Nazi Hunter: The Wiesenthal File

by Alan Levy

This is the remarkable story of a man who has become a legend in his own lifetime. Simon Wiesenthal spent four and a half years in Mauthausen concentration camp during the Second World War. With the exception of his wife, all his immediate family were exterminated, and he himself ended the war a living skeleton. Since then, he has achieved international renown for his tireless tracking down of Nazi war criminals—including his capture of Eichmann, the “desk murderer” who masterminded Hitler’s Final Solution, and Stangl the overlord of Treblinka—and for his pursuit of Mengele of Auschwitz, the dreaded “Angel of Death.” To this day his work continues, his motivation simply expressed in the “Justice, not vengeance.” The accounts of inspired detective work that lie behind Wiesenthal’s successful apprehension of the fugitives reads as excitingly as any thriller, but Alan Levy’s book is much more than that. It is an award-winning examination of the work of one of the greatest Jewish figures of the twentieth century. 8 pages of black-and-white photographs bring to life this gripping account of the life-long pursuit of justice by the man who declared “So long as the criminals are free, the war has not ended for me.” “Wiesenthal has played his part in a disturbing episode of post-war history. [A] readable and intelligent book.”—The Times (London)

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Holocaust, World War II, True Crime, Israel

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Meirav Rath · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Levy I found one of those rare writers which aught to be singled out and preserved; an objective historian. At first I thought this book was a slanted, over-praising Americanized description of Weisenthal and his works, but that was onyl the chapter about Simon's early life and thus told in Simon's style. Later, the book reveals Simon truly; warts and all and it's a brilliant book.
Personally, I find the constant footnotes about every city and every country mentioned in the book a bit tedious and distracted, but for an ignorant who knows nothing of Europe and events of the holocaust, these footnotes are a must. One thing I can saw, however, is that the constant notes to translate meters to miles and currencies to dollars is annoying and aggravating; sell a for-Americans copy in the US and sell a sane copy abroad, where we don't give a damn.
But this is a wonderful, interesting and captivating book and I highly recommend it!

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

One who is less than half aware of the history of the times might take up this book with a vague notion that it was about the life and persona of a man famous for hunting down some of the criminals against humanity who had managed to hide from justice for years, indeed, for decades, until his efforts caught up with them. And the book does begin with a chapter about him and his personal history, as a part of the larger scape that his time and place were deeply involved in, with all the resulting finesses to do with the role of Austria and Austrians in the nazi movement, the anschluss, the holocaust and aftermath. But really the book has a much larger canvas, which is that of the major parts of the work of the man in his untiring and often solitary on going war for justice in hunting the criminals down. And so the subsequent chapters methodically deal with some of the prominent nazis he managed to hunt down.

But the surprising part is, despite the horror and disgust evoked by each of the said criminals, and they are indeed horrendous, with names involved being Eichmann, Mengele, Stangl and likes of them - it's the three or so chapters that deal with the question of Kurt Waldheim that grip one, and not only because he was head of U.N. and subsequently the president of Austria, but more so because, it's someone famous for various reasons but mostly because the world is still unclear in this respectabout whether he indeed was a war criminal, the lack of clarity being as much due to lack of decisive evidence still to be found against him, as for Waldheim's seemingly permanent policy of evasions until caught and then a verbose evasion until caught, on and on.

At the very beginning, of course, there is a chapter describing his background - his being born, life in Poland that had shifting birders what with this or that neighbour occupying a part here or there, his education, and disruption of life that was brought by WWII and German occupation followed by ghetto life and concentration camps, his surviving it and miraculously meeting his wife who had equally miraculously survived as well, and the beginning of the life that he led thereafter, not as the architect he had qualified as but a seeker of justice for the victims of holocaust. As the author describes his umpteenth meeting with him, this one after Wiesenthal was ninety and had curtailed his travels,

" Our conversation about the seamy side of Bohemian life only served to make a mellow Wiesenthal wax nostalgic for his student years in Prague (1928–32):

