III 

109TH CONGRESS 

1ST SESSION S. RES. 245 

Recognizing the life and accomplishments of Simon Wiesenthal. 

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 

SEPTEMBER 21, 2005 

Mr. SCHUMER (for himself, Mr. COLEMAN, Mrs. BOXER, Mrs. FEINSTEIN, Mr. 

REID, Mr. BINGAMAN, Mr. WYDEN, Mrs. CLINTON, Mr. LAUTENBERG, 

Ms. MIKULSKI, Mr. KENNEDY, Ms. STABENOW, Mr. LIEBERMAN, Mr. 

JOHNSON, Mr. HARKIN, Mr. KOHL, Mrs. MURRAY, Mr. FEINGOLD, Mr. 

DODD, Mr. BROWNBACK, Mr. SMITH, Mr. ROCKEFELLER, Mr. 

VOINOVICH, Mr. BIDEN, Mr. CORZINE, Mr. ALLEN, Mr. INHOFE, Mr. 

CARPER, Mr. GRAHAM, Mr. DEWINE, Mr. NELSON of Florida, Mr. 

LEVIN, Mr. GRASSLEY, Mr. BURR, Mr. ALEXANDER, Mr. MCCAIN, Mr. 

NELSON of Nebraska, Mrs. HUTCHISON, Mr. SARBANES, Mr. SALAZAR, 

Mr. CORNYN, Mr. HAGEL, Mr. TALENT, Mr. CONRAD, Ms. SNOWE, Mr. 

SANTORUM, Mr. DURBIN, and Mr. LEAHY) submitted the following resolution; which was considered and agreed to 

RESOLUTION 

Recognizing the life and accomplishments of Simon 

Wiesenthal. 

Whereas Simon Wiesenthal was born on December 31, 1908, 

to Jewish merchants in Buczacz, in what is now the Lvov 

Oblast section of the Ukraine; 

Whereas after he was denied admission to the Polytechnic Institute in Lvov because of quota restrictions on Jewish 

students, Simon Wiesenthal received his degree in engineering from the Technical University of Prague in 1932; 
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Whereas Simon Wiesenthal worked in an architectural office 

until he was forced to close his business and become a 

mechanic in a bedspring factory, following the Russian 

army’s occupation of Lvov and purge of Jewish professionals; 

Whereas following the German occupation of Ukraine in 

1941, Simon Wiesenthal was initially detained in the 

Janwska concentration camp near Lvov, after which he 

and his wife were assigned to the forced labor camp serving the Ostbahn Works, which was the repair shop for 

Lvov’s Eastern Railroad; 

Whereas in August of 1942, Simon Wiesenthal’s mother was 

sent to the Belzec death camp as part of Nazi Germany’s 

‘‘Final Solution’’, and by the end of the next month 89 

of his relatives had been killed; 

Whereas with the help of the Polish Underground Simon 

Wiesenthal was able to help his wife escape the Ostbahn 

camp in 1942, and in 1943 was himself able to escape 

just before German guards began executing inmates, but 

he was recaptured the following year and sent to the 

Janwska camp; 

Whereas following the collapse of the German eastern front, 

the SS guards at Janwska took Simon Wiesenthal and 

the remaining camp survivors and joined the westward 

retreat from approaching Russian forces; 

Whereas Simon Wiesenthal was 1 of the few survivors of the 

retreat to Mauthausen, Austria and was on the brink of 

death, weighing only 99 pounds, when Mauthausen was 

liberated by American forces on May 5, 1945; 

Whereas after surviving 12 Nazi prison camps, including 5 

death camps, Wiesenthal chose not to return to his pre-
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vious occupation, and instead dedicated himself to finding 

Nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice; 

Whereas following the liberation of Mauthausen, Simon 

Wiesenthal began collecting evidence of Nazi activity for 

the War Crimes Section of the United States Army, and 

after the war continued these efforts for the Army’s Office of Strategic Services and Counter-Intelligence Corps; 

Whereas Simon Wiesenthal would also go on to head the 

Jewish Central Committee of the United States Zone of 

Austria, a relief and welfare organization; 

Whereas Simon Wiesenthal and his wife were reunited in 

1945, and had a daughter the next year; 

Whereas the evidence supplied by Wiesenthal was utilized in 

the United States Zone war crime trials; 

