Whereas Simon Wiesenthal was born on December 31, 1908, to
Jewish merchants in Buczacz, in what is now the Lvov Oblast section of the
Ukraine;
Whereas after he was denied admission to the Polytechnic
Institute in Lvov because of quota restrictions on Jewish students, Simon
Wiesenthal received his degree in engineering from the Technical University of
Prague in 1932;
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal worked in an architectural office
until he was forced to close his business and become a mechanic in a bedspring
factory, following the Russian army’s occupation of Lvov and purge of Jewish
professionals;
Whereas following the German occupation of Ukraine in
1941, Simon Wiesenthal was initially detained in the Janwska concentration camp
near Lvov, after which he and his wife were assigned to the forced labor camp
serving the Ostbahn Works, which was the repair shop for Lvov’s Eastern
Railroad;
Whereas in August of 1942, Simon Wiesenthal’s mother was
sent to the Belzec death camp as part of Nazi Germany’s Final
Solution
, and by the end of the next month 89 of his relatives had been
killed;
Whereas with the help of the Polish Underground Simon
Wiesenthal was able to help his wife escape the Ostbahn camp in 1942, and in
1943 was himself able to escape just before German guards began executing
inmates, but he was recaptured the following year and sent to the Janwska
camp;
Whereas following the collapse of the German eastern
front, the SS guards at Janwska took Simon Wiesenthal and the remaining camp
survivors and joined the westward retreat from approaching Russian
forces;
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal was 1 of the few survivors of the
retreat to Mauthausen, Austria and was on the brink of death, weighing only 99
pounds, when Mauthausen was liberated by American forces on May 5, 1945;
Whereas after surviving 12 Nazi prison camps, including 5
death camps, Wiesenthal chose not to return to his previous occupation, and
instead dedicated himself to finding Nazi war criminals and bringing them to
justice;
Whereas following the liberation of Mauthausen, Simon
Wiesenthal began collecting evidence of Nazi activity for the War Crimes
Section of the United States Army, and after the war continued these efforts
for the Army's Office of Strategic Services and Counter-Intelligence
Corps;
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal would also go on to head the
Jewish Central Committee of the United States Zone of Austria, a relief and
welfare organization;
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal and his wife were reunited in
1945, and had a daughter the next year;
Whereas the evidence supplied by Wiesenthal was utilized
in the United States Zone war crime trials;
Whereas, after concluding his work with the United States
Army in 1947, Simon Wiesenthal and others opened and operated the Jewish
Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, for the purpose of assembling
evidence for future Nazi trials, before closing the office and providing its
files to the Yad Vashem Archives in Israel in 1954;
Whereas despite his heavy involvement in relief work and
occupational education for Soviet refugees, Simon Wiesenthal tenaciously
continued his pursuit of Adolf Eichmann, who had served as the head of the
Gestapo’s Jewish Department and supervised the implementation of the
Final Solution
;
Whereas in 1953, Simon Wiesenthal acquired evidence that
Adolf Eichmann was living in Argentina and passed this information to the
Government of Israel;
Whereas this information, coupled with information about
Eichmann’s whereabouts in Argentina provided to Israel by Germany in 1959, led
to Eichmann’s capture by Israeli agents, trial and conviction in Israel, and
execution on May 31, 1961;
Whereas following Eichmann’s capture, Wiesenthal opened a
new Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, Austria, for the purpose of
collecting and analyzing information to aid in the location and apprehension of
war criminals;
Whereas Karl Silberbauer, the Gestapo officer who arrested
Anne Frank, Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor
concentration camps in Poland, and Hermine Braunsteiner, who had supervised the
killings of several hundred children at Majdanek, are among the approximately
1,100 war criminals found and brought to justice as a result of Simon
Wiesenthal’s investigative, analytical, and undercover operations;
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal bravely forged ahead with his
mission of promoting tolerance and justice in the face of danger and
resistance, including numerous threats and the bombing of his home in
1982;
Whereas the Simon Wiesenthal Center was established in
1977, to focus on the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, commemorate the events
of the Holocaust, teach tolerance education, and promote Middle East
affairs;
Whereas the Simon Wiesenthal Center monitors and combats
the growth of neo-Nazi activity in Europe and keeps watch over concentration
camp sites to ensure that the memory of the Holocaust and the sanctity of those
sites are preserved;
Whereas the Simon Wiesenthal Center played a pivotal role
in convincing foreign governments to pass laws enabling the prosecution of Nazi
war criminals;
Whereas throughout his lifetime, Simon Wiesenthal has had
many honors and awards bestowed upon him, including decorations from the
Austrian and French resistance movements, the Dutch Freedom Medal, the
Luxembourg Freedom Medal, the United Nations League for the Help of Refugees
Award, the French Legion of Honor, and the United States Congressional Gold
Medal, which was presented to him by President James Carter in 1980;
Whereas President Ronald W. Reagan once remarked,
For what Simon Wiesenthal represents are the animating principles of
Western civilization since the day Moses came down from Sinai: the idea of
justice, the idea of laws, the idea of the free will.
;
Whereas President George H. W. Bush has stated that Simon
Wiesenthal, is our living embodiment of remembrance. The two pledges of
Simon Wiesenthal’s life inspire us all—Never forget
and
Never again
.
;
Whereas President William Clinton has remarked of Simon
Wiesenthal, To those who know his story, one of miraculous survival and
of relentless pursuit of justice, the answer is apparent. From the unimaginable
horrors of the Holocaust, only a few voices survived, to bear witness, to hold
the guilty accountable, to honor the memory of those who were killed. Only if
we heed these brave voices can we build a bulwark of humanity against the
hatred and indifference that is still all too prevalent in this world of
ours.
; and
Whereas, at the end of a life dedicated to the pursuit of
justice and advocacy for victims of the Holocaust, Simon Wiesenthal passed away
on September 20, 2005, at the age of 96: Now, therefore, be it
That the Senate—
(1)expresses its
most sincere condolences to the family and friends of Simon Wiesenthal;
(2)recognizes the
life and accomplishments of Simon Wiesenthal, who, after surviving the
Holocaust, spent more than 50 years helping to bring Nazi war criminals to
justice and was a vigorous opponent of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and racism;
and
(3)recognizes and
commends Simon Wiesenthal’s legacy of promoting tolerance, his tireless efforts
to bring about justice, and the continuing pursuit of these ideals.