This first fully documented biography of Simon
Wiesenthal, the legendary Nazi hunter, is also a brilliant
character study of a man whose life was part invention but wholly
dedicated to ensuring both that the Nazis be held responsible for
their crimes and that the destruction of European Jewry never be
forgotten.
Like most Jews in Eastern Europe on the eve of
Hitler’s invasion of Poland, twenty-four-year-old Simon Wiesenthal
did not grasp the nature of the Nazi threat. But six years later,
when a skeletal Wiesenthal was liberated from the concentration
camp at Mauthausen, he fully fathomed the crimes of the Nazis.
Within days he had assembled a list of nearly 150 Nazi war
criminals, the first of dozens of such lists he would make over a
lifetime as a Nazi hunter. A hero in the eyes of many, Wiesenthal
was also attacked for his unrelenting pursuit of the past, when
others preferred to forget.
For this new biography, rich in newsworthy revelations, historian
and journalist Tom Segev has obtained access to Wiesenthal’s
private papers and to sixteen archives, including records of the
U.S., Israeli, Polish, and East German secret services. Segev is
able to reveal the intriguing secrets of Wiesenthal’s life,
including his stunning role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann, his
relationship with Israel’s Mossad, his controversial investigative
techniques, his unlikely friendships with Kurt Waldheim and Albert
Speer, and the nature of his rivalry with Elie Wiesel.
Segev’s challenge in writing this biography was Wiesenthal’s own
complicated relationship to truth. Wiesenthal told many versions of
his life, his suffering in the camps, and his involvement with the
arrest of individual Nazis. Segev shows that in order to gain the
information he sought and twist the arms of reluctant government
figures, Wiesenthal needed to seem more influential than he really
was.
For two generations of Americans, Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish
superhero—depicted on film by Ben Kingsley and Laurence Olivier—and
the muse for a Frederick Forsyth thriller. Now Segev demonstrates
that the truth of Wiesenthal’s existence is as compelling as the
fiction. Simon Wiesenthal is an unforgettable life of one of
the great men of the twentieth century.
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