Simon Wiesenthal

The Indianapolis Star

For six decades, Simon Wiesenthal served as a voice for justice, a tireless reminder of the horror and evil of the Holocaust.

Wiesenthal, who died Tuesday, lost 89 family members to the Nazis' assault on Europe and the Jewish people. He survived five death camps, weighing less than 100 pounds when liberated by American soldiers in May 1945 in Austria. He was 36 years old.

His life's work -- tracking down Nazi war criminals -- began soon afterward.

Wiesenthal is credited with helping bring more than 1,100 Nazis to justice. The most notorious: Adolf Eichmann, the SS chief who orchestrated the extermination of 6 million Jews and millions of other enemies of the Third Reich. In 1963, he found a former Gestapo officer named Karl Silberbauer, the man who sent 14-year-old Anne Frank and her family from their hiding place in an Amsterdam attic to the death camps.

Wiesenthal was a powerful and elegant voice against racism, prejudice and intolerance in all its forms. "The most important thing I have done is to fight against forgetting and to keep remembrance alive," he once told The Associated Press.

Simon Wiesenthal's role in a long and good fight has ended. The power of his witness remains.