Whereas, after concluding his work with the United States 

Army in 1947, Simon Wiesenthal and others opened and 

operated the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in 

Linz, Austria, for the purpose of assembling evidence for 

future Nazi trials, before closing the office and providing 

its files to the Yad Vashem Archives in Israel in 1954; 

Whereas despite his heavy involvement in relief work and occupational education for Soviet refugees, Simon 

Wiesenthal tenaciously continued his pursuit of Adolf 

Eichmann, who had served as the head of the Gestapo’s 

Jewish Department and supervised the implementation of 

the ‘‘Final Solution’’; 

Whereas in 1953, Simon Wiesenthal acquired evidence that 

Adolf Eichmann was living in Argentina and passed this 

information to the Government of Israel; 

Whereas this information, coupled with information about 

Eichmann’s whereabouts in Argentina provided to Israel 
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by Germany in 1959, led to Eichmann’s capture by 

Israeli agents, trial and conviction in Israel, and execution on May 31, 1961; 

Whereas following Eichmann’s capture, Wiesenthal opened a 

new Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, Austria, 

for the purpose of collecting and analyzing information to 

aid in the location and apprehension of war criminals; 

Whereas Karl Silberbauer, the Gestapo officer who arrested 

Anne Frank, Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor concentration camps in Poland, and 

Hermine Braunsteiner, who had supervised the killings of 

several hundred children at Majdanek, are among the approximately 1,100 war criminals found and brought to 

justice as a result of Simon Wiesenthal’s investigative, 

analytical, and undercover operations; 

Whereas Simon Wiesenthal bravely forged ahead with his 

mission of promoting tolerance and justice in the face of 

danger and resistance, including numerous threats and 

the bombing of his home in 1982; 

Whereas the Simon Wiesenthal Center was established in 

1977, to focus on the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, 

commemorate the events of the Holocaust, teach tolerance education, and promote Middle East affairs; 

Whereas the Simon Wiesenthal Center monitors and combats 

the growth of neo-Nazi activity in Europe and keeps 

watch over concentration camp sites to ensure that the 

memory of the Holocaust and the sanctity of those sites 

are preserved; 

Whereas the Simon Wiesenthal Center played a pivotal role 

in convincing foreign governments to pass laws enabling 

the prosecution of Nazi war criminals; 
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Whereas throughout his lifetime, Simon Wiesenthal has had 

many honors and awards bestowed upon him, including 

decorations from the Austrian and French resistance 

movements, the Dutch Freedom Medal, the Luxembourg 

Freedom Medal, the United Nations League for the Help 

of Refugees Award, the French Legion of Honor, and the 

United States Congressional Gold Medal, which was presented to him by President James Carter in 1980; 

Whereas President Ronald W. Reagan once remarked, ‘‘For 

what Simon Wiesenthal represents are the animating 

principles of Western civilization since the day Moses 

came down from Sinai: the idea of justice, the idea of 

laws, the idea of the free will.’’; 

Whereas President George H. W. Bush has stated that 

Simon Wiesenthal, ‘‘is our living embodiment of remembrance. The two pledges of Simon Wiesenthal’s life inspire us all—‘Never forget’ and ‘Never again’.’’; 

Whereas President William Clinton has remarked of Simon 

Wiesenthal, ‘‘To those who know his story, one of miraculous survival and of relentless pursuit of justice, the answer is apparent. 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. Only if we heed these brave voices can 

we build a bulwark of humanity against the hatred and 

indifference that is still all too prevalent in this world of 

ours.’’; and 

Whereas, at the end of a life dedicated to the pursuit of justice and advocacy for victims of the Holocaust, Simon 

Wiesenthal passed away on September 20, 2005, at the 

age of 96: Now, therefore, be it 
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1 Resolved, That the Senate— 

2 (1) expresses its most sincere condolences to 

3 the family and friends of Simon Wiesenthal; 

4 (2) recognizes the life and accomplishments of 

5 Simon Wiesenthal, who, after surviving the Holo6 caust, spent more than 50 years helping to bring 

7 Nazi war criminals to justice and was a vigorous op8 ponent of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and racism; 

9 and 

10 (3) recognizes and commends Simon 

11 Wiesenthal’s legacy of promoting tolerance, his tire12 less efforts to bring about justice, and the con13 tinuing pursuit of these ideals. 

Æ