‘Those four years were the best time of my young life. I came from Poland after being ‘liberated’ too many times by Cossacks and Ukrainians, Russians, Poles and Austrians – all at odds with each other, but all anti-Semites. The Czechs, on the other hand, were always fair to Jews; the Slovaks weren’t. Only in Prague was I ever forgetting that I was a Jew."
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Quoting from the book,

""All too often in this part of the world, fear of one lie gives birth to another lie, in the foolish hope that by protecting ourselves from the first lie we will be protected from lies in general. But a lie can never protect us from a lie. Those who falsify history do not protect the freedom of a nation but rather constitute a threat to it. The idea that a person can rewrite his autobiography is one of the traditional self-deceptions of Central Europe. Trying to do that means hurting oneself and one’s fellow countrymen. When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete."

– Czech (then Czechoslovak) President Václav Havel at the opening of the Salzburg Festival in Austria after he was introduced by President Kurt Waldheim on 26 July 1990 (translated from the Czech by Káča Poláčková-Henley)."

"No Nobel for Simon Wiesenthal makes him no less noble. Rabbi Hier of the Wiesenthal Centre puts it most eloquently:

‘Simon, to his credit, doesn’t have to apologize to anyone for what he’s done with his life. Without Simon Wiesenthal, the subject of the Holocaust would not really receive serious attention anywhere in the world. Let’s also state for the record that, although the popular writers on the Holocaust began writing in the sixties – that’s when Elie Wiesel first started getting published, too – there was still a big period of time between 1945 and the early sixties: a crucial period when there was the greatest pressure to forget. But if there was one person who kept it alive, that was Simon Wiesenthal. So this is all to his credit that nobody can take away from him. Without him, all this that we’re talking about in America, the mere fact that there would be in Washington a President’s Council, a Commission on the Holocaust headed by Elie Wiesel, would have been an impossibility, because the subject would have been forgotten. Simon was a stubborn man who kept it alive through the worst of times.’

When Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, Simon Wiesenthal did not rejoice at this recognition of Holocaust remembrance, for no love has been lost between these two titans of survivorship. Though Wiesel once came to Wiesenthal’s rescue as a fund-raiser when his Viennese bank collapsed in 1974, Simon says that Wiesel later opposed his poaching on his turf when the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies was built in Los Angeles three years later. One bone of contention was Simon’s insistence that the Wiesenthal Centre, despite being a division of Yeshiva University, should take a non-sectarian approach to the Holocaust:

‘I was for over four years in different camps with people from fifteen nations: Jews, Gentiles, gypsies, communists. Through this experience, my view on the Holocaust and the whole problem of Nazism is a lot different from Elie Wiesel, who was only six months in camps and only with Jews. For me was the Holocaust not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy. After the war, when I saw that the Jews were talking only about the tragedy of six million Jews, I sent letters to Jewish organizations asking them to talk also about the millions of others who were persecuted with us together – many of them only because they helped Jews. This made me unpopular with Jewish organizations – and, when the Wiesenthal Centre happened, I became a danger to them. Elie Wiesel wrote that what I was doing was “a diminution” of the tragedy. But he and they are the diminishers, for it is they who reduced the whole tragedy to a problem between Nazis and Jews instead of a crime against humanity. ‘I know I am not only the bad conscience of the Nazis.

I am also the bad conscience of the Jews. Because what I have taken up as my duty was everybody’s duty.’"

Needless to say, a must read.
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Some interesting insights are in the earliest part, one with Simon Wiesenthal telling the author about his work, life and more:-

"I am tired, too. I cannot teach my work to other people. There is nobody to succeed me, nobody left who is much younger, who would have my experience or could find out all that I carry in my head. But I will never retire . . . If I ever close my Centre here, I will have nothing to do but wait for my death. Besides, there are others waiting, too. For if I closed my office, it would be a Nazi holiday and a Jewish defeat – a defeat for humanity, a defeat for justice, too. And, believe me, the “heroes” will celebrate it as a victory – and they will begin again that much sooner.’

