I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal (2007) - full transcript

(MultiCom Jingle)

(orchestral music)

- The man who was watching
all of this very carefully

is Simon Wiesenthal.

- Nazi hunter Simon
Wiesenthal is with us now.

(speaking foreign language)

- The leading Nazi hunter--

- Known world wide as the
conscience of the Holocaust.

- Famous and successful
Nazi hunter in the world.

- He is a self-appointed
instrument of world justice.

- But he refuses to let his
former tormentors live in peace.



- Your organization have
tracked down some 1,100.

- Yes.
- Nazis.

Do you think it's still
really worthwhile pursuing

these men who must by now be fairly old?

- [Reporter] Any lasting
good is going to come out of

tracking down these people relentlessly

from country to country?
- What do you do

to people who say, Mr.
Wiesenthal, it is time to forget,

stop hunting these former Nazis,

stop torturing yourself
and the world and forget?

- Mr. Wiesenthal, enough already.

Enough time has gone by,
enough heartache has gone by.

There must be a statute
of limitations on this.

- Sure, sure, no.



You must understand my office

is the last office in the world.

And because this is the last office

we cannot close the office.

I cannot stop.

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] If you
didn't know where you were

as you walked down these steps,

you'd think you were entering
a beautiful nature preserve.

But for Simon Wiesenthal, who arrived

at the Mauthausen
concentration camp in Austria

two hours from Vienna in February 1945,

this was hell.

- [Simon] 185 steps.

Every 10 minutes you must bring a stone

from here on the top.

During this time of this camp

thousands die here on the steps.

(orchestral music)

Every step is for me dead corpses.

Every stone is for me a corpse

of a human, of a prisoner.

And I am looking from the
towers, you know, from the stones

I saw people, dead people.

This changed me.

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] At the end of March 1943,

SS chief Heinrich
Himmler visited the camp.

To entertain him, 1,000
newly arrived Dutch Jews

were assembled at the rim of the quarry.

One by one, they were
thrown to their deaths

165 feet below.

By the time of Simon Wiesenthal's
arrival at Mauthausen,

this had become a favorite
pastime of the SS.

They called it parachute jumping.

(orchestral music)

From 1938 to 1945 more than 130,000

men, women and children
died at Mauthausen,

gassed, shot, beaten,
tortured or starved by the SS.

(orchestral music)

- It was something that I
had never hoped in my life

to see or experience.

I was shocked, really and
truly shocked, on my first

visit to Mauthausen to see
these dead people lying around

in piles like wood, if you will,

and others so sick and so weak,

they're truly walking zombies.

It was absolutely dumbfounding.

And I thought to myself,
what are we gonna do?

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] As far as Simon knew

he was the only survivor in his family.

His wife and all of his
relatives had been murdered.

He was now a free man

but what did freedom mean?

- [Narrator] The man the
Americans put in charge

of granting the permits was
a former Polish prisoner,

Kazimierz Rusenik, who later became known

as a leading propagandist
in Communist Poland.

- [Narrator] The following
day Wiesenthal decided to seek

Colonel Richard Seibel,
the commanding officer

at Mauthausen, to file a formal complaint

against Rusinek, the
man who had beaten him.

While he waited he witnessed
a sight in an adjacent office

that amazed him.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal sat
down and composed a list

of 91 Nazi war criminals.

It contained the names of
such infamous SS criminals

as Friedrich Katzmann,
the SS major general

who ran the murder machine in the Ukraine

behind the slaughter of
hundreds of thousands of Jews,

Amond Goeth, the commandant
of the Plaszow death camp

responsible for the murders
of thousands of others,

as well as many lesser known criminals.

The document was
unprecedented for its time,

striking in its detail.

Not only listing names and
ranks of the perpetrators

but specific dates and vivid
descriptions of their crimes.

- [Narrator] But the offices
of the war crimes unit did not

see Simon's involvement with
them as anything long term.

They tried to convince him
that it was time to start

rebuilding his life.

- They say what you
are, you are architect.

Yes.

Okay we will send you to our sanitoria,

later you will go home
and build houses again.

Build houses?

I say to him, you think you can

continue in the same place

that the life was interrupted?

We have not only lost

people and houses,

we have lost everything, every believing.

- [Narrator] Simon Wiesenthal
now embarked on a career

that would define the rest of his life.

It was certainly not what his parents

Asher and Rosa Wiesenthal
had imagined for him

when he was born 37
years earlier in Buczacz

a small town in Galacia.

(bells tolling)

- I am born 31st of December, 1908

in Buczacz.

In the time of my birth that was Austria,

Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

Later this was Ukraine,
later that was Poland,

later that was Soviet Union,
then was Poland again.

The whole population
of Buczacz was 10,000,

6,000 Jews between 1,500 and 2,000 Poles

and the rest were Ukrainians.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] The family fled Buczacz

and Simon's father Asher was conscripted

into a Jewish unit of
the Austro-ungarian army.

Poorly trained and
overrun by the Russians,

the unit suffered tremendous casualties.

- [Narrator] Around the time
of Simon's 13th birthday

tragedy once again struck the family.

- [Narrator] Simon began
attending the local high school

in Buczacz, where he immediately stood out

amongst his fellow students.

- It was forbidden to speak Yiddish,

and because I have to resist
against such situation,

so I teach a number of
my non-Jewish colleagues

in Yiddish.

And the man, one professor of
history he was antisemitic.

He was comic, I had a quarrel
with my non-Jewish colleague

and he say to me in Yiddish.

The professor was looking,

what's going on here? (chuckling)

- [Narrator] Simon also tried
using his sense of humor

to attract the attention

of one of his classmates, Cyla Mueller.

- He was sitting right behind her

and my mother tells that
she had this long blond hair

and it was braided and whenever
the teacher was not looking

then my father started
pulling those braids

and she stayed there and she did not laugh

and everybody around
looked and started to laugh

and as soon as the teacher
came my father was.

He liked that.

- [Narrator] In 1928 Simon was
accepted as an architecture

student at the Technical
University in Prague,

which did not have the same
quota restrictions against Jews

that were the case in Poland.

- In 1930, I was in a place, Reichenberg,

I was coming to a friend.

The majority of the population was German.

It was a speech of Hitler in radio,

before he came to power.

And all the windows

on the street, with the radio,

with the speech of Hitler.

