Simon Wiesenthal

"The Nazi Hunter"

Simon Wiesenthal was born on the 31 December 1908 in Buczacz, which is now in the Lvov Oblast area of the Ukraine. His mother took the Wiesenthal family to Vienna, when the Cossacks burst into Buczacz in 1915.

Simon Wiesenthal attended a primary school in Bauerlgasse, Vienna, they returned to Buczacz as his mother wanted to re-marry. Simon Wiesenthal graduated from the Gymnasium in 1928 and applied to the Polytechnic Institute in Lvov. He was barred admission because of restrictions towards Jewish students.

Denied access Wiesenthal was accepted by the Technical University of Prague, from which he obtained a degree in architectural engineering in 1932. In 1936 Simon Wiesenthal married Cyla Muller, whom he had known from school and he found employment in an architectural office in Lvov. Their happiness was short lived.

The Russian army occupied Lvov as part of the Nazi – Soviet “non-aggression” pact which divided a conquered Poland between the two major powers. Simon Wiesenthal’s stepfather was arrested by the NKVD – Soviet Secret Police and he eventually died in prison, his step-brother was shot and Wiesenthal became a mechanic in a bed-spring factory.

He bribed an NKVD commissar to save his wife, his mother and himself from deportation to Siberia. Following the German invasion of Russia in June 11941, eight days later the last Russians left Lvov and the inhabitants first saw German uniforms albeit worn by auxiliary troops, who initiated a series of pogroms against the Jewish population.

Simon Wiesenthal was in hiding on the afternoon of the 6 July 1941 in a cellar was arrested along with approximately one hundred professionals, such as lawyers, doctors and teachers to the Brygidki prison.

Those arrested were ordered to stand in several rows facing the wall and to fold their arms behind their necks. A Ukrainian started the execution by shooting from the left end of the first row, two of his helpers flung the bodies into wooden boxes, which were dragged away.

The executions lasted throughout the afternoon, the church bells rang, and the Ukrainians halted the slaughter with the words, “Enough for now, vespers.” Wiesenthal stood ten yards from the executioner.    

 A Ukrainian he used to know, by the name of Bodnar, wearing an armband of a Ukrainian auxiliary policeman, managed to extricate Wiesenthal from the prison claiming he was a Soviet spy, and he deportations from Lvov to Belzec took place from the 15 March 1942.

The largest deportation from Lvov to Belzec took place between the 10 August to the 23 August 1942,in this transport was Simon Wiesenthal’s sixty-three year old mother. She probably perished in the gas chambers at Belzec, his wife’s mother was shot dead on the steps of her house by a Ukrainian police auxiliary, shortly afterwards.

In the Ostbahn Repair Works Wiesenthal was able to make contact with the Polish resistance, and in exchange for plans of the Railroad station, Cyla was able to escape and was provided with false papers, using the name Irene Kowalska. The Ostbahn repair shops came under the control of a German railway official called Heinrich Guenthert, Wiesenthal’s immediate supervisor Chief Inspector Adolf Kohlrautz.

They treated the Jews humanely, however, on the 20 April 1943, the safe haven for Wiesenthal and three other workers ended, they were collected early in the morning and taken to Janowska.

This was despite the two above mentioned Germans protesting, the SS paid no head to this, they wanted to murder some Jews to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday. The twenty or so Jews selected by the Nazis were made to stand in the so-called “tube” a two meter wide corridor between barbed wire fences. At the end of the so called “tube” was a sandpit into which the bodies fell.

Read more about Simon Wiesenthal here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/wiesenthal.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

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