He denied he was ‘some kind of modern Don Quixote or Jewish James Bond.

'Yes, my work is an adventure, but there are no romantics about it. You could make thriller after thriller out of my files, but I am not like James Bond because the results are not immediate; they can come in years, they may take generations. And Don Quixote I am not. Yes, many times I am fighting against imagination or a world that doesn’t understand, but my fight is not without results.’

On his way out, he confided: ‘I will tell you a secret. For a man who was in a ghetto and in concentration camps and lost all his blood relatives, my biggest personal satisfaction is not in having a Nazi arrested. It comes when two Nazis have a quarrel and one threatens the other with “I will go to Simon Wiesenthal about you.” And he does! They are my best informers.’"
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And this, following, is a couple of valuable gems, hidden from most:-

"In Albert Speer’s later years, Hitler’s master builder and diarist of Nazi times had struck up what could not be called a friendship, but a research relationship with Wiesenthal.

So Simon didn’t hesitate to try out his theory on Speer, whose reply came from Heidelberg in an elegant envelope with an ‘A.S.’ monogram and no return address:

'I can’t answer your question completely. Hitler in my presence never spoke of a syphilitic disease, though this does not mean he might not have had one some time earlier. What I can tell you is that his private doctor, Theo Morrell, used to hang his shingle on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin as ‘Specialist in Skin and Venereal Diseases’. From the moment he became the chief official physician of Hitler in 1936, however, that listing of his specialty disappeared.'

This intrigued Wiesenthal, who told me: ‘I am working on it in my spare time. If I can find a solution in another five or ten years, I would be very happy because this would give the whole story of Hitler and the Jews a different picture.’

‘But where do the Jews enter that picture?’ I asked him."

"When I met him, Wiesenthal’s research had brought him in contact with an expatriate physician, Edmund Ronald, then living in Portugal.

In the early 1950s, while working in a Seattle hospital, Dr Ronald had met a young Austrian doctor from Graz who said his late father, also a doctor, had treated Hitler for syphilis long ago. After Austria had been annexed by Germany in 1938, Gestapo agents had confiscated all of his father’s files on that particular patient, but the father had informed his son that Hitler told him he’d caught the disease from a Jewish prostitute before World War I. Though Dr Ronald gave Wiesenthal the name of his source, the young doctor from Graz later settled in the US and has not proved traceable. In 1977, there was a medical debate over whether Hitler was sterile or impotent and Dr Ronald wrote from Bordighera, Italy, to the International Herald Tribune that

'Hitler was rather unlucky in his sexual affairs. He caught – according to Dr Anwyl-Davies, the eminent London venereologist – syphilis from a Jewish prostitute in Vienna in 1910 and had to have anti-syphilitic treatment on and off for the next twenty years and it is not certain that he [was] ever completely cured.'

Dr Ronald, who subsequently died, went on to note that Hitler’s love affair with his Viennese niece, Angela ‘Geli’ Raubal, ended with her unexplained suicide in 1931 at the age of twenty-three.

Wiesenthal suspects she killed herself after her uncle infected her with syphilis. Wiesenthal’s work on Christopher Columbus had been more concentrated and productive. ‘In my research on anti-Semitism throughout history,’ he explained, ‘when I concentrated on the Spanish Inquisition, I discovered an amazing coincidence. The two most important events of 1492 – both of which determined the entire future of Spanish history and much of world history – were the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the discovery of America. All Jews had to be off Spanish soil by midnight of August second.

‘Now Columbus didn’t sail for “India”, as they called all of Asia in those days, until August third, as scheduled. But his sailors had orders to report on the night of the second. This was not customary: a sailor’s last night in port was sacred to him and was usually spent with his family or girlfriend before he came on board next day. I asked myself why.

‘The tides weren’t right for an earlier departure. And why did Columbus personally supervise the roll-call? So I began to look at the roll he called. One tenth of his crew was Jews; some of them, I learned later, may have been rabbis. But, even though nine-tenths of the crew wasn’t Jewish, there was no priest aboard. Very unusual at sea!

