Overview
- Interview Summary
- Simon Wiesenthal describes his views on the hesitation of survivors to tell their experiences to their children; encountering the same anxieties in WWII German officers years after the war; explaining to his own daughter, who was the only Jewish child in her school, about why they had no extended family; his liberation from Mauthausen and realizing that their justice could be sought after the war; beginning his organization (Jewish Documentation Centre); their war criminal investigations becoming more organized after Eichmann's capture; how many war criminals fled to Argentina and other countries; the Israeli view of Holocaust survivors in the early 1960s; the psychological reasoning for resistance and the difficulty of leaving family to join the resistance; his feeling as a Nazi hunter that he prevented the same propaganda from spreading; the left and right Fascism today; how at the time of the interview 1100 Nazi criminals have been brought to justice and they’re working on 300 more cases; believing he located Mengele and missed him by 80 minutes; his wife, who lives in Italy, and his son, who lives in Vienna, Austria; and a female camp commandant, Braunsteiner, who was arrested in Queens after a 9 year search.
- Interviewee
- Simon Wiesenthal
- Date
-
interview:
1975 May 12
Physical Details
- Language
- German
- Extent
-
1 sound cassette (90 min.).
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Concentration camp inmates. Holocaust survivors. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Jews--Austria. Nazi hunters. Public opinion--Israel. War crime trials. War criminals. World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Liberation. Men--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Queens (New York, N.Y.) Upper Austria (Austria)
- Corporate Name
- Mauthausen (Concentration camp)
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Peter Wortsman conducted the interview with Simon Wiesenthal on May 12, 1975. The interview was received by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on September 9, 2003.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:58:56
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn516244
Additional Resources
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Also in Oral history interviews of the Peter Wortsman collection
The collections consists of audio cassette tapes of oral history interviews with Holocaust survivors conducted from 1974 to 1975 in Austria, Poland, Israel, and France
Date: 1974-1975
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Oral history interview with Selma Steinmetz
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Oral history interview with Herbert Steiner
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Oral history interview with Josef Cepi Meisel
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Oral history interview with Herr Sussman and Frau Sussman
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Herr and Frau Sussman describe their deportations to Auschwitz; the living conditions in Auschwitz; the psychological sufferings of the camp prisoners; fears of going to the showers because no one knew whether gas or water would come out; Frau Sussman’s transfer to Camp Kraków and working with steel saw machinery there; figuring out how to sabotage machinery at the camp; Frau Sussman’s escape with a French girl and joining the underground movement; Frau Sussman’s escape to Switzerland and going to a refugee camp in Basel; Frau Sussman’s discovery that Herr Sussman was alive and living in Marseilles, France; their return to Austria; and the existence of antisemitism today.
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Oral history interview with Esther Schkurman
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Oral history interview with Tadeusz Holuj
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