I said, ach, this is impossible,

this man cannot have a chance

in a country of philosophers,
of thinkers, of inventors.

- [Crowd] Sieg heil!

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] After finishing
his studies in 1932,

Simon went to Lvov, also known as Lemberg,

and began working for a
Jewish-owned architectural firm.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal was
soon developing a reputation

as an architectural engineer,
designing apartment buildings,

houses, and office structures.

In the mid-1930s, he designed

the building he was proudest of:

a house for his mother
and stepfather in Dolyna.

(orchestral music)

(roaring)

(gunshots booming)
(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Simon,
Cyla and his mother Rosa

gathered what they could

and moved into the Jewish getto of Lvov.

Within weeks, Simon and
Cyla, along with thousands

of other able-bodied Jewish men and women,

were taken to the Janwska
concentration camp

and put into forced labor battalions

at the Eastern Railway yards.

Rosa remained in the ghetto.

Occasionally, Simon and Cyla were able

to arrange for passes
to go and visit Rosa.

- From all the stories
that I remind my mother,

about the time when we was in ghetto.

She prepare something for us to eat.

And then,

she never eat with us.

And then one day,

she felled,

and

I catch her

in the air.

For five days she had eat nothing.

Everything for us.

This is, you know, so dramatic

that everything else had not
made on me this impression.

Only this moment.

This moment.

A real Jewish mother.

- [Narrator] Several hundred miles away,

a high-level meeting was taking place

in an elegant villa on
the shore of Lake Wannsee,

just outside of Berlin.

Taking minutes of the meeting

was an SS major, Adolf Eichmann.

The subject of the conference?

The implementation of the final solution

of the Jewish question.

Within the six weeks of
the Wannsee conference,

trains from Lvov and
other parts of the Ukraine

began taking Jews to
a place called Belzec.

Very few lasted the day.

In the course of 14 months,

approximately 1.6 million
Jews were killed at Belzec

and two other death camps in Poland:

Treblinka and Sobibor.

- [Narrator] Several days
passed and Simon heard

that Ukrainians were rounding
up Jews in the ghetto.

When he heard no word from his mother,

he made his way to her flat

and was met by her next-door neighbor.

- [Narrator] Simon rushed to the main

railway station in Lvov.

He ran frantically from
one cattle car to another.

- People was naked in the
wagons, without nothing.

And you hear, "Water,
water, water, water."

(speaking faintly)

Nothing, it was not the
possibility to help.

The situation with the
wagons and these people,

I have dream many times.

Many times I see me, that I'm
running, and I could not help.

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] It was August 23, 1942.

The train left Lvov, and a few hours later

arrived at Belzec.

- [Narrator] Simon was now concerned

that the same fate would befall Cyla.

He contacted a friend in
the Polish underground.

- [Narrator] Cyla was taken to Warsaw,

where she was given a new
official ID as a non-Jewish Pole.

A few weeks later, Simon went into hiding

for seven months.

But in a Gestapo raid,
Wiesenthal was discovered.

After three failed suicide attempts,

he began a five-month odyssey of pain,

torture, and suffering
as the SS transported him

across Europe from one
death camp to another.

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal's
physical condition

was so poor as he walked
through the gates of Mauthausen

that he was placed in a
barracks for hopeless cases.

Despite his weakened condition,

Wiesenthal managed to draw
what he was seeing around him.

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] For the next few weeks,

Wiesenthal continued to sketch,

until his liberation on May 5th.

- [Narrator] A few weeks
after his liberation,

Simon Wiesenthal was at work
for the US War Crimes Office,

helping to gather testimony of survivors

to be used in hearings
against Nazi war criminals.

- [Questioner] What is your nationality?

(speaking foreign language)
Austrian.

- [Narrator] Along with
several other survivors,

he was now living in
the Leonding, Austria,

outside of Linz, not far from Mauthausen

in a former schoolhouse converted

into a small displaced persons camp.

From the window of his room,

he could look out on the
community's small cemetery

and churchyard adjacent to the school.

He had an uneasiness
about waking to the sight

of headstones each morning.

But when he learned that
his room also overlooked

the graves of Alois and Clara Hitler,

the parents of Adolf Hitler,

as well as the Hitler family home,

he put in a transfer to new quarters.

He was soon living in a small rented room

on one of Linz's
thoroughfares, the Landstrasse.

Just four doors away were
the offices of his employers,

the US War Crimes Office.

In the summer of 1945,

Wiesenthal and a group of other survivors

put together a committee to
search for family members

and friends who may have
also survived the camps.

- [Narrator] He wrote
to Biener and asked him

to see if he could find
out what had happened

to Cyla in Warsaw.

Amazingly, Cyla, passing through Krakow

on her way home to
Buczacz, found Dr. Biener.

He immediately sent word to
Simon that she was alive.

Wiesenthal asked his
superiors for permission

to go to Poland to bring Cyla to Austria.

But the War Office was concerned

that Simon might be
arrested by the Soviets

on his way to Krakow.

In his place, Wiesenthal sent a friend.

- [Narrator] Three weeks
later, Simon's friend appeared

at his front door.

- [Narrator] Pauline Rosa Wiesenthal

was born in September 1946.

She was named after her two grandmothers,

both of whom had perished
during the Holocaust.

Simon was now spending
a great deal of time

traveling from one displaced
persons camp to another,

collecting testimony from
survivors about war crimes.

He was learning more and more about extent

of the final solution

and its chief architect.

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] Without ever
having pulled a trigger,

this SS major was
responsible for more murders

than any other member of the Nazi party.

At the request of his superiors,

Eichmann formulated the details
and organized the mechanisms

which led to the systematic
genocide of six million Jews.

During the same time in Vienna,

Arthur Pierre was also learning more

about the crimes of Adolf Eichmann.

Pierre's real name was Asher Ben-Natan,

and his main task was
working for the Jewish agency

facilitating the Brichah, the
illegal effort to bring Jews

from the DP camps to Palestine.

- I started to delegate new immigrants

who came to the refugee camp in At-leet,

(speaking foreign language)
Nazi crimanls that they'd met,

or they knew about.

I had compiled a list
of 700 war criminals,

many of them Austrians.

- [Narrator] That night,
while poring over his files

in his flat, his landlady
came in to bring him some tea.

- [Narrator] Just up the block,

on the same side of the
street at Number 32,

was an electrical repair
shop, Elecrro-Eichmann.