‘Then I am looking into the financing of his voyage. This business of Queen Isabella hocking her jewels to pay for it is all legend. With the help of Marrano ministers of hers, the mission was entirely financed by Jewish money.’ A Marrano (from the Spanish word for ‘pig’ or ‘damned’) was a Jew who, in Wiesenthal’s words, ‘outwardly pretended to be a Christian, but secretly remained a Jew’, while a Converso was ‘a convert who broke off all relations with Jews and assimilated’. Both were suspect. It had been the discovery of Marranos partaking of a Passover seder in 1478 that led to the creation of the Spanish Inquisition, which used the rack, the pyre, the wheel, branding-irons and blinding-rods as well as bizarre pure-blood laws (direct ancestors of Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws of racial purity) to get to the very bottom of a victim’s religious beliefs.

‘I began to ask myself,’ Simon went on, ‘why the Jews financed Columbus when all others had refused for years. Who was he and what did the Jews want from him?’

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506), an Italian mariner known to Spaniards as Christóbal Colón, came from a family of ‘Spanish Jews settled in Genoa’, according to his contemporary biographer, Salvadore de Madariaga, who believes the Colóns converted to Christianity during Spanish persecutions in the fourteenth century. Around 1479, Columbus married a Portuguese noblewoman of Marrano descent. After some preliminary study, Wiesenthal went to Spain to examine materials preserved in the Biblioteca Columbina (Columbus Library) in Seville. In the archives, Simon found a dozen intimate letters from Columbus to his son, Diego. All of them bore not just the obligatory cross at the top, but also a strange boat-like symbol in the upper left-hand corner.

With the help of an American Jewish scholar named Maurice David, Wiesenthal deciphered it as two Hebrew characters, beth and hei, standing for baruch hashem, meaning Praised be the Lord. It was, Wiesenthal thinks, Columbus’s way of reminding his son: ‘Do not forget where you come from. The cross is a tribute to the religion you now follow, but within the circle of your family give the sign beth hei, so that they remember their origins.’ In one of the letters, Wiesenthal adds, he discussed with Diego the possibility of marriage to a Marrano.

‘I spent a lot of time in Seville,’ Wiesenthal went on. ‘I had in my hands all his writings that have survived – not just letters, but books he had read, with his jottings in the margins, and books he valued enough to have copied for himself at his own expense: usually by hand, because this was very soon after Gutenberg.4 Now why would you imagine that a Christian sailor five hundred years ago would make a copy of a work by Rabbi Samuel Jehudi urging Jews to accept conversion, even forced baptism? There were just too many coincidences.

‘In all, I find two hundred and fifty references by Columbus to Jews. He knew the Jewish calendar, the Jewish prophets, and his diary showed a deep knowledge of Jewish history. The beliefs of Columbus were a mixture of Christianity and Judaism. In a book of history by Pope Pius the Second, he makes a marginal note that the year 1481’s Jewish equivalent was 5241. He writes that Adam lived to be one hundred fifty years old and, when he tells how the Second Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in the year Seventy by the Romans, he calls it Casa secunda, the Second House. Only Jews use that phrase; in no non-Jewish publication have I ever met this idiom, Second House.

‘But the most important marginal note I find is the one that tells me Columbus knows the diary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, who travelled in the east three centuries before him and came to the conclusion that the ten lost tribes of Israel were in “India”. I have this book in my own library. So now I go back to the register of the crew and look a little closer. Not only are there a number of Jewish names, but later I learn that several in Columbus’s crew spoke Hebrew and a couple of them may have been rabbis. And who was the interpreter on board? Luis de Torres, who had been interpreter for the Governor of Murcia, which had a large Jewish population. It took me two weeks to confirm that Luis de Torres had been the governor’s interpreter of Hebrew. Now the only possible explanation of this is that Columbus expected to reach countries in which Jews lived and governed.’

