painting, learned something of the use of oil-colours, and painted the picture on a canvas hung against the stable wall. His master bought it and encouraged him to continue in his efforts. He accordingly began to copy prints of horses, and was introduced to Benjamin Marshall, the animal painter, who took him into his studio, and seems to have introduced him to the Sporting Magazine, an illustrated periodical to which he was himself a contributor.

In 1814 he exhibited his Tam O'Shanter, and in 1816 he won a prize for his Battle of Ligny. In 1817 he exhibited his Battle of Marston Moor and was made associate of the Academy, and in 1820 he was elected Academician. Cooper, although ill-educated, was a clever and conscientious artist; his coloring was somewhat flat and dead, but he was a master of equine portraiture and anatomy, and had some antiquarian knowledge. He had a special fondness for Cavalier and Roundhead pictures.

Paintings[link]

• Bosworth Field (1825, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts)
• The Death of Sir Francis Russell, who was treacherously slain at a Border Meeting, July 16, 1585 (1827, Duke of Bedford, Woburn Abbey)
• Battle of Zutphen, 1586 )1826 - Duke of Bedford, Woburn Abbey)
• The Battle of Marston Moor (1819 - Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston)
• The Heroic Conduct of Cromwell at Marston Moor (1821 - Chequers House, Buckinghamshire)
• Cromwell leading his Cavalry into Battle (Cambridgeshire Museums, at Cromwell House, Huntingdon)
• Battle Scene (attr.) (Guildhall Art Gallery)
• Wellington's First Great Victory - The Battle of Assaye (The Light Dragoons)
• The Battle of Ligny (Lord Egremont, Petworth House)

Gallery[link]

• 

  Crib and Rosa, 1817

• 

  Tam O'Shanter

• 

  Richard III and the Earl of Richmond During the Battle of Bosworth Field

References[link]

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cooper, Abraham". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Works About[link]

• Harrington, Peter (1993). British Artists and War: The Face of Battle in Paintings and Prints, 1700-1914. London: Greenhill.

Rabbi Marvin Hier (b. 1939 in New York) is the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, its Museum of Tolerance and of Moriah, the Center's film division.

Hier's parents came from Poland; his father worked as a lamp polisher after arriving in New York in 1917. In the 1960s, Hier served as assistant rabbi and, in 1964, became rabbi of Congregation Schara Tzedeck in Vancouver. In 1977, following a visit to Holocaust sites in Europe, Rabbi Hier came to Los Angeles to create the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Under his leadership, the Center has become one of the foremost Jewish human rights agencies in the world, with a constituency of more than 400,000 families. The Center maintains offices throughout the United States, and in Canada, Europe, Israel and Argentina.

He is the recipient of two Academy Awards - in 1997, as co-producer of "The Long Way Home", which offers new insights into the critical post WWII period between 1945 and 1948 and the suffering of the tens of thousands of refugees who survived the Holocaust, and in 1981 as co-producer and co-writer for "Genocide", a documentary on the Holocaust.

In 1990, he wrote and co-produced the award-winning "Echoes That Remain", a documentary on pre-world War II European Jewish life, and in 1994, Hier produced and co-wrote, "Liberation", the first production of Moriah Films. Under Rabbi Hier's direction, the Wiesenthal Center has served as consultant to Steven Spielberg's epic Schindler's List, and ABC Television's miniseries adaptation of Herman Wouk's novel, War and Remembrance. He is the recipient of an honorary degree and, in 1993 was made a Chevalier in the Ordre National du Mérite by French President François Mitterrand.

Newsweek Magazine describes Rabbi Hier as the following, "Hier is one phone call away from almost every world leader, journalist and Hollywood studio head. He is the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Museum of Tolerance and Moriah Films." -Newsweek 2007

Hier founded the school YULA and was the dean of the school until the 2006-2007 school year.

President George W. Bush appointed Hier to serve on the Honorary Delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.^[1]

In 2007 and 2008 Rabbi Marvin Hier was named the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek Magazine.

In 2009, he criticized Vatican cardinal Renato Martino over his comment that Gaza was a big concentration camp.^[2] He later criticized the lifting of the excommunication of bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the Society of Saint Pius X.^[3]

A $100 million Museum of Tolerance and Human Dignity, a project of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles run by Rabbi Marvin Hier, is set to be built in Jerusalem, Israel.

Marvin Hier currently resides in Los Angeles. He has 2 sons and 8 grandchildren.

External links[link]

• Hier's entry with the Simon Wiesenthal Center
• In Hitler's Shadow by Nick Taylor, excerpt from chapter 4
• Newsweek Magazine Ranks Hier Top Rabbi In America

Joy Behar
Behar attending the 21st Annual GLAAD Media Awards, March 13, 2010
Born	Josephina Victoria Occhiuto (1942-10-07) October 7, 1942 (age 69) Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress Comedian Writer Co-host on The View Host on The Joy Behar Show
Years active	1984–present
Religion	None (agnostic)
Spouse	Joe Behar (1965–1981) Steve Janowitz (2011–present)

Joy Behar (born Josephina Victoria Occhiuto; born October 7, 1942)^[1] is an American comedian, writer, actress, and a co-host of the talk show The View. Behar had a commentary program, entitled The Joy Behar Show, on CNN's sister network, HLN.^[2] It was cancelled on November 17, 2011.^[3]

Early life[link]

