Nazi-Hunter was Employed by the Mossad, Asserts New Biography
Simon Wiesenthal, internationally famous as a Nazi-hunter, was a prisoner in five concentration camps during the Holocaust. A new biography reviewed by The New York Times, reveals that he was also frequently on the payroll of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.
Tom Segev, the author of “Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends,” describes the important role Mr. Wiesenthal played in the 1960 location and capture in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Final Solution.
The Mossad financed his first office in Vienna in 1960, paid him a monthly salary and provided him with an Israeli passport, the biography says. Mr. Wiesenthal’s code name was Theocrat.
His main task was to help locate Nazi criminals, including Eichmann, and especially to watch out for neo-Nazis and provide information on the activities of former Nazis in Arab countries, the book says.
Mr. Wiesenthal died in 2005 at the age of 96 in his Vienna home
Mr. Segev describes Mr. Wiesenthal as a complex and often controversial figure. The New York Times review of the book states that Mr. Wiesenthal opposed Eichmann’s in the belief that Eichmann had not yet told everything he knew and that his future testimony could be useful.