One floor above was the
childhood home of Adolf Eichmann.

Eichmann's father and stepmother

were still living in the apartment.

The following morning, Wiesenthal
convinced the Americans

to immediately conduct a
search of the Eichmann home.

They found no trace of the son.

The parents did not even possess

a photo of their eldest child.

- [Narrator] Manus was Manus Diamant,

a survivor who was working
with AFA in the Brichah.

The plan was for Manus

to romance Eichmann's former girlfriend.

- This woman showed him all her photos,

and suddenly he saw a photo of Eichmann.

That's the way we got the
first photo of Eichmann.

In the meantime Wiesenthal found out

that Eichmann's wife and two children

were living in Bad Aussee.

(cows lowing)
(birds twittering)

- [Narrator] Bad Aussee, in
the lake region of Austria,

is considered one of the
most picturesque areas

of the country.

It is also where many
high-ranking Nazis escaped to

at the end of the war.

It was to this small town
that Veronica Eichmann

and her sons retreated in 1945.

There were rumors that her husband,

having slipped through
the hands of the Allies

at the German POW camp
at Rosenheim, Germany,

was also hiding out in the area,

occasionally sneaking into the basement

of his wife's rented home
for clandestine meetings.

- Wiesenthal really fought, all his life,

for something that at
the time seemed strange,

which is to say that Nazi criminals,

one shouldn't just take
revenge against them.

The important thing was
to bring them to justice

and to leave the historic
record of what they'd done.

- Revenge is a human feeling.

And after a time,

you have enough, just like food.

You cannot eat the whole day.

You cannot hate the whole day.

- [Newsreel Announcer] Out
of bombed and devastated

Nuremberg, comes the last grim chapter

in the record of the Nazi war criminals.

- [Narrator] Once the major
Nuremberg war crimes trials

were completed in 1946,
many of the officers

working with Simon at
the US War Crimes Office

returned home.

Their replacements were more concerned

about a new threat coming from Moscow

than they were about Nazi war crimes.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal
made a difficult decision.

He would open his own
documentation center.

He gathered a group of
fellow survivors together

and explained what he was about to do.

More than 30 volunteered to work with him.

- [Narrator] As Simon was launching

his new documentation center,

Cyla was busy at home raising Paulinka

and trying to create a
safe haven for her family.

- To grow up as a Jewish
child of Holocaust survivors

in Linz after the war

was lonely.

It was very lonely, very insulated.

Books, lots of books and lots of books.

Few friends, not much going out.

My mother shielded me
from the surroundings.

I remembered one day, I
came home from school,

and I said, "Why don't we have relatives?

"No uncles or aunts, or grandparents.

"How can that be, what
kind of family is this?

"Only just the three people."

- I cannot tell the truth,
she will not understand.

And when I don't tell her,

she will look up the other children.

Like of children from murderers.

So I call a friend in Vienna,
I told them the story.

The next day, I say call your cousin

and invite her.

Then every holiday,

we find somebody in Salzburg,

some other cousin in Vienna.

And when she was 11, slowly I began

to tell her the whole truth.

- [Narrator] The stress
of Wiesenthal's work

and trying to support his family

began to take a toll on
him by the early 1950s.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal
took to his new hobby

with the same intensity
he brought to his work.

He was soon meeting and trading stamps

with very serious collectors,
including an Autrian baron

who invited to his home
one evening in 1953.

As they looked out at the view

from the baron's palatial estate,

Wiesenthal explained his line of work.

The baron, who had been an
anti-Nazi during the war,

was quite moved.

And then he remembered a letter

someone had sent him
recently from Argentina.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal
sent the information

on to Dr. Nahum Goldmann, the chairman

of the World Jewish Congress,

and one of the most
prominent Jewish leaders

in the world at that time.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal was
crushed by the response.

In addition, the new
realities of the Cold War

were making the work of his
office increasingly impossible.

Simon decided he had no choice
but to close his office.

- [Narrator] For the next few years,

Simon worked as a teacher
and a freelance journalist

to support his family.

But Eichmann was never from his mind.

Wiesenthal knew that Veronica
Eichmann and her sons

had disappeared from Bad Aussee.

He began investigating
and learned that Veronica

was now living in Buenos Aires

with a man named Ricardo Clement.

But was this man Adolf Eichmann?

There was no recent picture to prove

whether or not he was.

This dilemma was solved
when Wiesenthal noticed

a death announcement in a Linz newspaper,

for the funeral of Eichmann's
father in early 1960.

- [Narrator] The photo was
transmitted to Mossad agents

already staking out the Clement household

on Garibaldi Street in Buenos Aires.

- I had those pictures
with me from Wiesenthal

and could compare the
men I saw near the house

to the people he
photographed at the funeral.

- I remember seeing him on television.

It was broadcast during
the Eichmann trial.

It made a tremendous impression on me.

This is when I started being aware

of what he was doing.

- [Narrator] Simon Wiesenthal
quickly become recognized

around the world as the man
who caught Adolf Eichmann.

He wrote a bestselling
book about the case,

but did mention the role of the Mossad.

Wiesenthal had been asked
by the Israeli government

to keep quiet about the participation

of its secret police.

- He said (speaking foreign language),

he didn't say, "I found Eichmann."

he didn't claim that.

And he did (speaking foreign language),

he did chase Eichmann.

As a matter of fact, he was the only one

who systematically tried to find him

and work on his family and all the rest.

He didn't, I read the book,

I don't think he claimed
anything that wasn't true.

(orchestral music)

- After the Eichmann
trial, things changed.

We moved to Vienna, my
father reopened the office.

And he was not going to close this office.

There was no way that he would close it

for a second time.

- He was viewed as a
man who could not stop

thinking of the guilt of other people.

And the Austrian politics

for 20 or 30 years was

we shouldn't talk about
that, it's unnecessary.

Are they really war criminals?

- There were all these
phone calls at night.

Frightful phone calls--

- Hello?
- in the middle of the night

and my father runs to pick up the phone,

and he puts it down immediately.

My father didn't perceive it as a threat.

- [Narrator] But Simon's attitude changed

when the threats started being
directed at his only child.

- My father took precautions
and I mas taken to school

with police cars.

Which was dreadful.

A child, to have to go to
school with a policeman

trailing behind it and picking it up

and taking it back.

