Simon Wiesenthal: Holcocaust Survivor and Nazi Hunter, Dead at 96

Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal who became best known for his never-ending quest to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, died Tuesday at the age of 96. Wiesenthal died at his Vienna home.

During the Holocaust, Wiesenthal survived five Nazi death camps and lost nearly 90 relatives to the German death machine. After the war ended, Wiesenthal dedicated his life to being a voice for the six million killed in the Holocaust and to bring Nazi war criminals to justice despite facing a world that would have rather forgotten about the horrors of the war.

'I think he'll be remembered as the conscience of the Holocaust. In a way he became the permanent representative of the victims of the Holocaust, determined to bring the perpetrators of the greatest crime to justice,' Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles told the Associated Press.

Wiesenthal helped track down more than 1,100 Nazi war criminals after World War II. He spoke out against racism, Nazism and sought to help the world remember the Holocaust.

'When history looks back I want people to know the Nazis weren't able to kill millions of people and get away with it,' he once said.

During the war, he twice attempted suicide but his life was changed towards the end of the war when an SS corporal bet Wiesenthal that nobody would believe the truth about the concentration camps once the war was over.

By the time Wiesenthal was liberated at Mauthausen concentration camp at the end of the war, the six-foot-tall man weighed just 99 pounds. He gradually returned to health and later helped American forces arrest Nazis who had participated in war crimes.

Wiesenthal was involved in the capture of Adolf Eichmann, perhaps the biggest name among escaped Nazi war criminals to go into hiding. Eichmann was later captured by Israeli officials, put on trial for crimes against humanity and hung.

Wiesenthal also helped capture Austrian policeman Karl Silberbauer, the man who arrested teenager Anne Frank and her family and sent them all to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where Anne perished.

Simon Wiesenthal was born December 31, 1908 in Buczacz, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Before World War II, he was an architect.

His post-war work made him hated in Austria, a country which desperately tried to forget its role in the Holocaust and in World War II. He often faced death threats and assassination attempts but he kept on with his work.

He later spoke out against Austrian Prime Minister Kurt Waldheim, calling for the ex-Nazi's resignation. Despite this, Waldheim never asked that Waldheim be brought to trial as there was no evidence he had directly committed a war crime.

Wiesenthal's wife, Cyla, died in 2003. The couple had one daughter and three grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held in Vienna's central cemetery on Wednesday. Mr. Wiesenthal's funeral will take place Thursday in Israel.

In a 1999 interview with the Associated Press, Wiesenthal modestly summed up his life's work by saying, 'The most important thing I have done is to fight against forgetting and to keep remembrance alive. It is very important to let people know that our enemies are not forgotten.'