Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal once said: 'When my life is over and I meet up with the victims of the Holocaust, I shall have the privilege of saying to them, I have never forgotten you.'
Wiesenthal, who died in 2005 aged 97, dedicated nearly 60 years of his life to documenting the crimes of the Holocaust and hunting down the perpetrators still at large. A documentary, I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, shown at the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival last Sunday, tries to reconstruct the life of the man who ferreted out nearly 1,100 Nazi war criminals.
The film, narrated by actress Nicole Kidman, features interviews with Wiesenthal's long-time associates, government leaders, friends and family.
The freelance Nazi hunter played a role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann, chief administrator of the so-called final solution; Karl Silberbauer, the Gestapo officer who arrested Anne Frank; and other leading Nazis.
'He wasn't a hater,' says Abraham Cooper, a rabbi and associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre, whose Moriah Films produced the documentary. 'His motivation was not to get back but to bring justice.' Wiesenthal refused to collaborate with those who sought extrajudicial killings to punish the perpetrators.
'He insisted it should be through a judicial process,' says Cooper, who met Wiesenthal in 1978 and was in Hong Kong last week to attend the film's screening. 'He felt every trial was like an inoculation against hatred, and that's what the world needs to stand up against genocide.'
Born in 1908, Wiesenthal lived a quiet life as an architect, married to high-school sweetheart Cyla. But the Nazis' reign of terror from 1939 changed everything.
