History has produced many giants: adventurers like Magellan, philosophers like Spinoza, thinkers like Newton, soldiers like Washington. But most giants have an opportunity to choose their destinies. In fact, most giants seek out greatness, believing that they possess such a spark of brilliance that they deserve to be at the center of events. Not Simon Wiesenthal. He lived a life worthy of the giants, but he did not choose that life. It was imposed upon him by events completely beyond his control, events which will forever scar the 20th century, marking it as the century of social experiments gone horrifically wrong. They are events he endured, events which ought to have broken him but did not, events which stole away his life and replaced it with a purpose that governed the rest of his days. What Nazi could have imagined that one, anonymous Jew, subjected to the unmatched cruelties of their concentration camps, would some day come back to hunt them down and bring them under the force of the law.
Born in Austria, Wiesenthal's early life was shaped by war when World War I claimed the life of his father and forced Wiesenthal and his family to relocate to Vienna where, decades later, he would settle in his new life. But before he would cement himself as one of the greatest Nazi hunters, he spent the 1920s and 1930s between Poland and the Ukraine, helpless as the Nazis rose to power. Arrested in 1941, Wiesenthal was initially forced to work in a rail repair yard before escaping to aid the Polish resistance. But then in 1944, he was re-arrested by the Nazis and relocated to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Severely undernourished and with a wounded foot, Wiesenthal nonetheless survived the three months between his arrival and the American liberation of the camp, an event which marked the completion of his crucible.
Upon returning to Vienna and reuniting with his wife, Wiesenthal chose his destiny. Though his resources were at times pathetically scarce, he deployed the threat of the law to first acquire information concerning the whereabouts of Nazis who had fled Europe and then to badger various governments into acting upon his intelligence. A supporter of Israel, he was clearly appalled at the lack of appetite Western governments had for pursuing and prosecuting escaped Nazis. And so he shamed them by collating enough intelligence that he was able to play a significant role in the arrest of numerous high-profile targets, including, most famously, Adolf Eichmann. For decades, he went to work, every day, hearing the accounts of victims, collecting information, tracking targets, and using the statements of his victims to establish proof of guilt for those targets. In this, he devoted his life to the pursuit of justice, forsaking even the wishes of his wife to perform a remarkable service.
What must it be like to realize that ones life has been shattered, that one cannot go back to the way it was, that one has only a choice between forgetting, as so many governments wished to do, or immersing oneself so completely in the ugliness that one becomes the reposatory of remembrance, an instrument capable of forcing others to remember? Simon Wiesenthal surely had his own aspirations -- he clearly had a talent for architectural design --, but he shelved those dreams to commit himself to a path that would have been unnecessary but for European appeasement of Hitler's madness. It is a supreme act of self-sacrifice, but of course it did not come without its benefits: a sense of purpose, a sense of justice, and the knowledge that his enemies would never forget his name or their crimes. Mr. Segev does a wonderful job of conveying the complex life of Simon Wiesenthal. And though there will always be questions left inconveniently unanswered -- Wisenthal did have a complex and sometimes disappointing relationship with the truth --, the author has drawn as clear a portrait of this exceptional person as can be assembled by the available data. We watch Wiesenthal the boy become Wiesenthal the victim, only to resurrect himself as Wiesenthal the hunter, Wiesenthal the justice-maker, and then Wiesenthal the legend. It is a fascinating journey I will not soon forget. (4/5 Stars)
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