That doesn't do you a lot of good.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal
was far more popular

outside of Austria.

In Holland, for instance, a
group of non-Jewish supporters

put together a special fund

to help finance the work of
his new documentation center.

Simon felt a special
affinity to the Netherlands

because of the story of Anne Frank.

- [Narrator] In the late 1950s,

during a performance of the play

based on The Diary of Anne Frank,

young neo-Nazis disrupted the actors,

tossing pro-Nazi leaflets and screamed

that Anne Franks's story was a fraud.

- Thousands and thousands
of young people in Austria

and Germany believed them.

And against this
propaganda, the best way was

to find this man who
arrest Anne Frank family.

Because if he will tell
that Anne Frank was existed,

because I arrest her,

this will be believable.

- [Narrator] Looking in
the appendix of the diary,

Simon found a reference
to an Austrian SS man

who arrested the Frank family.

- Mr. Wiesenthal in
Vienna believed at first

that the man was called Silbernagel.

So he asked us whether we had information

on a member of the German police force

which was specializing in getting Jews

out of their hiding
places, called Silbernagel.

We happened to have a
document in our files.

A really unimportant document as such,

it's a telephone list of
the commanding officers

of the German security
police in this country.

And here on one of the final pages

we found the name of Silberbauer.

So we passed on this
name to Dr. Wiesenthal

and he was able to locate him

as a member of the
present-day German police.

- It is 840 miles and 20 years

from the house on the
Prinsengracht in Amsterdam

to this house, bell-let Strasse
Number 5 in suburban Vienna,

where police inspector
Karl Silberbauer's past

has come back to haunt him.

- He was interrogated,
and he tells right away.

(speaking foreign language)
"I arrest Anne Frank."

The case was for me finished.

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] On a trip to Israel in 1964,

Wiesenthal was approached
by a woman who asked,

"Are you Wiesenthal the Nazi hunter?"

When he replied that he was, she insisted,

"You need to do something
Hermine Braunsteiner."

And she began to tell him

about Braunsteiner's brutality.

- She threw them just
like you throw in garbage.

Incinerated, this was the way

she was throwing small children.

She was tearing the
children from mothers' arms,

throwing them to the truck.

And if a mother didn't
want to give up the child,

the mother was taken also.

I could still hear the
cries of the children

and the mothers.

Those cries you could never forget, never.

- [Narrator] Back in Vienna,

Wiesenthal began looking into
what happened to Braunsteiner.

Starting with her last
known address in Vienna,

he learned that she had
disappeared in the late 1940s

to her family in the Austrian Alps.

Wiesenthal sent a young
volunteer from his office,

who was able to obtain
the key information:

Braunsteiner had met and
married an American GI

named Russell Ryan.

Wiesenthal tracked the couple
to a quiet neighborhood

in Queens, New York.

Armed with this information,

he called the New York Times.

- Joe Lelyveld, who at the
time was a very young reporter,

ripped apart the notion

that no Nazis were in the United States

and forced government officials

to look at the real facts, the real truth.

- [Narrator] It would
take more than a decade

to deport, and finally
try, the Majdanek guard

for her war crimes.

- It was an embarrassment
for the Justice Department,

for the government of the United States,

and there was pressure to set up an office

of special investigations to investigate

Nazi war criminals.

And Simon Wiesenthal provided information

on a great many cases that were prosecuted

in the United States in the early days.

- In Dusseldorf, West Germany today,

a court ended a five-and-a-half-year-long

Nazi war crimes trial,

the longest and most expensive
war crimes prosecution,

by sentencing to life imprisonment

a former New York City housewife.

She was the first American resident

to be turned over to West Germany

for war crimes prosecution.

- As he became more known,

he became this man that you
just couldn't push away.

When things didn't work out,

when he had gone to the ministry 10 times,

he had written 50 letters, and no reply,

he started using the press to put pressure

to get things going, get things done.

It didn't endear him to anybody,

but there were results.

- [Narrator] In 1966, Wiesenthal
held a press conferenece

at Schloss Hartheim, a
castle built in 1600,

about two hours from Vienna,

which was the euthanasia testing
center for the Third Reich.

Some of the first
experiments with Zyklon B,

the gas used to kill millions at Auschwitz

and other death camps, took place there.

Franz Stangl, who became
the commandant in Treblinka,

responsible for the
murders of 800,000 Jews,

trained at Schloss Hartheim.

A few days after the press conference,

an odd-looking, unkempt man

showed up at Wiesenthal's office.

He had a proposition for the Nazi hunter.

- [Narrator] Simon
immediately called a contact

in the Sao Paolo Police Department,

and Stangl was arrested
on his way home from work.

But a problem arose immediately.

- [Narrator] Kennedy, the
former attorney general

and now US Senator from New York,

persuaded the Brazilian ambassador

to convince his government
to keep Stangl in custody.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal
now had to make good

on his promissory note.

So he called a friend in the United States

and the money was transferred as promised.

He never revealed the identity

of this or any other informer.

- [Narrator] The strain of
the trial and imprisonment

took a toll on the Treblinka commandant.

Less than six months
after being sentenced,

he died of a massive heart attack.

While investigating the Stangl case,

Wiesenthal discovered another criminal

on his most-wanted list living
in Brazil: Gustav Wagner,

Stangl's former top sergeant at Treblinka,

and later the commandant at Sobibor,

where more than 250,000
Jewes had been murdered.

When Wagner heard about
his friend Stangl's arrest,

he was petrified that Wiesenthal
would come after him next.

- The mere thought that
Wiesenthal would be on the case

meant that lots of malefactors

could not sleep at night.

- [Narrator] An error was
made in the translation

of the indictment, and Wagner
was released by the Brazilians

on a technicality.

- [Narrator] In 1967,
Simon Wiesenthal's memoirs,

The Murderers Among Us,

became an international bestseller.

There was no question that
here was the main address

for anyone looking for information
about Nazi war criminals.

- I went down to Vienna, and I thought

he would give 20 minutes, tops.

He gave me two and a half hours.

He became enthused,

and his enthusiasm was contagious.

- [Narrator] The young
author outlined a story

about a Nazi concentration
camp commander for Wiesenthal.

- Then I was saying to
him, could we just devise

a fictional concentration camp commander?

