Simon Wiesenthal addressing the UN in 1995
23 September 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor and Nazi war-crimes investigator, was laid to rest today in Israel.
Speaking at the service, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said Wiesenthal was the "conscience of the Holocaust."
"Few times in history do we have the opportunity to remember a man who spoke for the generations and not only for his neighbors, who labored and toiled, not only for those he knew, but for those he would never know, for those not yet born, to provide them with a safer world," Hier said.
Hundreds of dignitaries, Holocaust survivors, and others attended the funeral.
Wiesenthal was 96 years old when he died on 20 September in Vienna. He survived five Nazi concentration camps and seven other prisons.
Wiesenthal, who lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust, led efforts for more than 50 years to find those responsible for the Holocaust.
He helped bring more 1,100 Nazi criminals to justice, including Adolf Eichmann, a pivotal man behind the Nazi extermination campaign.
(Reuters/AFP/AP)
"Few times in history do we have the opportunity to remember a man who spoke for the generations and not only for his neighbors, who labored and toiled, not only for those he knew, but for those he would never know, for those not yet born, to provide them with a safer world," Hier said.
Hundreds of dignitaries, Holocaust survivors, and others attended the funeral.
Wiesenthal was 96 years old when he died on 20 September in Vienna. He survived five Nazi concentration camps and seven other prisons.
Wiesenthal, who lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust, led efforts for more than 50 years to find those responsible for the Holocaust.
He helped bring more 1,100 Nazi criminals to justice, including Adolf Eichmann, a pivotal man behind the Nazi extermination campaign.
(Reuters/AFP/AP)