The today 94 year old Simon Wiesenthal balanced the accounts of his long research in an Interview with the Austrian weekly “Format”. He claims that he has found the mass murderers that he was searching. He had survived them all. If there were some that managed to escape they were too old and too ill to stand trial.

Looking back, he said that he had come quite close to his philosophy “Justice not revenge”. According to his office, Wiesenthal had already retired from active Nazi hunting
some years ago. But still he spends at least one hour in his office every day. He started his Documentation Center in 1947 in Linz and moved to Vienna in 1961. For Wiesenthal it is natural that his life work “never ends”. Now he will act against Holocaust denial. He wants to push communication and education. His Office in Vienna will continue to collect and to pass information on suspected Nazi criminals. (!)

The active search he has transferrerd to the Centers under his name in Los Angeles, Jerusalem and Paris. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Center in Jerusalem, has already started to continue Simon Wiesenthal’s work 25 years ago. Now Zuroff is especially interested in the activities of Austrian Police Battalions. Recent results of research indicate that these units were deeply involved in the extermination of Jews in the east in the shadow of the Wehrmacht as the SS. In an Interview with “Format”, Zuroff complains about the “inactiveness of Austrian authorities”. There were “no serious efforts” to hunt perpetrators or to clear Nazi crimes. According to Zuroff, this is a “direct result of the not existing political will to try Nazi War Criminals”.