And he just beamed and waved (chuckling)

a proprietorial hand at a shelf

and he says, "Why,"
you know, "why invent?"

He said, "I have the man for you."

And he reached out and he
rummaged through these files,

and he brought this file down.

He said, "His name is Roschmann,

"Eduard Roschmann, the Butcher of Riga."

- [Narrator] The Oddessa File was not only

an international bestseller,

it also became one of the
top-grossing movies of 1974.

- O-D-E-S-S-A.

- [Narrator] And now Simon
Wiesenthal was a character

in a major motion picture.

- It was formed at the end of the war

to help SS men to disappear,
to get them out of Germany.

- [Narrator] The worldwide
release of The Odessa File

ended up having a result
that neither Simon

nor Frederick Forsythe
could have predicted.

- Roschmann.

- There was a man, an Argentine,
sitting in a little town

200 miles south of Buenos
Aires, watching this film.

He suddenly thought, that man
lives down the street from me.

Really, that is him.

He went and denounced.

The local magistrate had him arrested.

Buenos Aires involved the German embassy.

The German embassy said we
want an extradition warrant.

And he panicked, and he ran

for the safety of Paraguay.

And he was actually
crossing the Paraguay River

and his fright overcame him, he suffered

a massive internal heart
attack right then and there.

- [Narrator] Eduard
Roschmann, the mass murderer

of women and children,

never regained consciousness
and died a few days later.

- I hope I can correct a
false picture about me.

I am not a Jewish James Bond.

And I am not a Don Quixote,
and I'm not between.

I am only a survivor

who pays with dedicated work

for the privilege to remain alive.

(speaking foreign language)
(orchestral music)

- The main thing was to write letters

to lots of state attorneys,

ministers of law,

Yad Vashem, the police.

Put down testimonials.

- Sometimes he was so
full of energy and ideas

and leads that we had to
jump at and to write letters

and sometimes he was really

- We got hundreds of
letters and postcards.

Some sent money,

some asked questions.

Quite a lot of letters and postcards said,

"Well, you are a criminal."

- We had to put a big M on these letters

and go to these big boxes

where we collected these things.

That was File M, meshugge.

- The meshuggene box.
- Yeah.

- [Narrator] Some of the
letters asked Wiesenthal

to become involved in a particular case.

Like the one received from Sweden in 1971.

- The mother of Rauol Wallenberg

asked me to be occupied with this problem.

- [Newscaster] More
evidence came to light today

that the man they call
the Swedish pimpernel

is still alive in a Soviet jail.

- [Newscaster] As a young Swedish diplomat

in occupied Hungary, Wallenberg
saved tens of thousands

of Jews by signing makeshift passports

bearing the right to Swedish nationality

and diplomatic protection.

- [Narrator] Not long after
the Soviets entered Budapest,

Wallenberg was taken into
custody by the Russians

and disappeared.

- For me as a survivor,
and for me as a Jew,

I feel our duty

to help this man.

The criminals can wait.

But the man who is in oppression,

whom the whole world must
be thankful, cannot wait.

According to a number of witnesses,

the Soviet declaration that Wallenberg

die in Lubyanka Prison, on
July 17, '47, cannot be true.

What we wish to know is the truth.

- [Narrator] From the time
Raoul Wallenberg's mother

was first in touch with Wiesenthal,

he never missed an opportunity

to bring up the case in public,

as well as in private
meetings around the world.

- [Announcer] The President
of the United States.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal's
efforts helped to gain

honorary US citizenship for Wallenberg,

so that the American
government could lobby

on his behalf as a citizen.

It was only the second time in US history

that an individual was given this honor.

- You and I know each other fairly well.

And I know you to be a realist.

What are the chances that
we'll ever see him alive?

- Well,

a Jew must believe in miracles.

A Jew don't believe in
miracles, he is not a realist.

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] In 1975,
Wiesenthal found himself

going up against two of Austria's

most popular political figures.

- [Narrator] While going
through an SS directory,

Wiesenthal had turned up evidence

showing that Friedrich Peter,

the head of Austria's People's Party,

had been a member of a mass murder squad

responsible for the killings of as many as

350,000 Jews in the Ukraine.

(gunshots booming)

- [Narrator] Austria's
popular socialist chancellor,

Bruno Kreisky, himself a Jew,
refuted Wiesenthal's charges.

He was working with the People's Party

to create a ruling coalition.

When Wiesenthal went
public with his information

about Peter,

Kreisky was furious.

- [Narrator] The media battle
between Simon and Kreisky

reached its lowest point
when the Austrian chancellor

questioned how Wiesenthal
had survived the war.

- My father was in shock.

I think he was prepared for many things,

not for this.

People did not know whether
to speak up or to support him.

And you didn't know
which way it would turn.

The papers turned this
into a Jewish story,

about the Jew Kreisky turning
against the Jew Wiesenthal.

Which made it even uglier.

- Wiesenthal became extremely unpopular.

83% of the Austrian population

thought that Kreisky was completely right.

3% thought Simon Wiesenthal was right.

The main paper in the country,

they wrote, "Wiesenthal should
get out of this country."

He was hated.

He was hated.

- [Narrator] The situation
grew so out of control

that the building housing Simon's office

on the Rudolfsplatz was
attacked by Nazi sympathizers.

Windows were broken and
bomb threats were made.

Frightened residents, many of them

older Jewish Holocaust survivors,
begged Wiesenthal to move.

He relocated a few blocks away.

- My wife said to him, "Simon,
why do you stay in Vienna?"

And his answer was very simple.

A soldier stays on the battlefield.

- [Narrator] While
Wiesenthal was being vilified

for exposing Friedrich Peter's membership

in an SS murder squad, a politician

was being honored by the Austrian people.

(German folk music)

- [Narrator] When he
retired from the parliament

many years later,

he received a standing ovation

for his service to the country.

(piano music)

- [Narrator] Almost since
the time of their reunion,

Cyla had wanted Simon to leave Austria

and start a new life with her in Israel.

Now, as people literally spat at them

as they walked together in Vienna,

she begged her husband to move.

Her desire to leave had
become even stronger

after Paulinka and her
husband, Gerard Kresiburg,

announced their plans to move from Holland

with their three young
children to the Jewish state.

(orchestral music)

- Despite my mother's
hopes for a different life,

there was this strong,
strong bond that tied them.

