Krystyna: The Tragedy of the Polish Resistance

by Simon Wiesenthal

Meyrink's second, and most mystical, novel from 1916: this is the first time this Dedalus edition has been available in North America. Published in Germany to critical and commercial acclaim, it is set in Amsterdam, used as a symbol of European the city is ultimately destroyed. The Green Face has classic Meyrink * a mystical wedding * a galaxy of grotesque characters * the haunting atmosphere of the ghetto In an Amsterdam that very much resembles the Prague of The Golem, a stranger, Hauberisser, enters by chance a magician's shop. The name on the shop, he believes, is Chidher Green; inside, among several strange customers, he hears an old man, who says his name is Green, explain that, like the Wandering Jew, he has been on earth ""ever since the moon has been circling the heaven."" When Hauberisser catches sight of the old man's face, it makes him sick with horror, haunting him. The rest of the novel chronicles Hauberisser's quest for the elusive and horrible old man.

Genres: World War II

333 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Simon Wiesenthal, KBE, was an Austrian-Jewish architectural engineer and Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter who pursued Nazi war criminals in an effort to bring them to justice.

Following four and a half years in the German concentration camps such as Janowska, Plaszow, and Mauthausen during World War II, Wiesenthal dedicated most of his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazis so that they could be brought to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 1947, he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, in order to gather information for future war crime trials. Later he opened Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna. Wiesenthal wrote The Sunflower, which describes a life-changing event he experienced when he was in the camp.

A biography by Guy Walters asserts that many of Wiesenthal's claims regarding his education, wartime experiences and Nazi hunting exploits are false or exaggerated. Walters calls Wiesenthal’s claims "an illusion mounted for a good cause". It is difficult to establish a reliable narrative of Wiesenthal’s life due to the inconsistencies between his three memoirs which are in turn all contradicted by contemporary records. It is partly thanks to Wiesenthal that the Holocaust has been remembered and properly documented.

Wiesenthal died in his sleep at age 96 in Vienna on September 20, 2005, and was buried in the city of Herzliya in Israel on 23 September. He is survived by his daughter, Paulinka Kriesberg, and three grandchildren. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, located in Los Angeles in the United States, is named in his honor.