From research on Columbus that began around 1965, Wiesenthal was convinced ‘that the Jews, concerned about their deteriorating situation in Spain,5 were looking for a homeland, a place to flee to, where they would find a protector. And so, in the belief that the ten lost tribes had found refuge in “India”, they financed the expedition of Columbus: a man they could trust.’ Simon says Columbus was surely a Converso and quite likely a Marrano: ‘I am convinced he was following the Law of Moses. But I’m not saying to the bitter end that I’m sure he’s Jewish. I make the matter open.’

Still, when Simon wrote a book-length manuscript that became Sails of Hope: the Secret Mission of Christopher Columbus, he hesitated to offer it to publishers because ‘I feel when I give out that Columbus had a Hebrew interpreter, people will think I am absolutely crazy or else some Jewish fanatic. So I cannot publish the book. But then I have an idea. I was invited to lecture in Lisbon, so I am going to the Royal Library there and looking on the documents of Vasco da Gama, who was also looking for a way to India and really found it.6 He had also an interpreter for the Hebrew language. When I saw this, now I should publish.’

When Wiesenthal’s French literary agent, Charles Ronsac, sold Sails of Hope to six European publishers and Macmillan in America (1973), an editor in the New York office objected facetiously: ‘The Italian Mafia will kill us!’ and Wiesenthal said: ‘After this book is published, all Jews will have three holidays: Rosh Hashonah, Yom Kippur, and Columbus Day.’

Actually, the only problem came in Spain, where a Wiesenthal reference to three Franco families who sailed to the New World in 1510 was punctuated with: ‘Franco was a common Jewish name in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.’ This did not sit well with the fascist dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892–1975) and Sails of Hope was banned in Spain. Wiesenthal says the reference was no accident and was, in fact, his way of thanking Franco for his reluctance to repatriate Jewish refugees who escaped to Spain during the war.

During my dialogues with Wiesenthal, I wondered what the Hebrew interpreter Luis de Torres, who was the first member of the expedition to set foot in the New World, might have said to the ‘Indians’ when the Pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria landed in the Bahamas on 12 October 1492: ‘Did he address them in Hebrew?’

‘That I don’t know,’ Simon said, adding deadpan, ‘But I can tell you what the Indians said back to the white man: “Now begins the tsuris.”’"

[Rebekah Mui · Rating 5 out of 5]

In comparison to this book, the Wiesenthal exhibit at the Wiens Jewish museum feels like it glosses over far too many details. Levy's biography attempts to paint a character-driven picture of Simon Wiesenthal, his remarkable life and his painstaking, tireless and often thankless pursuit of justice. It is quite a voluminous paperback, but the narrative is well-paced.

[P.S. Winn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samuel Wiesenthal spent over 4 years in a concentration camp. Surviving that, he made finding the criminals who committed the atrocities his life work. This is a great story of the war, and overcoming heart break, personal horror and doing good despite what happened.

[lcee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was completely enthralled by this - walking down the street and reading at the same time kind of enthralled. Levy doesn't shy away from the inherent contradictions of the people that are his subject. Simon Weisenthal is heroic and wise and vain and closed-minded by turns. The Nazis he hunts are good fathers and neighbours and, when the situation arises, genocidists. It only falters, ever so slightly, in the last section when the hunt for war criminals starts to get lost in the loops and turns of European politics in the 1980s. I highly reccommend it, though its subject makes it a not entirely easy read.

[Anthony Lipmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given this book about ten years ago by my Polish cleaner's 23 year old son. He was a lovely sensitive man from a poor Polish background whose mother had fled to England to escape his alcoholic father. I think I might have been one of the first people of Jewish origin he had met with whom he could raise these subjects. This book had assisted his knowledge of his own country's role in the Second World War and he wanted to share it with me in a gesture of understanding.

It's been at least 20 years on the shelf; but every book has its time. What led me back to this subject was perhaps my mother's forthcoming 100th birthday (June 2024). Born in Vienna, survivor of the Leopoldstadt Ghetto, Teresin, Auschwitz, Belsen, she was liberated in April 1945 from the Salzwedel munitions factory.