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] Simon Wiesenthal
was one of the first

Jewish activists to publicly discuss

the plight of non-Jews who
suffered during the Nazi era.

- It was not only Jews, it was Frenchmen,

it was Dutch people, it was
Russians, it was gypsies.

Why not, they are in a common mass grave,

why don't mention them?

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal
became a special advocate

of the gypsy or Roma community,

which had lost hundreds of
thousands in the death camps.

- As well, the homosexuals.

At that time, he was among
the few people who said,

"Well, we have to think

"that 50,000 who were homosexuals
have been killed there."

- This is important.

The young generation from many nations,

for their benefit, should
learn from our tragedy.

Because what happened once
to us can happen again.

The only alternative is tolerance.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal's
example became the inspiration

for a young rabbi based
in Vancouver, Canada.

- I knew that Yad Vashem
was a great repository

of the story of the Holocaust.

But not an activist group,
they were not involved

in doing something about it,

in terms of counteracting anti-Semitism.

And it occurred to me
that no one more fitting

could be found in the
world than Simon Wiesenthal

to create such an institution

with an address in the United States.

It was in August of
1977, we went to Vienna.

We spent a morning
session, afternoon session.

He asked us many questions.

What he said to us is,
"There a lot of people

"who gather information,
store it in the freezer,

"and forget about it.

"I'm not into that."

He said, "I wanna gather information,

"and when there's a recurrence,

"I want people to stand up
and do something about it.

"In that kind of an
institution I'm interested."

That's precisely what we had in mind

with the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

- [Newscaster] Wiesenthal toured
the new center this morning

with Governor Brown, and
he officially opened it

by affixing the traditional
Jewish mezuzah above the door.

(speaking foreign language)

- [Narrator] The first
official collaboration

between the new Simon Wiesenthal
Center and its namesake

involved an issue being debated

in West Germany's Bundestag:

the statute of limitations
for Nazi war crimes.

- The statute of limitations

will be at the end of next year,

and after that time, when
we will find new people,

they commit crimes or I
find new evidence of people,

they are free, we cannot bring
them for justice in Germany.

- Simon comes up with an idea.

We're gonna send a postcard

with that very difficult
and horrible photo on it,

of one the Nazi war criminals
torturing a prisoner.

No time-limited justice.

- One million postcards were
mailed around the world.

And we said to the people, if
you want to make a difference,

send this postcard to
the German Bundestag,

and to Chancellor Schmidt.

- And he invited a small
but representative group

to come and discuss this issue with him,

with the Bundestag, with
the German officials.

It's an extraordinary invitation.

And we spent a week discussing,
cajoling, twisting arms.

The final vote, which we won by 23 votes

out of approximately 500-person Bundestag

abolished the statute
of limitations forever.

- Ladies and gentlemen,
there's a time coming

when I need your help.

- [Narrator] Almost immediately,
Wiesenthal and the Center

initiated a second campaign,

focused on a man Simon viewed

as one of the worst
criminals of the Holocaust.

- Walter Rauff was one of
the deputies of Heydrich.

And this man was responsible
for the gas trucks.

They pick up people on
the railway station,

put them in a truck

with the sign of the Red Cross.

50, 60 people in a truck.

And this was a terrible death.

After a half an hour,
sometime after 45 minutes,

the people was dead.

And during that way,

they killed 250,000 people.

He lives free.

- [Reporter] Undeterred,
he walked nonchalantly

toward his son's house.

There at the gate he came
face to face with an unwelcome

visitor carrying a
hidden radio microphone.

- [Reporter] You live
in Santiago, don't you?

- Huh?
- You live here in Santiago.

- [Walter] Yes.

- You are fighting your case?
- No.

(chuckling)

- Walter Rauff was found in Chile.

And the question was how to move Pinochet.

Pinochet wouldn't easily
give up a Nazi war criminal,

even if an extradition request came.

Simon came up with the
idea that we should have

a postcard campaign showing
what Walter Rauff did.

We put out 100,000 postcards
with a picture of that van.

When the postcards were received,

there was international pressure
on the Pinochet government.

We got a message.

The chief of staff in Pinochet's
office, saying, "Okay.

"If the West Germans reapply
the extradition request,

"we'll honor it."

As soon as there was word
of an extradition request,

Rauff died of a heart attack.

At his graveside, all of his comrades

defiantly met at his funeral

and gave a final Sieg heil.

(clattering)
(shouting)

(sirens wailing)

- I know it was on a Friday

that my parents' house was firebombed.

And I was in shock.

This was serious, it was no joke.

It started his police protection.

There was no police
protection at all beforehand.

My parents' house became an island.

Outside was the police
in front and in the back,

and inside was the island.

Any threat made my father more convinced

that it was his duty to continue.

- I respect Simon Wiesenthal.

And I am proud to call him friend,

and prouder still that he calls me friend.

- [Narrator] Helping to
boost Simon's spirits

were a series of events
in the United States

that put him into the
spotlight like never before.

- Freedom is not a gift from the heavens.

You have to fight for it
every day of your life.

(audience applauding)

- [Narrator] But then a
dramatic, unexpected development

in one of Wiesenthal's
longest unsolved cases

started to raise questions

about the reliability of his work.

- Medical experts in Brazil said today

they were reasonably
certain that the bones

they have been examining are indeed those

of Josef Mengele, the Nazi angel of death.

- [Newscaster] After two weeks of study

the doctors and
investigators were conivnced.

- This skeleton is that of Josef Mengele

within a reasonable scientific certainty.

- [Newscaster] What's
known is that Mengele

lived in solitude in
various houses around Brazil

for 18 years before drowning
off this beach in 1979.

- [Narrator] Almost from the moment

he had started working for
the US War Crimes Office,

Simon Wiesenthal had been
searching for Josef Mengele.

- Mengele was the chief
physician of Auschwitz.

He was the hand of Eichmann in Auschwitz.

Two or 300,000 children he killed

for the experiments and also
sent to the gas chambers.

- There were many children
there with their parents.

Two, three-year-old,
four--year-old, five-year-old.

Then he told the man, the
father, "Go on the right side."

To the mother, he told,
"On the left side."

So the fathers start to cry and the wife,

"Give me my children."

And they took a child.

And the SS man, one took his
leg, and the other one his leg.

And the head down,

and they said, "One," or Dr.
Mengele said, "One two three,"

and they parted the child,
tore the child apart.

