Overview

Simon Wiesenthal was the legendary 'Nazi hunter', a Holocaust survivor who dedicated his life to the punishment of Nazi criminals. A hero in the eyes of many, he was also attacked for his unrelenting pursuit of the past, when others preferred to forget. For this definitive biography, Tom Segev has obtained access to Wiesenthal's hundreds of thousands of private papers and to sixteen archives, including records of the U.S., Israeli, Polish and East German secret services. Segev is able to reveal the intriguing secrets of Wiesenthal's life, including his stunning role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann, his controversial investigative techniques, his unlikely friendships with Kurt Waldheim and Albert Speer, and the nature of his rivalry with Elie Wiesel. Tom Segev has written a brilliant character study of a 'hunter' who was driven by his own memories to ensure that the destruction of European Jewry never be forgotten.

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9780224091060

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Reviews

Praise for Tom Segev's Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends Mr. Segev, justly celebrated for his histories of formative moments of the state of Israel, is as careful a biographer as he is an historian....Gripping yet sober, this meticulous portrait of a complicated man is unlikely to be bettered. -- The Economist [A] meticulous yet forceful new biography...[Segev's] book delivers not merely an intimate account of Wiesenthal's life and times, but also judicious examinations of the many controversial and little-known aspects of that life....It is a serious pleasure to imagine a new generation of readers discovering his life in this careful telling. -- The New York Times Segev reveals...a man of profound conflict and contradiction, a lightning rod for controversy and recrimination, but unquestionably a crucial figure in the struggle to retrieve and preserve the evidence of the Holocaust....Segev himself sticks to the 'true story'. That's his stock-in-trade and that's what makes all of his work so compelling. But telling the unvarnished truth ultimately honors the man he is writing about, and Wiesenthal emerges from Segev's book as an even richer and more consequential character than the one he invented for himself. -- Los Angeles Times Segev is one of the world's great investigative reporters--in a class with bloodhounds like Seymour Hersh and the late David Halberstam....The real achievement of this warts-and-all biography [is] that truth, justice, and memory are the province not of saints, but of flawed human beings. --Susan Jacoby, The Washington Post Tom Segev has produced a biography that is a model of fascinating description and measured analysis. --The Sunday Times (UK) Segev paints a vivid portrait of this human dynamo who made it his life's work to make people not only confront and remember the Nazi genocide but also to punish as many of its perpetrators as possible. -- San Fra

Author Information

Tom Segev, who writes a weekly column in Ha'aretz, Israel's leading daily newspaper, is the author of The Seventh Million, The Israelis and the Holocaust and other groundbreaking books, including One Palestine, Complete, which was one of the New York Times' ten best books of 2000. He lives in Jerusalem.

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