I had been reading family letters from July and September 1939 written to my aunt in London. The letters are made more poignant because we know what was to happen. At this point all three - Bobby (my grandfather), his wife Lily, and my mother Evelyn - write in sequence on the same piece of paper.

I had never seen my grandfather's handwriting before and he was writing in very slightly broken English for the censor. He was a gifted lawyer who had become a chemist to take over the family varnish business in Stuttgart when my grandfather had died on the the same day my mother was born.

Now with the walls closing in, he was telling my aunt they would make a great team as butler and maids in an English household. As others had, his dream was to find emigration as a domestic servant. In fact he never made it beyond Auschwitz but mum and my grandmother did the full tour. That's not for here; but what is, is to hear in the story of Simon Wiesenthal as related to and narrated by Alan Levy and why his life's work and testimony is so important when many of those survived could do nothing other than attempt to bury the past. Instead, Wiesenthal he took on the world of Nazis who attempted to slink back into society as if nothing had happened. And he does this all from the heart of Vienna, the town that had been the centre of Nazism. The story relates how Wiesenthal was in the early post war years a lone and persistent voice to bring individual mass killers to justice by the meticulous collection of evidence.

Levy's narration of Wiesenthal's survival of four years in the camps sets the scene, before we hear the astonishing story of how he and his wife, each assuming the other to be dead, are by luck brought them together again.

The story is centred on his detective work in pursuit of Eichmann and Mengele, and finally the exposition of Kurt Waldheim's attempt to hide his past . Most important to Wiesenthal is justice not vengeance - in contrast to the more extreme Jewish organizations such as the self-appointed voice for Jews, the World Jewish Congress, content with a much lower level of evidence. It is a life-affirming story of one man's moral crusade for justice. This is not a story in which only Nazis are criminals and Jews victims. Wiesenthal saw far too much not to mention many examples of the collaboration of Jews in their own annihilation, for which telling Zionists hated him, and nor does Levy or Wiesenthal leave out the suffering of Gypsy communities, and all other minorities from the story.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Due to the vast reach of the war it is understandable that there will be people that slip through the cracks of history. Unless, you belonged to a group or country that was directly affected by actions of the war. That is not the case for me.
Simon Wiesenthal is one of those people who has slipped through the cracks as time has gone on. At least for me. As I learned from the 1950s through to the 1980s he had a more prominent presence. But as it happens people grow older and history books change.
As far as I can recall I have not heard about nor read anything about Wiesenthal before this book. Given that people are a bit divided about him and what work he did after the war it is understandable. Plus, the end of the war brought on new times for the world and in some cases people just tried to forget.
Despite that, I believe that that he should be included or at least talked about more. Especially, because there are few people who have brought around 1,000 Nazi war criminals to some form of justice. And on top of that he not only lost 80 members of his family but he survived not just one concentration camp but four. And through some miracle after the war he managed to find his wife that he thought was dead.
It was his experiences and pain that made him want to bring Nazi criminals to justice and not let them escape into the woodwork until the world forgot. He also didn’t want people to forget what had happened. So, as an independent person of justice he set about gathering as much information as he could about Nazi’s throughout all levels and building cases against them. I was amazed throughout most of the book about the lengths that had to be taken to bring some of these people to justice. And it wasn’t quick as this was far before the time of the internet. With misinformation, lack of funds and a hundred other things some criminals like Mengele escaped the grasp of justice for decades. But he overcame these challenges to succeed where others had failed or given up.
Levy shares interviews that he had with not only Wiesenthal but other people who were entangled in the attempts to find war criminals which I found interesting as well.
Levy also talks about the heroic and brassy Swedish hero, Raoul Wallenberg. He literally disappeared from the face of the earth, thanks to the Red Army, while saving countless Jews from death.
Despite that… I felt burnt out a little over halfway through the book. I’m not sure if it was from information overload or if it went on for too long. Some of the chapters about the people of interest offered quite the insight as to who these Nazi’s were but it felt like it dragged on in some cases which is a shame.
To wrap this insight up, I would say that this book is worth a read. It may not be the most interesting read but learning about Wiesenthal and the contributions that he made to help bring justice and peace for victims and survivors is in my opinion worth it.