And then gives the father a
piece, and the mother a piece.

Not one time.

Not one time, many times
I saw this my own eyes.

- We need Mengele for a German trial,

before a German court.

A trial of Mengele will be a won battle

against the deniers of the Holocaust.

- [Narrator] Wiesenthal
kept Mengele's name

in the headlines by
helping to stage events

like a mock trial of
his crimes in Jerusalem.

- [Interviewer] If you
had a personal statement

to make to Mengele, what would it be?

- To surrender.

This was Mengele '43,

and this is Mengele now.

This man is living in Paraguay.

- [Narrator] After tracing
Mengele to South America,

Wiesenthal kept an eye
on the Mengele family

in Gunzburg, Bavaria,
where they maintained

their lucrative farm supply business,

one of the largest in Germany.

He urged West German
officials to tap the phone

and intercept the mail of the
family's busniness manager,

Hanns Sedlmeier, in the hope of finding

Mengele's exact address.

But the authorities refused
after Sedlmeier insisted

he had never been in
contact with the fugitive.

After the announcement of Mengele's death,

volumes of correspondence
and phone records

proving that he had been in close touch

with the Auschwitz doctor
for decades were found,

just as Wiesenthal predicted.

Yet he was criticized for
having been on the wrong trail,

claiming that Mengele
was alive in Paraguay

when in fact he had been
dead in Brazil for years.

- There were and still remain today alive,

many people who personally suffered

at the hands of Josef Mengele.

And to hold out hope to them,

and these people held out hope,

that their tormentor, their torturer,

this mass murderer would
be brought to justice,

when the information was not
accurate, I think is cruel.

- He had no official capacity.

He had no subpoena rights,
he had no investigators.

He had no money, except the limited money

to keep him going.

I mean, if you go to any
detective, US attorneys,

there are more false leads
than all positive leads.

For these people to criticize him,

that there were false leads,

thank God he was making the leads.

Thank God he was trying
to get these people.

There was one office in
one place in the world

where people who had
information knew they could go.

There had to be a place where
accountability could start,

and that's where it was.

- But is going everything
to a biological end.

Criminals die, witnesses die.

I will die.

But how long people from these
two generations are alive,

the matter must remain an open matter.

And as a warning for the future,

that these people, they commit
crimes, will never rest.

(orchestral music)

- Despite all he'd been through,

despite all the pain he'd suffered,

despite all the humiliations
and the horrors he'd seen,

there was a genial, jovial man there.

- He was a very, very good storyteller.

He remembered jokes, and one
joke triggered the next joke.

And what made me laugh
was to see him laughing

because he couldn't finish his joke.

And halfway or towards the
point he started to laugh,

and we looked at him and
started to laugh and say.

- Lovey, possible--
(speaking foreign language)

- He several times came from
his office to our office

and wanted to tell us a joke. (chuckling)

But sometimes we didn't
understand it. (chuckling)

Sometimes it was a joke
that he should have told

perhaps to a male person. (chuckling)

Not to a lady. (chuckling)

- I remember when he attended the premiere

of The Boys from Brazil.

Gregory Peck was of
course playing Mengele.

And Sir Laurence Olivier
was supposed to be

a character like Simon Wiesenthal.

And Simon said to Sir Laurence Olivier,

"He is a better Mengele,

"than you are a Wiesenthal."

- As well as weeping all of his tears,

he was a man capable of
laughing all of his laughter.

- [Narrator] Sir Ben Kingsley
starred as Simon Wiesenthal

in an HBO film based on
his bestselling memoirs,

The Murderers Among Us.

(shouting)

(orchestral music)

- I'm one of the few people
who have been allowed

to create a portrait of Simon Wiesenthal.

I met him in Vienna.

And the first gesture I remember is this.

And it's never left me.

Never left me.

We must never forget.

I'd never seen anyone
else physically embody

a whole generation of grief in one gesture

and have it completely
communicated to the listener.

Do not forget us,

and do not forget our murderers.

Can you believe?

He manages to tap into

the collective grief and
the understanding of grief

in all of us, whatever our history.

This I think is tremendously unique.

Because if you cannot grieve over loss,

you cannot begin to address that loss

and repair the damage done.

And I believe that he was
doing enormous service

to healing wounds, and
not keeping them open.

- Some very serious allegations
have surfaced this week

against the former secretary general

of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim.

Waldheim is now running for
the presidency of Austria.

- [Newscaster] Recently
released photographs

and documents link
Waldheim to two Nazi groups

and to a general who was hanged

for sending thousands to their deaths

in concentration camps.

(speaking foreign language)

- [Newscaster] This is
the sound of skeletons

falling out of the closet.

(speaking foreign language)

- [Interpreter] You are
traitors, you should keep quiet

and stay in Israel.

(speaking foreign language)

- [Interpreter] Where were you in the war?

You did shoot Jews, admit it.

- [Newscaster] Still the issue remains:

How serious are the charges
against Kurt Waldheim,

and what effect will they
have on Austria's voters?

Next month the voters will decide.

- When the issue of Waldheim came up,

and there were those
people, including myself,

who said, "Simon, condemn
him," and he said, "No."

Because he felt Waldheim
did not rise to the level

of a Nazi criminal.

- [Narrator] In one press
conference and interview

after another, Wiesenthal tried to explain

his position, to no avail.

He believed that his views
on Waldheim's character

were being distorted.

- I know that some
people, maybe between you

or maybe other people,
will think I am coming here

to attack Mr. Waldheim,
no, believe me, not.

When I present a case,

the documents will be hard, very hard.

The language very moderate.

If not, people will say, you are a hater

and we don't believe you.

- No greater disaster could come

by calling him a person
a Nazi war criminal,

taking him to court, and
having the court acquit him

for lack of evidence.

On that, Simon Wiesenthal
was absolutely right.

But, to take no no action at all,

we felt, was also not appropriate.

Because here was a man
who certainly knew better.

He rose through the ranks to become

the Secretary General
of the United Nations.

We had a disagreement, Simon
Wiesenthal and the Center,

about whether Kurt
Waldheim should be placed

on the watch list.

- [Narrator] Responding to a public outcry

in the United States,
congressional hearings were held

to investigate whether
or not Kurt Waldheim

should be placed on the
so-called Nazi watch list,

an act that would bar him permanently

from the United States.

