Tuesday, September 20, 2005

In memoriam

The Wiesenthal Center has announced the death of Simon Wiesenthal, in his sleep at his Vienna home at the age of 96.

Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor, devoted the rest of his life to tracking and finding Nazis and bringing them to justice. He made sure that none of them could sleep safely, knowing that they were always hunted.

A biography of Wiesenthal is found here.

5 comments:

dorsano said...

NPR ran a piece today about Wiesenthal. He lost 81 relatives if I remember correctly.

He devoted his life not to revenge, but to justice

and to send a warning to anyone in future generations contemplating such horrow that there is no place to hide.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Wiesenthal and with Dorsano..
There is no place for guys like that to hide..

..Lets get that guy Saddam who gassed his own people then put him on trial for his atrocities.

Oh yeah that's just what GWB did.

Mark

dorsano said...

And Rumsfeld was shaking Saddam's hand while we were providing him with chemical weapons precursors.

Eli Blake said...

Put him on trial and leave the country in the hands of a cleric dominated government, where Islamic law is the new standard (all as spelled out in the new constitution) and friendly to Iran?

Was this outcome really worth hundreds of American lives?

And if it was really about getting rid of Saddam, then why did Bush Sr. pull the plug on the Shiites during their rebellion in 1991, when they wanted to do exactly that? Oh, yeah, they didn't want an Islamic government friendly to Iran.

Also, that is why we (in the words of a former Reagan administration official) 'tilted' towards Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.

But, I guess if you can define 'victory' as being what we defined as 'an unacceptable outcome' ten or twenty years ago, then you can have your victory (probably, anyway-- the Sunnis are still fighting against it.)

Eli Blake said...

Oh, and Wiesenthal used every legal means at his disposal. But he never suggested that anyone invade Paraguay to remove Stroessner from the presidency and all the Nazis who lived quite openly in Paraguay at that time.