7 Decades of Justice -- Simon Wiesenthal

For your benefit, learn from our tragedy. It is not a written law that the next victims must be Jews. It can also be other people. We saw it begin in Germany with Jews, but people from more than twenty other nations were also murdered. When I started this work, I said to myself, 'I will look for the murderers of all the victims, not only the Jewish victims. I will fight for justice.'(Quoted in an interview in Penthouse Magazine, 1983)

Could any of us even possibly imagine having seven-dozen of our most loved relatives rounded up from all over the country and then have them worked, starved, and tortured to death. This group would include your parents, maybe your children, your aunts, uncles, and brothers and sisters, even your grandparents if you're lucky enough to still have them. To make it even worse, many of your most beloved friends and acquaintances would also suffer the very same fate.

Then, imagine this DID happen to you; and starting tomorrow you would begin a systematic and relentless sixty-year quest to bring those who had perpertrated this injustice upon you and your loved ones to face their own judgement. Your jurisdictions would know no bounds, your pain would have no solace; still you would perservere doggedly on every continent where ever the murderers might hide. The difference being, you would offer those accused of this hatred justice. Justice based on democratic laws that are subject to both appeals and public review; not the justice that was so indiscriminately meted out to the millions of innocents. This is of course would be in stark contrast to the summary judgements your seven-dozen loved ones not to mention hundreds of friends had received.

If you can even begin to imagine such a horror then you would know the life that Simon Wiesenthal has led. He died last night at 96. In his brutal early life he saw exactly these horrors and many more, yet he perservered to personally bring to justice over 1100 Nazi's in hiding for genocide and crimes against humanity. His relentless spirit of justice was motivated by his desire to give a voice to those who would never speak again, and to make sure the world did not forget the evil that men do. In a world short of true heroes and saints Simon Wiesenthal stood tall. Mr. Wiesenthal lost 89 members of his family and lived the remainder of his remarkably long life seeking the justice for those oppressors which they themselves denied to every single member of his family and community. This is a true hero.