Simon Wiesenthal

A graduate of the Czech Technical University in Prague, Simon Wiesenthal was an architect in the city of Lvov in the Ukraine when World War II broke out; due to the non-aggression treaty with Nazi Germany, the Russians forced Wiesenthal, as with other Jews, from his livelihood; he was working as a mechanic in a bedspring factory when he was imprisoned in a labor camp working on a railroad for the duration of the war. He had smuggled his wife, a blonde who could pass for Polish, to safety through the underground, but both thought the other had died during the war. At various times during his captivity, he contemplated suicide rather than face torture; however, he made a wager with an SS Corporal who bet him that no one would ever believe the truth of what had gone on in the concentration camps. Wiesenthal had his purpose in life - to survive and bring the truth of the horrors of the Holocaust to the public at large, as well as bringing the perpetrators of those atrocities to justice. Af