Behar, an Italian-American, was born Josephina Victoria Occhiuto in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on October 7, 1942. Her mother, Rose (née Carbone), was a seamstress, and her father, Gino Occhiuto, was a truck driver for Coca-Cola.^[4][5] Her grandfather was Giuseppe Occhiuto born in Fagnano Castello, Cosenza, Calabria, Italy.^[6] She started off her career as a teacher at Lindenhurst High School. There she taught English class.^[7]

Career[link]

[edit] The early years & The View

Joy Behar got her start in show business in the early 1980s as a stand up comedian, including appearances on ABC's Good Morning America, and The New Show, a short lived Lorne Michaels NBC project. In 1987 she had a talk show on Lifetime Television called 'Way Off Broadway'. From there she continued to work the comedy club circuit, was a regular on NBC's Baby Boom, and had minor film rolls including Cookie, This Is My Life, and Manhattan Murder Mystery. She also was a WABC (AM) radio talk show host, and made appearances on HBO Comedy Specials 'One Night Stand' and 'Women Of The Night 2',

In 1997 Behar became one of the original cast members of Barbara Walters's ABC television creation, The View. Originally, Behar appeared only on the days when Walters was away from the show; ultimately, Behar became a regular co-host, with the panel expanding to five when Walters rejoined. Behar often hosts a segment called "Joy's Comedy Corner" in which she presents up-and-coming comedians.

Star Jones, former co-host on The View, and Behar had well-publicized disputes. On March 27, 2006, Star Jones called in to the show to discuss a recent operation that she had undergone. After talking with the show's co-hosts, Behar abruptly stated to Jones, "OK, Star. That's enough about you. On to us. Bye. Keep your [breasts] perky!"^[8] Jones then responded, "Even today, you [Behar] are still a bitch."^[8]

In August 2009 Behar, alongside her co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Sherri Shepherd, Barbara Walters and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, won the 36th Annual Daytime Emmy award for Outstanding Talk Show Host. It follows over a decade of nominations for The View. None of the co-hosts of the show traveled from New York to Los Angeles to attend the ceremony, however.^[9]

Other work[link]

Behar has also made theater appearances in The Food Chain and The Vagina Monologues. Behar wrote a book of humorous essays and stories called Joy Shtick — Or What is the Existential Vacuum and Does It Come with Attachments?, published in 1999. She has also written a children's book called Sheetzucacapoopoo: My Kind of Dog, published in 2006.

Behar frequently incorporates her Italian-American culture into her comedy and once told Charlie Rose on his PBS program that her grandmother kept a picture of Mussolini in her home.

She appeared on the eighth season of Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown and finished in fourth place, behind Robin Tunney, Christopher Meloni and Macy Gray, but ahead of Andy Dick. She played for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

Beginning in 2007, she has occasionally filled in as a guest host on Larry King Live. On June 11, 2009, Behar announced that she would be hosting her own news/talk program on CNN's HLN beginning in the fall of 2009, titled The Joy Behar Show. She did not leave The View, but worked on both shows simultaneously.^[2] The final broadcast of the The Joy Behar Show was on December 15, 2011.

Behar played the part of "Dr. Lucy" in the 2011 comedy film Hall Pass.^[10]

Personal life[link]

Occhiuto married Joe Behar in January 1965; they divorced in 1981. They have one daughter, Eve (b. 1970).^[11] Joy Behar has been in a relationship with Steve Janowitz since July 10, 1982, whom she called her 'spousal equivalent'. On March 17, 2009, Behar announced on The View that she might eventually marry Janowitz.^[12] Behar called off the engagement three months later^[13] because she wanted people to stop talking about it. On August 11, 2011, Behar married Janowitz.^[14]

Behar holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Queens College (class of 1964), and a Master of Arts degree in English education from the State University of New York at Stony Brook (class of 1966). She taught English in the late 1960s and early 1970s at Lindenhurst High School on Long Island, New York. She has identified herself as agnostic.^[15] She resides in Manhattan. Behar became a grandmother on February 28, 2011 when her daughter had a son, Luca.^[16] Behar is a member of the Delta Zeta sorority.^[17]

Filmography[link]

• Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) ... Eunice (post-production)
• Hall Pass (2011) ... Dr. Lucy
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (2001) ... 42 (1 episode)
• Love Is All There Is (1996) ... Mary
• Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist (1996) ... Joy (2 episode)
• 'M' Word (1996) ... Carol
• Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) ... Marilyn
• This Is My Life (1992) ... Rudy
• It's Gary Shandling's Show (1989–1990) ... Joy Mull/Joy Smith
• Baby Boom (1988–1989) ... Helga Von Haput (13 episodes)
• Cookie (film) (1989) ... Dottie
• Hiding Out (1987) ... Gertrude

Awards and nominations[link]

GLAAD Media Award

• 2010 Excellence in Media Award

Daytime Emmy Award

• 1998 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 1999 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 2000 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 2001 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 2002 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 2003 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 2003 Award for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 2004 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 2005 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 2006 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 2007 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 2008 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show (The View)
• 2009 Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host(s) (The View)
• 2010 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show Host(s) (The View)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Rozen, Leah (July 9, 2010). "After Work With Joy Behar:Stand Up; Sit Down; Talk, Talk, Talk". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/fashion/11WITH.html. 
• Mitchell, Russ (March 28, 2010). "Joy Behar: Left Front Center". CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/28/sunday/main6341367.shtml. 

External links[link]

• Joy Behar at the Internet Movie Database
• Joy Behar at AllRovi
• The Joy Behar Show
• The View Official Profile