Simon Wiesenthal was a hero who carried the torch of justice at a time when there was a paralysis of conscience over responsibility for the Holocaust. 

It is difficult, 60 years removed from the events of that period, to recall that the world has not always been so eager to remember the events of the war and of those who were directly responsible for the death of six million innocent men, women and children.

But for many years after the war there was an avalanche of silence about the crimes of the Holocaust. It is both remarkable, and a testament to who he was, that one man — a survivor who lived through that hell — almost single-handedly changed world opinion and popular attitudes through his own personal crusade to bring the Nazi war criminals and collaborators to justice.

Wiesenthal, who died Tuesday at his home in Vienna at 96, emerged from the ashes of the Shoah, having survived five concentration camps. He was barely alive, weighing just 99 pounds upon his liberation from Mauthausen in 1945. Yet as soon as his health was sufficiently restored, he began his lifetime struggle to ensure that the world would not forget the crimes of the Holocaust.

It was an enormous undertaking. There were thousands of war criminals and collaborators, and no official mechanism for bringing them to justice or documenting their crimes. In the years immediately following the war, into the 1950s and '60s, there was denial in Germany and Austria and across Eastern Europe. Secretly, in an effort to gain the upper hand against the Soviet Union, the United States and its allies began recruiting Nazi war criminals in the fight against communism. This conspiracy of silence threw up roadblocks that made Wiesenthal's efforts difficult, if not downright impossible.

Yet there was something that motivated Wiesenthal and those who surrounded him to continue their effort to investigate and expose. In the late 1940s, when Wiesenthal opened his first documentation center in Lintz, Austria, my father — himself a survivor living in a displaced persons camp — went to join his fledgling operation as an investigator and associate. Even though I was only 7 at the time, I clearly remember Wiesenthal's visits, this proud yet grandfatherly man who seemed determined, yet never vengeful in his relentless pursuit for justice.

Over the years, Wiesenthal has had his share of critics, including some people who accused him of seeking vengeance against those who imprisoned him in the camps and killed 89 members of his extended family. On the contrary, Wiesenthal was motivated by a quest for justice. He set up a standard that no matter the time, no matter the place, if you were a war criminal someone would eventually go after you and find you.

To Wiesenthal, each arrest was an essential piece of a much larger purpose. He always took the position that civilization must be impressed with the magnitude of the horror of the Holocaust as an object lesson to prevent a recurrence in the future. That's why it was necessary, he reasoned, that the anti-Semitic perpetrators of these vicious crimes against humanity be apprehended and tried in courts of law. They, and the world for generations to come, had to know that such crimes would not go unpunished.

Today, this model of justice for perpetrators of crimes against humanity is reflected in a wide array of institutions that have taken their cues from Wiesenthal's lifetime of devotion to Nazi hunting. Most notably, the U.S. Office of Special Investigations continues the important work of tracking down Nazi-era war criminals, showing a determination to ensure that justice is served, even 60 years after the fact. The United Nations and the International Court of Justice in the Hague, in their efforts to end genocide and pursue war crimes perpetrators, including Slobodan Milosevic and his ilk, are in many ways modeled on Wiesenthal's approach of bringing evidence of crimes before the international community.

Certainly, there were many disappointments in Wiesenthal's search for justice — among them his inability to bring to justice the ever-elusive Dr. Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" of Auschwitz who found refuge in South America. Yet although many of those responsible for the crimes of the Holocaust were never brought to justice, they never enjoyed a peaceful night from the day Simon Wiesenthal raised his voice. No Nazi war criminal, big or small, knew when Wiesenthal's voice of moral outrage would find him. 

And there were important victories. The capture of Adolf Eichmann would have been impossible without Wiesenthal's perseverance. Eichmann's capture and trial revived public concern and awareness about the Nazi war criminals who had avoided detection and arrest, and as a result, Wiesenthal was encouraged to open his Documentation Center in Vienna.

In 1988, the Anti-Defamation League honored Wiesenthal for his "courageous Jewish leadership" in making sure that the world would never forget the Holocaust. We presented him with the Jabotinsky Award, named after the Zionist pioneer who helped lead the struggle to establish a Jewish state. The award had only been given twice previously — to former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

In accepting the award, Wiesenthal hailed Jabotinsky as a "fighter" who "went his own way — the way which he thought was right.

"I adopted some of Jabotinsky's principles," Wiesenthal said, "and as I look back on my life it gives me a certain satisfaction to be able to say, I chose the right way."

Wiesenthal's choice to uphold and carry the torch of justice is his legacy and will be remembered and celebrated for generations to come.
 

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.