Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal is lionized – and rightfully so –in this documentary.
The film follows him from his life in a German concentration camp until his death in 2005.
It shows how relentless he was in tracking down war criminals and how scrupulous he was.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z8pW6dr_Fy4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]While many jumped on the anti-Kurt Waldheim bandwagon in the 1980s when Waldheim was seeking to be Austria’s president, Wiesenthal refused to implicate him. Wiesenthal did so because, even though Waldheim had been a Nazi soldier during the war, he had no evidence that Waldheim had committed war crimes.
This documentary, which was produced by Moriah Films, the Academy Award-winning media subdivision of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, also reveals when the Nazi hunter was wrong, like when he was convinced that Josef Menegele was still alive in South America even though he was widely believed to be dead. Mengele was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau known as the “Angel of Death” because of his human experiments on camp inmates.
Wiesenthal was also stubborn and refused to leave Austria even when his popularity decreased substantially and his daughter had to be escorted by police to school.
One person interviewed for the film claims that ad hoc war crimes tribunals like the ones for Yugoslavia and Rwanda exist in part because of the groundwork laid by Wiesenthal.
It’s been said many times before but needs to be repeated because there are those on the world stage who still claim otherwise: the Holocaust happened. The work of people like Wiesenthal to track down the perpetrators of genocide should be supported.
“I Have Never Forgotten You” is available for rent.
Murphy can be reached at: [email protected]
