The Wiesenthal file

Simon Wiesenthal spent four and a half years in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Eighty-nine family members and relatives were exterminated, and he himself ended the war a living skeleton. Almost fifty years later, Wiesenthal remains undauntedly committed to the cause of justice for the Jewish people and to the pursuit of Nazi war criminals. The cases he has pursued are many - he has brought eleven hundred Nazis to trial - and his name has frequently hit world headlines in connection with such figures as Adolf Eichmann, Franz Stangl, Josef Mengele, and Kurt Waldheim. Of his enormous personal courage there is no doubt. But so long after the war, is Wiesenthal's work still important? Does it have meaning? Is he making a positive contribution to post-Holocaust Judaism? Wiesenthal's answer is resolute: "We live in a modern world. We know there is pollution. The air is bad, the water is bad, the skies are dirty. But there is another sort of pollution that people ignore. In many countries people are living between murderers, and that is the biggest pollution of all." This book by internationally known author and journalist Alan Levy - an acquaintance of Wiesenthal for many years - is the first critical examination of Wiesenthal's life and work. The story of Wiesenthal's pursuit of war criminals - often detailed in Wiesenthal's own words - offers reading as exciting as any thriller. But The Wiesenthal File is much more than that. It is an examination by an independent-minded Jew of the work of one of the greatest Jewish figures of our century.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.