Jerusalem, September 03: Austrian-Jewish Holocaust survivor, Simon Wiesenthal, who became well-known for dedicating his life pursuing Nazi war criminals and documenting their crimes, was in fact an agent of the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, a new book released on Thursday revealed.
Documents from Wiesenthal’s estate and interviews with his Mossad supervisors break the widely-held belief of how he operated and cast doubts on the standard perception that the Israeli government had played minimal role in tracking down Nazi criminals.
In his new book, “Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends,” Israeli historian, author and columnist Tom Segev revealed that Wiesenthal, who died in 2005 at the age of 96, had received a monthly salary of $300 from the Israeli embassy in Vienna.
Wiesenthal was first recruited by the political department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, an espionage body predecessor to the Mossad, and then by the agency itself. The spy agency provided him funding to set up his first office on Vienna in 1960 and gave him an Israeli passport and assigned him the codename of “Theorcart,” Segev wrote in his book.
He was assigned the tasks of tracking down and locating Nazi criminals, including Adolf Eichmann who was responsible for facilitating the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe, according to the book.
Wiesenthal was the one who informed the Mossad that Eichmann was living in Argentina, where he was captured by Israeli operatives in 1960 and brought to Israel for trial. Eichmann was convicted in an Israeli civilian court on crimes against humanity and was executed by hanging in 1962.
Segev wrote that Wiesenthal opposed Eichmann’s execution not on grounds of moral objection but because he believed Eichmann hadn’t told everything he knew and that further testimony would be more revealing.
The book also revealed that Wiesenthal supported former Austrian President and former UN Secretary General Kurt Josef Waldheim when the latter was accused by Jewish groups of having served in the Nazi-Germany army.
Wiesenthal served as a behind-the-scene adviser to Mr. Waldheim and helped him challenge the harshest suspicions against him.
-Agencies