Herzliya, Israel – Simon Wiesenthal, who spent half a century tirelessly tracking down Nazis hiding throughout the world, was laid to rest Friday in Israel, the nation that sprang from the ashes of the Holocaust.
Several hundred dignitaries, Holocaust survivors and admirers gathered at the funeral for the man one diplomat praised as “the conscience of the Western world.”
“Every (Holocaust) survivor in the world walked a little taller and felt a little more secure because Simon Wiesenthal was out there defending their honor and the honor of their loved ones who perished,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
Wiesenthal, who died Tuesday in his sleep at his Vienna home at the age of 96, lost 89 family members in the Holocaust, survived a dozen Nazi camps and weighed less than 100 pounds when he was liberated in 1945.
Speaker after speaker at the funeral in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya saluted the man who, by his own count, helped bring more than 1,000 Nazi war criminals to justice, giving voice to the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.
“For decades,” said Gene Cretz, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, “Simon Wiesenthal served as the conscience of the Western world.”
Wiesenthal had trained to be an architect, Rabbi Hier said, “but instead of sketching homes, he was forced to sketch the faces of the murderers.”
Dignitaries from several nations placed wreaths on Wiesenthal’s grave, and mourners put stones on it in keeping with Jewish tradition. A cantor chanted a prayer for the dead, infusing it with references to the Holocaust.
