Simon Wiesenthal a Life In Search of Jus - Hardcover

Pick, Hella

3.58

33 ratings by Goodreads

9780297815594: Simon Wiesenthal a Life In Search of Jus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297815598 ISBN 13: 9780297815594

Publisher: Trafalgar Square, 1996

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Nazi-hunter extraordinary - the first authorised biography of man who brought Adolf Eichman and other Nazi crimainals to trial.

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Review:

Simon Wiesenthal is known worldwide for his tenacious pursuit of Nazi war criminals, his resistance to historical revisionists, and his insistence that the world must remember the Holocaust. His has been a voice for those who did not survive. Hella Pick, a writer with The Guardian of London, tells Wiesenthal's personal story, which includes his experience as a prisoner at the Janowska concentration camp in Poland, an experience which inspired his mission to make the world remember. In Auschwitz in 1994 he explained, "My whole life's meaning is to ensure that the murderers of tomorrow--who may not even be born yet--must know that they will have no peace."

From Kirkus Reviews:

A full, lucid, and moving biography of the Nazi hunter who became the ``unwelcome conscience'' of post-Holocaust Europe. Pick, diplomatic editor and feature writer of the Guardian since 1961, got Simon Wiesenthal's cooperation for this biography without ceding editorial control. This allows the author, who has long covered the careers of Wiesenthal and fellow Austrians Kurt Waldheim and Bruno Kreisky, to go well beyond her subject's published memoirs, The Murderers Among Us (1967) and Justice Not Vengeance (1990). While recording Wiesenthal's monumental achievements in both tracking down Nazi war criminals and protecting the history of the Holocaust, Pick does not refrain from painting her subject as egotistical, inconsiderate, and ``unsuited to teamwork.'' As a young man, Wiesenthal seemed headed for a career as an architect. The war changed everything. Pick provides some psychological clues to Wiesenthal's obsession with preserving Holocaust memory, including the trauma he felt at not being there when his mother was seized. His photographic memory, facility with languages, and tenacity combined with uncanny luck to preserve him from firing squads and crematoria lines (he spent time in 13 concentration camps), place him with an American war crimes unit after the war and, eventually, on the world stage, where he did battle with the likes of Adolf Eichmann, Dr. Josef Mengele, the Israeli Mossad, the Vatican, other Nazi hunters, the World Jewish Congress, and Bruno Kreisky. Providing a moving glimpse into the private life of this international icon, Pick quotes wife Cyla complaining, ``I am not married to a man. I am married to thousands, or maybe millions of dead.'' There is no more disturbing memory for the West than that of the genocidal atrocities committed in WW II, and no more disturbing--and decorated--guardian of this memory than the complex man depicted here. (40 illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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