- Based on your findings, is it your view

that Dr. Waldheim is in fact

guilty of committing war crimes?

- What we know is that Waldheim

is an indicted Nazi war criminal.

We are fairly optimistic
that the answer will be found

right here at the US National Archives.

- You cannot accuse and
later look for documents.

This is not the way of justice.

We should never mix politics with justice.

- [Narrator] Despite being
elected Austria's president,

Kurt Waldheim was not allowed
to visit the United States,

even on official business.

- Professors and experts on the Holocaust,

and I think one or two
Nuremberg prosecutors,

came up with the conclusion
that Waldheim's acttivities

did not rise to the
level of a Nazi criminal.

Which is the conclusion
that Simon came to.

It would have been so easy
for Simon to condemn him.

That's all he had to
do, join the bandwagon.

But he said, "Then I sacrifice
everything I stood for."

(audience applauding)

- The Austrian people finally decided

to come to proper terms with
Austria's personal history

and to accept that it
shared in the responsibility

for what happened during the Nazi era.

At that point, Wiesenthal
started being pulled out

as this sort of living legend,

a monument to the people who had tried

to bring Austria to its senses.

- Going to my grandfather's office.

(speaking foreign language)

- [Simon] Sure.

- [Filmmaker] This is
the room of Opa there.

- [Filmmaker] This is a
sculpture of Opa-tee's head.

- He lived in an attached
house in a suburb of Vienna.

Always the same attached house.

(speaking foreign language)

And here is Oma-chen.

- He had the same three suits.

They were shiny after a while.

He didn't take any money for what he did.

His money that he took for
his own personal living

was what he wrote and his speaking.

And that was it.

- He had a battered Peugeot.

That car was probably

at least 20 years old.

- He used to he used to eat nuts,

and he'd crush them basically,
by using this hand gear.

The car was always a junkyard.

- [Narrator] Cyla also had no
interest in material things.

What was paramount in
her life was her family.

- My mother was in love
with the grandchildren

and the great-grandchildren.

- This was the pleasure of her life.

This occupied her, and
even though she didn't

see them that often.

I never figured out how she
knew so much about them.

- I now have pleasure to
invite Mr. Simon Wiesenthal,

special envoy of the Austrian government,

to take the floor.

- [Narrator] Almost 90 years old,

Simon continued to speak
out on the idea of justice

for the victims of the Holocaust.

He also delivered speeches
and wrote articles

about genocides taking place in Cambodia,

the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda.

He continued working on
behalf of political prisoners

around the world.

In his ninth decade,

it seemed as if the honors
never stopped coming.

- From the unimaginable
horrors of the Holocaust,

only a few voices survived,

to bear witness, to hold
the guilty accountable,

to honor the memory of
those who were killed.

- [Narrator] In 2000,
President Bill Clinton,

in one of his final acts in office,

awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

to Simon Wiesenthal.

Too ill to leave Vienna,

Simon asked Rabbi Hier to
accept the award on his behalf.

- I think it's Medal of Freedom.

- [Narrator] By 2002, Simon's
health was too fragile

for him to continue coming to the office.

He worked at home and stayed current

with the affairs of the world.

- Then of course when Cyla died,

he went down pretty quick.

He used to like to kid that she was

four months older than he was.

He used to say, "She's
much older than I am."

- The way I would like people
to look at my grandmother

is that my grandmother, in her way,

played a very important role
for this whole operation

that my grandfather led to happen.

- After our death, there
will need, all these people,

was killed by the Nazis.

And they ask you, what you
are doing after the war?

And I will tell them, I didn't forget you.

(orchestral music)

- [Narrator] On September 20, 2005,

Simon Wiesenthal died
peacefully in his sleep,

at the age of 96 at his home in Vienna.

(orchestral music)

At his request, he was
buried in Herzliya, Israel,

not far from the home of his only child.

The following summer, a
special ceremony was held,

unveiling the headstones

of both Simon's and Cyla's graves.

- There are lonely years
where no one listens.

Sometimes the Bible says it's 40 years,

sometimes it says it's
40 days and 40 nights.

With Simon, it was a
certain number of years

where he was a prophet in the wilderness

and nobody listened.

It is the quality of
being a genuine prophet

that will get you through those years.

Enormous inner faith.

- Without Simon Wiesenthal's activity,

without Simon Wiesenthal's vision,

there would not be war
crimes trials today,

either in the former
Yugoslavia, in Rwanda.

The reason that there is a permanent UN

War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague

is directly attributable to the work

that Simon Wiesenthal began in 1946

with the American Army.

- No one had a more
stacked deck against him

than Simon Wiesenthal.

He came out of the Holocaust
with nobody, nothing.

99 pounds and he was barely alive.

And with that, he wouldn't give up.

To me that's the lesson
of Simon Wiesenthal.

That one person, if they
want to and if they try,

can make a difference.

He made a difference in the world.

- It was a hard life,
it was difficult life.

But this little Jew,

from this little village
in Poland or Ukraine,

wherever you look for it,

which you can't even find on the map,

look, it's a long way.

(audience applauding)

- One day he called me and he says,

"Rabbi Hier, I wish to
celebrate my 90th birthday

"with a few friends in the
Imperial Hotel in Vienna."

I said, why the Imperial Hotel?

And he said, "Let me tell you why."

This was Hitler's favorite hotel.

He had a permanent suite there.

Heinrich Himmler, the head of Gestapo,

had a permanent suite there.

Hitler loved the hotel so much

that he would conduct the
Second World War from the hotel.

And when he had to get out of Vienna,

he would use the bunker underneath.

And Simon said, "I want the
history of this hotel to read

"that Simon Wiesenthal
held his 90th birthday here

"with a kosher dinner."

(orchestral music)

We had people fly in
from all over the world.

He was weak, but this was
a special occasion for him.

He told me that he'd slept
four hours during the day,

in order to make sure

that he'd enjoy every
minute of this occasion.

(orchestral music)

As the band was playing Mein Shtetl Belz,

a very popoluar Yiddish melody,

he turned to me and he said, "Rabbi Hier,

"look, even the chandeliers are shaking.

"Because in this hotel

"they never heard music like this.

"Hitler is gone.

"The Nazis are no more.

"But we are still here,
singing and dancing."

(audience applauding)
(orchestral music)

(solemn orchestral music)