Wiesenthal Buried in Israel

Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who did more than any single individual to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, was buried in Israel today.

Hundreds of dignitaries, Holocaust survivors and admirers attended the funeral ceremony in the seaside town of Herzliya for Wiesenthal, who died in his sleep at his Vienna home on Tuesday aged 96.

A survivor of five concentration camps and seven other prisons, Wiesenthal spent the rest of his life pursuing Nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice.

"Today we are burying the conscience of the Holocaust," Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, said before the ceremony began. "Nobody did more to keep alive the memories of the Holocaust than Simon Wiesenthal."

Dignitaries from the US, Austria and Israel placed wreaths on Wiesenthal's grave, and mourners placed stones, a Jewish tradition.

"Simon Wiesenthal taught an entire generation that you learn from the past and use your knowledge to build the past, so that there will be hope in the future, hope for the Jewish nation and for the entire humanity," Rabbi Michael Melchior, Israel's deputy minister for education, said.

Wiesenthal weighed just 45kg (99lb) when a US army unit liberated him and other inmates at Mauthausen in May 1945. Enlisted by the Americans to research war criminals, he spent more than 50 years hunting Nazis, speaking out against neo-Nazism and racism, and being a voice for the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

Wiesenthal, who lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust, estimated that he helped bring some 1,100 Nazi war criminals to trial.

"When history looks back I want people to know the Nazis weren't able to kill millions of people and get away with it," he once said.

Mr Hier recalled that Wiesenthal asked to celebrate his 90th birthday at the Hotel Imperial in Vienna. Asked why there, Wiesenthal replied, "Because it was Hitler's favourite hotel," Mr Hier said.

He wanted to show "that the Jews have outlived the Nazis", Mr Hier said.

Wiesenthal was perhaps best known for his role in helping track down one-time SS leader Adolf Eichmann, who organised the extermination of the Jews. Eichmann was found in Argentina, abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, and tried and hanged by Israel.

Wiesenthal also tracked down Austrian policeman Karl Silberbauer, who he believed arrested the Dutch teenager Anne Frank and sent her to her death at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. That pursuit began in 1958 after a youth told Wiesenthal he did not believe in Frank's existence and murder, but would if Wiesenthal could find the man who arrested her. The search led to Silberbauer's arrest in 1963.