[Anne Vandenbrink · Rating 4 out of 5]

From 1945 to the mid 1960s there was great pressure to forget about the holocaust. But Simon Wiesenthal, having spent 4 years in 5 different concentration camps and having over 80 relatives die could not forget. He spent his life hunting down Nazi criminals and was involved in the prosecution of hundreds. He was criticized, sometimes he was off track because of misinformation given to him. At times, the book a bit tedious and overly detailed but fascinating nonetheless.

[Robert Banovský · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given the fact Wiesenthal's life was connected to Czechoslovakia and Levy lived in Prague, I don't get why this book wasn't translated to Czech. Awesome book about hunting nazi war crimminals after WW2. Some of these investigations are connected with Wiesenthal, some less so (Mengele). Account of Wiesenthal's life is also very thorough and entertaining.

[David Thrale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wiesenthal is a complex man driven - not broken - by his appalling mistreatment in the death camps. This book describes his life warts and all. The unending life's work he put into bringing evil people to justice is an inspiration. May his memory be a blessing.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting and informative read. Incredible research. Glad I finally decided to read some each day.

[dorothy cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent summary of the life of Wiesental. Heartbreaking in places.
I am very interested in the Holocaust and learned a lot from this book.
Well worth a read.

[Lance Holter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Timely read for what is happening in America today. Autocrats and ICE goons manifesting Fascism in America as we speak.

[Jay Harrold · Rating 4 out of 5]

546 pages of horror, and hope.

[Frederik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le roman sur le chasseur de nazi numéro 1, Simon Wiesenthal, se lit comme un polar de haute gamme.

Mais c’est l’histoire d’un jeune diplomate noble, Raoul Wallenberg, envoyé en Hongrie par le gouvernement suédois, qui est le plus intéressant. Wallenberg, héritier d’une grande famille aristocrate, timide, moitié chauve, pas beaucoup plus que 30 ans, réussit en deux mois en 1944 á sauver la vie de plus de 10.000 juifs á Budapest en leur procurant des passeports suédois. Et après. La disparation en janvier 1945 quand les russes arrivent á Budapest. Les russes lui prennent pour un espion puisque Wallenberg maitrise leur langue. Donc forcément, il doit être un espion. Perdu dans le système chaotique des prisons soviétiques. Jamais retrouvé. Quel destin.

Mais non, les russes ne font pas d’excuses, parce qu’un système totalitaire ne fait jamais d’erreur. Wiesenthal explique :“The Soviet Union, like every dictatorship, never recognized a mistake. In all history, no dictatorship never did. And nothing has really changed from Stalin to a later regime. So long as they stay a dictatorship, even with Gorbachev, there can be no lasting change. Once they make a statement that is false, even when they know it is false, they stick with it. This is the real philosophy of any dictatorship.”

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Levy first met Wiesenthal in 1974. Over the next 28 years they met frequently to discuss Wiesenthal’s work and that of his document centres. The first edition of Levy’s biography was published in 1993 and subsequently revised nine years later. It is a sympathetic account of Wiesenthal’s life and work, but importantly it is fair in its treatment setting out both sides of his various political battles with other Nazi hunters, politicians and institutions and also critiquing his thoughts and actions where merited. Levy’s account highlights both Wiesenthal’s compassion and humanist stance, but also his contradictions and ego. Rather than map out in chronological detail Wiesenthal’s life, Levy’s strategy is focus on key events and strands to highlight what made and drove the man. The portrait created reveals Wiesenthal to be a quite clearly a complex person, one who experienced a varied life that was full of personal tussles and conflict throughout. While the book provides a fascinating read, the strategy taken does leave plenty of gaps, most notably around his family and his dealings with and feelings about Israel. Filling them however would have led to a very long narrative. Overall, an interesting book that details the work of a fascinating man and the crimes for which he sought justice.

