Simon Wiesenthal.

Early in 1942, the Nazis formally decided on the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish problem". Kill them. Throughout Europe a terrifying plan was put into operation. In August 1942, My mother was sent to the Belzec death camp which almost killed me. I loved my mother very much. She was what inspired me to keep living and doing good. By September, most of mine and my wifes relatives were dead. Eighty-nine members of both families were tragically killed.

Because my wife's blonde hair, it gave her a chance of passing as an "Aryan,". I tried my hardest and made a deal with the Polish underground. In return for detailed charts of railroad junction points that I made, my wife was provided with false papers identifying her as "Irene Kowalska," a Pole , and spirited out of the camp in the autumn of 1942. She lived in Warsaw for two years and then worked in the Rhineland as a forced laborer, without her true identity ever being discovered.

With the help of the deputy director, I was able to escape the Ostbahn camp in October 1943, just before the Germans began liquidating all the inmates. In June 1944, I was recaptured and sent back to Janwska where I was nearly killed. If the German eastern front had not collapsed under the advancing Red Army, I would of been a goner. Knowing they would be sent into combat if they had no prisoners to justify their rear-echelon assignment, the SS guards at Janwska decided to keep the few remaining inmates alive. There were 34 prisoners out of an original 149,000. When Mauthausen was liberated by an American armored unit on May 5, 1945, I was barely alive. I was in agonizing pain.

As soon as I got better, I began gathering and preparing evidence on Nazi atrocities for the War Crimes Section of the United States Army. What the Nazi's were doing was totally wrong. I could not understand why they had so much hate. After the war, I worked for the Army's Office of Strategic Services and Counter-Intelligence Corps and was the of the Jewish Central Committee of the United States Zone of Austria. In 1945, me and my wife, were reunited, and in 1946, we had a beautiful daughter named Pauline.

The evidence supplied by Wiesenthal was utilized in the American zone war crime trials. When his association with the United States Army ended in 1947, Wiesenthal and thirty volunteers opened the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, for the purpose of assembling evidence for future trials. But, as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union intensified, both sides lost interest in prosecuting Germans, and Wiesenthal's volunteers, succumbing to frustration, drifted away to more ordinary pursuits. In 1954, the office in Linz was closed and its files were given to the Yad Vashem Archives in Israel, except for one - the dossier on Adolf Eichmann, the inconspicuous technocrat who, as chief of the Gestapo's Jewish Department, had supervised the implementation of the "Final Solution."

 I went on gaining and releasing evidence to put war-crime commiters away. My progressions and persaverence was encouraged by my mother. I did this for her. In 1967 I released a book of memoirs called "The Murderers Among Us". I now live in a simple apartment in Vienna and have little social life. I spend most of my evenings answering letters, studying books and files, and working on my stamp collection.

I have received numerous anonymous threats and insulting letters. In June 1982, a bomb went off at the front door of my house causing a great deal of damage. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Since then, my house and office have been guarded by an armed policeman. I have no regrets for what I have done. I am happy and I love it.