2020-12-31 Thu

Simon Wiesenthal was an Austrian Jewish architectural engineer and Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter who pursued Nazi war criminals. His life motto was justice, not Vengeance.

He studied architecture and was living in Lwow at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration camp, Krakow-P?aszow concentration camp, Gross-Rosen concentration camp, death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.

After the war, Wiesenthal dedicated his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial. He opened the Documentation Centre of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime in Vienna in 1961 and continued to try to locate missing Nazi war criminals. He played a small role in locating Adolf Eichmann (one of the major organizers of the Holocaust).

In 2010 the Austrian and Israeli governments jointly issued a commemorative stamp honouring Wiesenthal. The stamps show a portrait of Simon Wiesenthal in a frame in the form of the Star of David, applied using special printing technology. The text elements on the stamp are in both German and Hebrew.

Wiesenthal became an avid stamp collector after the war, following advice from his doctors to take up a hobby to help him relax. In 2006 his collection of Zemstvo stamps sold at auction for 90,000 Euros after his death.

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