[Audra Murzycki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This thrilling work reads like fiction as it takes the reader deep into the terrifying and purposeful life of Simon Wiesenthal, the respected and feared Nazi Hunter. It is divided into seven section, beginning with Wiesenthal's early life of constant military takeovers and into his journey of survival at multiple concentration camps throughout WWII. The four following sections are devoted to the impressive hunt, capture, and sentencing of both little-known and notorious Nazis. The author's passion for his subject shines through, though at times he is long-winded where seemingly unnecessary and the post-Nazi sections do not hold the same interest, as is understandable. I give this book my highest recommendation, though I warn readers that it may insight both tears and nightmares. (Warning: Graphic violence including toward children.)

[Kevin Tarner · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Nazi Hunter: The Wiesenthal File" by Alan Levy is a gripping and insightful exploration into the relentless pursuit of justice by Nazi war criminal hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Levy's narrative skillfully captures the intensity and determination of Wiesenthal's quest to bring perpetrators of atrocities to account, offering readers a fascinating glimpse into this dark chapter of history. As someone deeply invested in seeing justice served, it's both gratifying and sobering to witness the dedication and courage of individuals like Wiesenthal in the face of such heinous crimes. "Nazi Hunter" is not only a compelling read but also a powerful reminder of the importance of holding accountable those responsible for acts of inhumanity. For its compelling storytelling and profound subject matter, I wholeheartedly give it a well-deserved 5/5 stars.

[Garion Bracken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite a comprehensive anal of his career or life. But an introductory biography on a man who would seem to have been very important. As it was put in the book he didn't match the strength of what became popular organizations in the 60's and 70's, nor did he have the developed skill and tact early after the war to make his personal struggle as effectual s it would become. But he did keep going. He never stopped. He devoted his life to it and because he maintained momentum the holocaust victims were never forgotten and retribution was allowed to take place. There is some interesting political history in here. I don't know enough about Levy to talk about the possible bias here either way, but it is an emmotive topic.

[Sandhya Bhatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

not for the faint-hearted.. an unbelievable narration about the life of an extraordinary man and a chapter of history that unfortunately our generation doesn't know or has conveniently forgotten. this is story of the struggle of human spirit against one of the most ruthless dictators of the world and the incompetent bureaucracy that followed him.. reading this book will give you shivers, moments of absolute incognizance, terror filled hours sprinkled with hope for humanity and yes, loss of appetite for days. most important this book will give you perspective. so if you would like a break from the world of fiction and drama, read this and keep in touch with the extremely horrifying reality.

[Somerset Bloke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. The first half details his time during the war, managing to survive his time in the concentration camps. The second half covers his time post-war tracking down the Nazis that got away.

Without wishing to dismiss the second half I found the first half to be one of the most thrilling stories I have ever read. This should be made into a film (if it already has then please tell me what it is called).

A must read for anyone interested in WW2.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a few things.

I had never heard of Raoul Wallenberg before, a man who risked his life many times during the war freeing Jews from Nazi captivity, only to be captured by the Soviets and to spend the rest of his own life in the gulag.

There is quite a bit here about Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General of the UN and then president of Austria despite accusations of Nazi war crimes. He hurt his own case quite a bit by being secretive about his 1942-45 service in Yugoslavia.

A fascinating read.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Important book and definitely worth the read. Provides a rather extensive history on the "Final Solution" and tracking down Nazis who perpetuated said solution, but towards the end there was so much politics and different names that it was somewhat difficult to keep track of what was going on.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book about Wiesenthal's hunt for escaped Nazi criminals during 40 years after WWII.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very good.

[Alex Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

good flowed well

[Arthur Sperry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book which I am glad that I finally had time to read. The persistence and determination Wiesenthal showed in tracking and finding so many war criminals is admirable.

[Magdalena]

I loved the book and ready to read more on Wiesenthal's books.

[Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Objective, compelling history

[Gerard Niroshan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew Hitler was a horrible person, but this book made me realize it