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Simon Wiesenthal Essay

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Simon Wiesenthal born on December 31, 1908, in Austria-Hungary, was a survivor of numerous Nazi concentration camps. Simon's experiences allow us to gain a deeper understanding of how the Holocaust has impacted his life. His experience profoundly impacted his mental & emotional health, the loss in his life and the influence it had on him to become a Nazi hunter. On July 6, 1941, Wiesenthal was arrested and taken to Brigidki Prison and managed to escape. After the escape he was forced to move to the ghettos and was eventually taken to the Janowska concentration camp. In 1941, Wiesenthal was sent from the camp to a forced-labor camp (the Ostbahn Repair Works). From there Simon was forced to persevere through more concentration camps including …show more content…

As a Prisoner of 5 concentration camps, Simon was placed under many mental and emotional hardships including exposure to death & suicide attempts. At the Brigidki Prison Simon was forced to watch the mass murder of Jewish victims. In the Prison the Jews were ordered to form a row, face the wall and cross their arms behind their necks, and then an SS guard began to shoot at them. Wiesenthal fortunately escaped the shootings and was taken to his cell; he thought of the dead and envied them because he believed that death was a better alternative. During Simon’s time as a prisoner in the camps, he experienced extreme loneliness due to being separated from his family and friends. In the Ostbahn Repair Works, Simon tried multiple times to kill himself. Simon made his first attempt by using a small razor blade to cut both his wrist and his second attempt was to hang himself. In the aftermath of the war, Wiesenthal had no hope & was overcome by sadness, and hardly looked for his friends and family because he thought that "his people were dead”. The exposure to seeing death & the suicide attempts on his life are the mental & emotional impacts on Simon Wiesenthal due to the …show more content…

Some of these losses include the death of family members, loss of money & assets and loss of personal identity. The website 'Museum of Tolerance.com’ states that by September of 1942 most of Siomon’s & his wife's relatives were dead; a total of 89 family members. ‘The murderers among us’ reveals that at the beginning of the war Simon Wiesenthal lost his job as an architect due to the strict regulations placed upon the Jews. After this Simon was forced to give up his home and any property he owned and move to the ghettos. The effects of this prevented Simon from financially supporting himself and his family. Simon’s loss of identity is another impact of the Holocaust. In the time that Simon was in the concentration camps he was isolated and lost the connection to his family and Jewish community. This profoundly impacted him because he was no longer able to be himself since the foundation of the concentration camps was to strip away any form of identity from the Jews. The loss of family members, money & assets and personal identity are the impact of loss that the Holocaust had on Simon

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