TLS by the Famed Nazi-Hunter and Author

Simon Wiesenthal

Wiesenthal, an Austrian architect, evaded execution in the Lvov ghetto only to be transported to the Janowska concentration camp in 1941. He escaped, was recaptured, and in the closing months of the war, barely survived a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald and Mauthausen-Gusen, which Allied troops liberated in May 1945. Within a matter of weeks, Wiesenthal presented a list of war criminals to the War Crimes office of the American Counterintelligence Corps and. despite the fragile state of his health, assisted in investigations. After working for the underground Bericha Movement, which smuggled Holocaust survivors into the British Mandate of Palestine, Wiesenthal founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre in 1947, dedicated to gathering evidence to prosecute Nazi war criminals. The center was closed in 1954 but Wiesenthal continued his pursuit of the notorious Adolph Eichmann, who was captured by Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960, tried in Israel and hanged. Bolstered by Eichmann’s successful capture, Wiesenthal established the Documentation Centre of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime in Vienna in 1961, which not only helped prosecute thousands of Nazis, but also track anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism.

Our letter discusses Wiesenthal’s books Every Day Remembrance Day: A Chronicle of Jewish Martyrdom (1987), Flucht vor dem Schicksal (1988) and Recht, nicht Rache (1989). Our letter was penned the same year HBO released the film entitled Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story, based on his book of the same name.

Folded into quarters with normal wear and in very fine condition.