Razgovor:Simon Wiesenthal

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Simon Wiesenthal, KBE, (Buczacz, 31 prosinac 1908. – Beč, 20 rujan 2005.) bio je Austrijsko-Židovski inžinjer arhitekture koji je postao lovac na Naciste kada je preživjeo holokaust. Preživjevši četiri i pol godine u koncentracijskim logorima Janowska, Plaszow, and Mauthausen tokom Drugog Svijetskog Rata, Wiesenthal je posvetio najveći dio svog života traženju i skupljanju informacija o odbjeglim Nacistima da bi ih se dovelo pred lice pravde i sudilo za ratne zločine i zločine protiv čovječnosti. Centar Simon Wiesenthal u Los Angelesu (SAD) nosi njegovo ime da bi se odala počast njegovu radu. Wiesenthal je napisao roman "Suncokret" koji opisuje događaje iz logora koji su mu promijenili život.

[uredi] Early life and World War II

Wiesenthal je rođen kao Szymon Wiesenthal pola sata prije ponoći 31 prosinca 1908. u Buczaczu, gradiću u Ukrajinskoj Galiciji (tada dijelu Austro-ugarske, a sada dijelu Lvovske županije u Ukrajini) u Židovskoj, tgovačkoj obitalji. Imao je mirno djetinjstvo. U to vrijeme je njegov otac Asher Wiesenthal, izbjeglica iz carske Rusije postao jedan od najimućnijih građana Buczacz trgujući šećerom i drugim luksuznim potrebštinama.

Početkom Prvog Svijetskog Rata 1914. godine njegov otac je kao rezervni vojnik Austro-ugarske vojske mobiliziran i 1915. poginuo na Istočnom (Ruskom) frontu. Kad Rusi zauzimaju Galiciju Wiesenthal bježi s majkom i bratom u Beč (Austrija).

Wiesenthal i njegov brat pohađaju osnovnu školu u Beču do Ruskog povlačenja iz Galicije 1917. godine. Kad se vraća u Buczacz dolazi u iznimno nesigurnu regiju. U tom periodu taj dio Galicije "oslobađaju" razne nacije; od Kozaka, Austrijanaca, Ukrainaca, Poljaka i Sovjeta.

Na Humanističkoj gimnaziji koju pohađa tih godina upoznaje svoju buduću suprugu Cylu Muller, kojom se ženi 1936. godine. 1925. godine Simonova majka se ponovno udaje i seli na padine Karpata s njegovim bratom. Simon nastavlja školovanje u Buczacz, ali često posjećuje obitelj.

Završivši srednju školu godine 1927., pohađa Češki Tehnički Univerzitet u Pragu, gdje diplomira 1932. Kad ga odbiju primiti na Lvovski Politehnički Institut zbog Židovsk kvote, ograničenja broja Židovskih studenata. [1]

Tokom 1934. i 1935. Wiesenthal šegrtuje kao građevinski inžinjer u SSSR, boraveći kratko u Krakowu i Kievu, ali najveći dio tih dviju godina je proveo u Odesi, luci na Crnom moru.

Returning to Galicia at the end of his Russian apprenticeship, Wiesenthal was allowed to enter the Lwów University of Technology for the advanced degree that would allow him to practice architecture in Poland. The Poles were again in power, and Wiesenthal was again treated as a subordinate citizen. He opened his own architectural office in Lwów following his marriage, despite not having a Polish diploma in hand. He specialised in elegant villas, which wealthy Polish Jews were building despite the threats of Nazism to the west. His career spanned all of three years until he finished his final job a week before the German invasion, which began 1 September, 1939.

Wiesenthal was living in Lwów, (at the time a part of Poland, formerly Lemberg, now called Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine) when World War II began. As a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Lwów was occupied by the Soviet Union on 17 September 1939. Wiesenthal's stepfather and stepbrother were killed by agents of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, as a part of the anti-Polish repressions designed to eliminate all Polish intelligentsia. Wiesenthal was forced to close his firm and work in a factory. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941, Wiesenthal and his family were captured.

Wiesenthal survived an early wave of executions during the Holocaust thanks to the intervention of a man named Bodnar, a Ukrainian auxiliary policeman who, on 6 July 1941, saved him from execution by the Nazis then occupying Lwów, as recalled in Wiesenthal's memoir, The Murderers Among Us, written with Joseph Wechsberg. Wiesenthal and his wife were first imprisoned in the Janowska Street camp in the suburbs of the city, where they were forced to work on the local railroad.

In the ghetto, Wiesenthal’s mother was crammed among other Jewish women on to a freight train to the extermination camp of Belzec, where she perished in August 1942. Around the same time, Cyla Wiesenthal found out her mother had been shot back in Buczacz on her front porch by a Ukrainian policeman as she was being evicted from her home. Cyla and Simon Wiesenthal lost 89 relatives during the Holocaust.

Members of the Home Army, the underground Polish army, helped Cyla Wiesenthal escape from the camp and provided her with false papers in exchange for diagrams of railroad junctions drawn by her husband. Cyla Wiesenthal was able to hide her Jewish identity from the Nazis because of her blonde hair and survived the war as a forced-laborer in the Rhineland. Until the end of the war, Simon believed she had perished in the Warsaw Uprising. Following their surprising reunion, they quickly had their first and only child, Paulina, in 1946 (who now lives in Israel).

However, Simon Wiesenthal did not escape imprisonment so quickly. With the help of a deputy director of the camp he managed to escape from Janowska right before the Nazis executed the camp's inmates in October of 1943, and escaped into the Polish underground (for his expertise in engineering and architecture would help the Polish Partisans with bunkers and lines of fortification against German forces).

He was recaptured in June of the following year (1944) by Gestapo officers. After two failed suicide attempts, Wiesenthal and the 34 remaining Janowska prisoners were sent on a death march from camps in Poland (including Plaszow) and Germany to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. By the time he was liberated by American forces on May 5 1945, he had been imprisoned in 12 different concentration camps, including five death camps, and had narrowly escaped execution on a number of occasions.