LONDON — Simon Wiesenthal’s search for Nazi war criminals has ended and, at age 92, having brought some 3,000 to justice, he has announced his retirement.
“My real work — the search for criminals — is over,” he told the London-based Sunday Telegraph in an exclusive interview published last weekend.
“Those I sought I have found,” he said. “I’ve outlived them all. Even if there are any I had not looked for that are still alive, it is too late to bring them to justice. They would be too old now, so my work is done.”
But while he feels the task of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice is over, the new generation of fighters against far-right extremism is facing a daunting task and he said he might continue working for a couple of days a week to help them meet the challenge.
“There are organizations which want to tell the world that not all that the Nazis did was bad. They are small but if, all of a sudden, they all join together — then they are a danger. I fear that people may not have learnt the lessons of history.”
Wiesenthal, who was himself a prisoner in various concentration camps until liberated from Mathausen on May 5, 1945, pledged that he would dedicate his life to bringing those responsible for such crimes to justice.
What kept him going throughout his ordeal, he said, “was my desire for justice…I had a good memory to help me, and I noted the names and faces of those who held us and what they did to us.
“When I was freed, I could not move any more, and even a month after my liberation I still couldn’t walk, but I started with my work.” While some sought to forget the horrors of the war, Wiesenthal, who had trained as an architect, said he embarked on a “fight against forgetting.”
“The first few years went well, but after 1948, the Americans saw that the Soviet Union was getting too strong. They stopped looking for Nazi criminals and dedicated themselves to the fight against communism.
“Most of the criminals fled. They lived in South America under false names. We had lots of information, but we could not follow up all parts of this information, because we did not have the funds.
“The murdered 6 million Jews were 6 million murdered witnesses. Therefore our work was difficult.” Wiesenthal had thought his work would be over within a few years: “But I was naive,” he said. “Once you start this kind of work you can’t stop.”
Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, took issue with the notion that the work of Nazi-hunting is over.
“While I certainly can appreciate Mr.Wiesenthal’s decision to retire after so many years of dedicated work in attempting to bring the perpetrators of the Holocaust to justice, his step does not mean that there aren’t numerous unprosecuted Nazi war criminals who can still be brought to trial,” said Zuroff.
“Our efforts continue apace and we have no intention of ignoring any of the numerous cases in which prosecution is still a concrete possibility.”