[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 118 (Tuesday, September 20, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1902]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                REMEMBERING THE LIFE OF SIMON WIESENTHAL

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                         HON. ALCEE L. HASTINGS

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 20, 2005

  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life 
of one of the great figures in Jewish and world history, the late Simon 
Wiesenthal. Mr. Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor who crusaded to ensure 
that those responsible for the Holocaust were brought to justice, 
passed away earlier today in his home in Vienna, Austria. Simon 
Wiesenthal followed his creed of ``justice, not vengeance'' and oversaw 
the arrest, capture and conviction of many Nazi war criminals.
  Simon Wiesenthal was imprisoned at five German Condentration camps 
during the Nazi Holocaust, narrowly escaping execution on numerous 
occasions. After he was liberated, Mr. Wiesenthal went to work for the 
United States Army and began gathering information to be used in the 
Nazi war crimes trials. After the Nuremberg trials, while the 
governments of the United States and the Soviet Union were no longer 
interested in pursuing Nazi war criminals, Wiesenthal continued the 
charge to arrest and convict those responsible for the genocide of more 
than eleven million innocent people, including six million Jews and 89 
of Wiesenthal's personal relatives.
  Wiesenthal's most celebrated capture was that of Adolf Eichmann, one 
of Hitler's main engineers of his final solution. While Eichmann's wife 
claimed that he was dead, Wiesenthal was able to prove that the 
evidence for his death was insufficient. Wiesenthal then assisted 
Israeli efforts to track down Eichmann. Eventually, the war criminal 
was caught and executed thanks in large part to Wiesenthal's efforts.
  After the extremely high profile capture of Eichmann, Wiesenthal was 
able to gather enough support to continue in his efforts. He continued 
his mission and was able to secure the arrests and convictions of other 
important Nazis. His work led to the capture of Karl Silberbauer, a 
member of the German Gestapo who arrested Anne Frank. Silberbauer's 
confessions disproved the claims that The Diary of Anne Frank was a 
forgery. Wiesenthal was also instrumental in the capture and conviction 
of Franz Stangl who was in charge of running the Treblinka and Sobibor 
concentration camps. Wiesenthal also is credited with locating Hermine 
Braunsteiner-Ryan, a housewife living in New York who had supervised 
the murder of hundreds of children during the war.
  Simon Wiesenthal believed that it was his mission to ensure that the 
victims of the Holocaust were not forgotten and that the type of 
atrocities that occurred during the Second World War do not happen to 
anyone anywhere ever again. Personally, I was honored to have made his 
acquaintance and was humbled by his presence.
  Thanks to Simon Wiesenthal's lifelong dedication to the cause and 
organizations such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, neither he nor the 
victims of the Nazi atrocities will ever be forgotten. It is now our 
responsibility to continue the vision of Simon Wiesenthal. We can not 
allow the horror of what occurred at Auschwitz and Treblinka and the 
other concentration camps to be erased from our memory; we can not 
allow racism and hatred to fester to the point where genocide becomes 
an option; and we can not allow those who commit acts of genocide to 
walk away without having to answer for the horrific crimes they have 
committed. The world has lost a champion for compassion and humanity in 
the death of Simon Wiesenthal. May his memory always be a blessing unto 
all of us.

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